I'm really excited to announce the first in a series of barcamp-style events for the upcoming Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 OS! I have a long history as a Microsoft developer and my recent work in marketing, publicity, social media, and community-building has now come full circle with my past as a Microsoft ASP.NET, VB, and Mobile developer with the announcement of these events.

First and foremost, I want to thank Loke Uei, Senior Technical Project Manager on the Microsoft Mobile Developer Experience team for not hesitating in giving his full support to the community. AGAIN, Microsoft demonstrates, by walking the walk, its commitment to the developer community with their support of these community-driven events. Thank you Loke. Also, a hearty thanks to Chris Koenig, Microsoft Developer Evangelist, for hooking us up after that fateful tweet. ;-)

So, WHAT is WinMoDevCamp? Glad you asked!

WinMoDevCamp is a series of upcoming not-for-profit gatherings to develop applications for the upcoming release of the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 O/S. The event is currently being planned in 6 cities around the world. Our first Windows Mobile Developer Camp event has been scheduled for August 19 in Redmond, Washington at the Microsoft Campus. You can register today via Eventbright. Dates will soon be announced for the following additional cities: Austin, London, New York, San Francisco, and Singapore. We will also encourage other mobile developers to host their own events on the same dates. The soon-to-be-released http://winmodevcamp.org website will have facilities for local events to organize as well.

Dates: Our first event will be held Seattle on 8/19
Venue: Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington in the Cascade Auditorium

Registration: Eventbright will be utilized so that registrations are broken down by city. Please contact us to set up your city for an event so we can provide you with the necessary registration pages and subdomain on the http://WinMoDevCamp.org website (no live yet).

The event inspired by BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, and MacHack, and the original iPhoneDevCamp to develop applications (local and web based) for mobile devices that run the Windows Mobile 6.5 Operating System.

Attendees will include mobile developers, web developers, .Net Developers, UI designers, and testers, all working together. Development projects will include both solo and team efforts. While some attendees will wish to work solo during the event, we encourage attendees to team up, based on expertise, to work in ad-hoc project development teams. All attendees should be prepared to work on a development project during the event.

Attendees will be able to:

* Create new applications for the Windows Mobile Platform.
* Meet and work side-by-side with team members from the Microsoft Mobile Developer Experience team.
* Migrate existing mobile applications from the iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre to the Windows Mobile Platform.
* Create applications to support Windows Enterprise Applications.
* Test and optimize applications for Windows Mobile 6.5.

The organizer of WinMoDevCamp is Giovanni Gallucci. Many thanks to the Microsoft Mobile Developer Experience team for their support in making these events happen!

You're hardcore if you like Britney. Britney's hardcore.

What's that? Oh right. We do that a lot then.

Who's your Britney?

Received an instant message this morning: "This is ballsy, so I thought of you of course."

Thanks Jeff. :-) I think it's brilliant. Enough so that I'd like to take these folks to lunch at a local Ruby Tuesday the next time I'm in Charlotte. I give you BooneOakley's Home Page.