Summary of my CG09 session

I have finally finished the summary of my Codegarden 09 session 'Using Webservices in Umbraco'.

I have packed all together in a zip file you can download here.

Retreat and Codegarden 09 roundup

My plans had been to write every day a summary for the Retreat and Codegarden 09. I don't know why I didn't managed it (I am so sorry *g*). So I will try to give you my roundup of these great event(s) right now, nearly two weeks after Codegarden 09 and the Retreat.

Day one (Thursday)

The first day I arrived at Copenhagen in the morning. It was great to see all the guys I met the year before and also the new ones who joined the first time. I was a bit nervous to meet all these guys. Therefore that the retreat house opened at least at 3 pm we had to kill time in the great an fabulous BonBonLand. I was wondering why all security advices had been written in Danish and German. Per pointed out that BonBonLand and also the retreat house are in a tourist region mostly used by germans. I also had to take a rollercoaster as training for later usage with my childs (my wife wouldn't do that in life).

Finally we arrived at the retreat house where we continued some social talks to get known each other. We also played the legendary retreat football game with AJAX.

Day two (Friday)

The second day we started with some Open Space sessions. This had been great talks. The most important talk for me had been the Umbraco cross roots promotion therefore that I am disappointed about the low popularity of Umbraco in Germany.

The day ended with a great BBQ, some social talks and the unavoidable Podcast (I am soooo sorry).

Day three (Saturday)

The third day started by the principle discussion about using ASP.NET MVC in Umbraco which will be done for v5. I am totally exited about this because I love this Framework. Afterwards most of us helped hacking the new our.umbraco.org site. I also had to prepare my session for Codegarden.

This evening we had great fun driving carts, and I became third in a team together with Alex (thanks Alex).

Unlike to the year before this saturday we got neighbours (all from germany) and I could see some typical german behaviours (confirming some prejudices).

Day four (Sunday)

This morning we had to leave the retreat house returning to Copenhagen. We drove directly to the venue where we prepared the rooms.

This evening I finished the preparations for my session. Afterwards a small group of us took a beer in a near cafe.

Day five (Monday), Codegarden 09 day one

Finally Codegarden 09 started with the Keynote from Niels and Per. They presented the new community site (our.umbraco.org), the roadmap for Umbraco with v5 going to MVC. Wow.

Afterwards the sessions took place. In my session I talked about using webservices in Umbraco. Although I had to compete to the 'Wired.co.uk building for massive traffic' session I had an audience from about 40 to 50 people. All demos went well although the time was short. Direct after the session and also later the day I got some very good feedback for the session (YAY).

Later I joined the Perfomance optimizing ASP.NET session (thanks Mads) and had some good talks.

As an special guest Tor Norretranders talked about getting laid via sharing your shit. A great philosophical talk.

But nothing can be better than the great and one and only Ole Erling playing for the Umbraco Bingo. Wow, nice end of day one.

Day six (Thursday), Codegarden 09 day two

The second day of Codegarden is traditional an Open Space day. So we got some great themes for this day and I joined some of them taking good ideas and new motivation with me.

Fortunately there was midsummer in denmark and we haeded to the venue from last year where a big party was. Afterwards the others took me to another bar or something else. Great ending of the week I guess.

Day seven (Wednesday)

I was in bed about 3:30 am. Kenneth and me we stood up at 6 am heading to the airport.

Arriving home I had to catch some mice and had to clean the first floor completely because of the mice (received one's just desert I guess).

Conclusion

Again this had been a great week with awesome people. I learned a lot, got some motivation and new ideas.

The most important things I take with me from this week are:

• Umbraco goes MVC
• LinQ to Umbraco
• the new community site
• don't wait, just do it
• share your shit

My thanks are going to Niels and Per who invited me again and made this week to an awesome week I will not forget.

A special thanks goes to Doug for his great pictures he is sharing with us. Also Peter uploaded some pics, thx.

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Codegarden 09 Day 2

A summary of the second day at the retreat house:

This day had been affected by talks about the main themes 'the community' and 'umbraco with MVC?'. We had some great talks about these two themes discussing forth and back all the possibilities we can see.

Afterwards we had BBQ and again I got the clown of the retreat podcast. Just laughing about it and taking it as it seems to be: make a joke on one who don't care.

Also had a nice evening talking to many of the guys here.

Codegarden 09 Day 1

• Journey
• BonBonLand
• Retreathouse
• Demo of the CG09 surprise
• Talks about MVC

After a short night (daughter gets tooth) and a flight full of giggling teens I meet most of the other guys joining the Retreat before Codegarden 09. They are all very friendly guys you can meet at Codegarden 09 in Copenhagen.

After loading the buses we drove to BonBonLand drove the Rollercoasters (me only one) and had a few hours of fun before driving to the retreat house. It is exactly the same house as last year. While we waited for the arrival of the last three guys we played the first round of the retreat football game (my team loosed this game, shame on us) and started the first talks and demos.

The most important things on this day were the friendly guys I met, the socializing talks with them and the great demo of the Codegarden 09 surprise from Per (more on monday).

Tomorrow we will start with the talks about ASP.NET MVC for Umbraco, where I am really curious about it.

Just check out the pictures from the first day from Doug.

Stay tuned, Thomas

Speaking at Codegarden 09

Only one week left till Codegarden 09 and I missed to blog about me speaking on this conference the last months. Shame on me, but now I am confirming that I will talk in the hacking session about using Webservices in Umbraco.

What will I talk about and what demos will I show? As the name of the session says I will talk about using Webservices in Umbraco. Umbraco has a rich API in the background which you can use via .NET to manipulate the complete content. The API is most used by building .NET Usercontrols, but not only the Usercontrols can consume these API. Every code written in .NET and running in the scope of the Web application Umbraco can consume these API. So Webservices can do this too. I am using Webservices with Umbraco in many ways in my company. This has several advantages especially the user experience when using Win-Forms connected to Umbraco via Webservices.

So some samples I will show will be:

• Simple usage of Webservice via Win-Forms: Reading from Umbraco, adding, updating and deleting nodes in Umbraco
• The same as before, but not using Win-Forms, thus I will use another Website made with the ASP.NET MVC Framework
• Using an own implemented search via .NET Usercontrols and jQuery.
• Implementing a search Plugin for IE
• Showcase of my ClientTools, especially the Log Viewer, the Version Cleaner and (if ready) a cool new feature

So I have only 2 days till I leave for the retreat meeting and I have a lot of work to do. I hope you will join Codegarden 09 and we will see us there.