Windows 8 Developer Camp in hyderabad by Microsoft India.

Windows 8 Developer Camp in hyderabad by Microsoft India.

It was the first ever developer camp on windows 8 and was excited to attend it. As it was an invite based event submitted two app ideas and fortunately got invitation for both.

Venue was The PARK hotel, somajiguda. Had a good time in The Park, well hosted and nice food as well. Registration was simple and directly went to the seminar hall. First session started with the Windows 8 consumer preview demo by Rajashekaran from Microsoft. After that had continuous sessions by other Microsoft techies like Sandeep Alur, Aditee gupte, Harish V etc. All the sessions are nice with useful samples and demos.

The features that impressed me in Windows 8 Consumer preview are The Metro style home screen and Metro style apps, faster app switching, integration of multiple technologies like C#, VB, C/C++, HTML5, CSS, JS etc into the WinRT metro application development. We were given access to the Visual studio 2011 beta version, which includes some cool new features like integration with Blend, Edit and continue in debugging, improved Team development, deeply integrated testing, Unit testing and I felt the best of all is the support for languages like CPP, HTML5, CSS, JS in VS (as if they are native .NET languages).

After the successful completion of the sessions, actual fun started at 6PM a nonstop 24 hour development and coding session of Windows 8 Metro apps. A big spacious seminar hall with well planned seating arrangement is provided to all the developers. Most of the people worked seriously on their own ideas. Some people worked as a team also. Eventhough its a continuous development session, there was no moment we felt bore. There were continuous efforts from microsoft team to cheer us and to encourage us. They arranged a funny Magic show, a nice music show by a guitarist and a yoga session on how to perform Mudras. 

One best thing other than the sessions is the food provided by The PARK, lunch, dinner, breakfast everything is good. We were provided with various kinds of snacks throughout the night. Microsoft also provided nice T-shirts for all the attendees along with a participation certificate.

Finally before the end of the Camp, we were asked to demonstrate our ideas on the stage. I have demoed two simple apps, one shows the public timeline of the twitter and another is a cocktail app, which got a good response from all. Microsoft team felt good with my presention and asked me to give the visual feedback about the event. Overall its a nice Metro journey with all surprises and memories. Btw, met some new friends from different companies.