Learning WPF at the WPF LOB tour and XAMLFest events

There seems to be a lot of buzz around Silverlight lately and I admit, I like it :-).  But I also think that there is a huge misconception about Silverlight “replacing” WPF.  I get emails a lot about people asking me questions about Silverlight and after a bit of prodding, I see that their target platform for their application is Windows.  I then begin my rant on why it should be WPF if that is the target platform.  I’m usually met with some weird looks being that I do a lot of Silverlight, but I state my case accordingly.

The conversation usually follows about not understanding WPF or trying to find more information about it.  Well, the WPF teams are trying to change that perception.  In fact, Jaime Rodriquez and Karl Shifflett have been organizing a WPF LOB Tour to provide 2 days of free WPF training for developers.  Jaime is the technical evangelist for WPF and Karl works on the WPF team.  They will be in these cities soon:

• Los Angeles, CA
• London, UK
• New York, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Phoenix, AZ

Take a look at what they’ll be covering about WPF:

• Day One:

  • Lap Around WPF
  • WPF Tools ( Blend, Visual Studio 2008)
  • Graphics Subsystem
  • Layout
  • WPF Fundamentals and new concepts
    • Application Model
    • Dependency Properties
    • Trees (logical & visual)
    • Events
    • Threading
    • Resources
  • Controls
  • Styling
  • Templating
  • Q&A with instructors at end of day
• Day Two:
  • WPF integration with Win32 and Windows Forms
  • Data binding
  • Introduction to Model-View-ViewModel
  • Commanding in M-V-VM
  • Views, Navigation and Transitions
  • Data Validation
  • Error handling, Model dialogs, Logging
  • Unit Testing
  • MVVM & LOB tips and tricks
  • Q&A with the instructor
If this is coming to an area near you, I’d strongly encourage you to make the time to be there.  There is no cost to you other than getting yourself there (if it isn’t in your same city).  Their first event packed a full house on registration within 2 hours and the feedback from the training was overwhelmingly positive and exciting.  Karl is such a dynamic and fun guy to be around, it will be worth your price of admission to hang out with him and Jaime for 2 days.  I’d love for one city to rally together and all show up wearing Hawaiian shirts to make Karl feel at home :-).

You can find all the information about the events on Karl’s blog or Jaime’s blog.  Registration links and everything are listed there.  If you have a question about the event, please reach out to Karl or Jaime.  I know their most asked question is "why aren’t you coming to <fill-in-the-blank-location>?  Honestly after talking to Karl I’m convinced he wouldn’t sleep if he could go everywhere…and he wants to as well!  I think there are some plans to do some studio recordings and produce the information online, but there is no timeframe for that just yet…and I do believe that nothing really supplements being able to network with others learning and being in-person to ask questions, etc.  It’s a great opportunity to learn and demystify WPF development for yourself…really, make the time to be there.

Additionally, there have been some organized XAMLFest events happening around the country (US – but if there are others worldwide, leave a comment where they are happening).  These aren’t 2-day workshop trainings, but are events organized around our XAML technologies, specifically WPF and Silverlight. 

I think WPF and Silverlight are really great technologies and compliment each other well.  Try not to learn one without the other.  I know personally I’m trying to do more WPF learning myself as the natural progression of the Microsoft platform is the continuum of Silverlight to WPF as shared application platforms.  I hope you’ll do the same.

If you’ve attended one of these WPF events listed above, please leave a comment about your feedback as well.