Ria Wireside Chat

Episode 03 - Laurent Bugnion and Silverlight 2 Unleashed

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:31:53 GMT

Listen to Episode 03 - Laurent Bugnion and Silverlight 2 Unleashed.

In this episode of ria.wiresidechat.com, Mike and Josh catch up with Laurent Bugnion about his new book - Silverlight 2 Unleashed. In this interview, we talk about the new features in Silverlight 2, how it relates to WPF and Flex and lots more.

Laurent Bugnion works as a senior software developer and architect in Switzerland. Originally an electronics engineer from the Engineering School of Yverdon (Switzerland), his interests quickly moved to software, and he achieved a post-graduate degree in software engineering in 1999 in the Engineering School of Rapperswil (Switzerland). Currently, his interests are very much set on WPF, Silverlight, and other .NET 3.5 technologies, which he helped introduce, teach, and coach at Siemens for the past three years. Prior to that, he first wrote embedded C/C++, and then moved to desktop computers in Java, JavaScript, and eventually .NET (WinForms and ASP.NET). After more than 12 years spent developing various software products at Siemens, Laurent is employed since December 2008 by IdentityMine, one of the world’s leading firms in WPF and Silverlight development and design.

Laurent Bugnion - http://www.galasoft.ch

IdentityMine - http://www.identitymine.com

Episode 02 - Ben Forta on The History of RIA

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:02:38 GMT

Listen to Episode 02 - Ben Forta on the History of RIA.

In this episode of ria.wiresidechat.com, Mike and Josh catch up with Ben Forta to talk about the history of RIA. Ben is the original evangelist from Adobe and has seen the entire history of RIA. He is now the Director of Platform Evangelism.

First, Ben lays down his definition of RIA. This was an interesting conversation as even this the question was a little bit of a walk down memory lane the term RIA (Rich Internet Applications) has started to become main stream and he's finding that he's not having to explain it to everyone the way that he did in the past.

One of the very important things that Ben talks about is the difference between Web Sites or traditional Web Applications and RIAs. One of the key differences is that traditional sites and applications are typically loosely coupled collections of pages that happen to work together whereas a RIA is a single application that has lots of interactions without having to refresh the entire screen. Instead they are leveraging services to interact with the server.

Next we talked about the barriers to adoption in the enterprise. The great news there is that over the past year or so, the momentum has really picked up in the RIA space across the board. The issue here is that one of the bigger issues is that there are not enough people to get the work done sometimes.

One of the things that all three of us, Mike, Ben and Josh, agree on is that one of the major bad practices when building RIAs is treating thinking like a traditional web developer. It's actually easier sometimes for desktop or old school client/server developers to get into RIA than it is for an HTML/CSS/JavaScript developer.

Ben is very excited about the future as he is starting to see a ton of new applications and

Finally Ben talks about how to get started.
The first thing that you have to do is pick a technology and go with it. It doesn't really matter which one - obviously Ben wants you doing Flex.
The second part is that you really need to learn back ends. You really need to understand the server side technologies and how to build them successfully. The front end technologies only work as well as the server side that supports them.
The third thing is that you need to get heavily engaged in the community. There are fantastic communities out there that will give you a ton of support. But these only work if you're engaged.

Links:

Ben Forta - http://www.forta.com/

Adobe - http://www.adobe.com/

Google Maps - http://maps.google.com/

Line Rider - http://linerider.com/

Fantastic Contraption - http://www.fantasticcontraption.com/

Mike's Blog: http://blogs.digitalprimates.net/codeSlinger/

Josh's Blog: http://www.joshholmes.com

Episode 01 - What is RIA?

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 04:00:00 GMT

In this inaugural RIA Wireside Chat, Josh Holmes and Mike Labriola discuss their backgrounds, how the RIA Chat podcast came to be, what RIA means, and their plans for the future.

Listen to Episode 01 - What is RIA?

Hosts:

Josh Holmes - RIA Evangelist for Microsoft

Josh Holmes is a RIA Architect Evangelist with Microsoft focused on building and educating the dev partners with a Rich Internet Application offering in Central Region. Prior to joining Microsoft in October 2006, Josh was a consultant working with a variety of clients ranging from large Fortune 500 firms to smaller sized companies. Josh is a frequent speaker and lead panelist at national and international software development conferences focusing on emerging technologies, software design and development with an emphasis on mobility and RIA (Rich Internet Applications).

Mike Labriola - Senior Consultant at Digital Primates

Michael has been developing Internet applications since 1995 and has been working with Flex since its 1.0 beta program. He specializes in developing applications with high business impact using emerging technologies.
Michael worked as an author and technical editor on Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source and has published a series of articles on Adobe's Developer Center teaching others to integrate Flex client and server technologies. As a frequent speaker on Flex topics and contributor to Flex mailing lists, he is known throughout the developer community. Michael also speaks Spanish, Italian, and pretends to speak more Japanese than he actually knows.

Links:

Mike's Blog: http://blogs.digitalprimates.net/codeSlinger/

Josh's Blog: http://www.joshholmes.com

The Thirsty Developer Podcast: http://thirstydeveloper.com/

OpenLazlo: http://www.openlaszlo.org/

Silverlight: http://www.silverlight.net

Flex: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

LineRider: http://linerider.com/