Adam Kinney posts tagged with 'devigner'

Interviewed at MIX, audio now available

Adam Kinney — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:21:00 GMT

In case you haven't heard, we meaning Microsoft threw a little party in Vegas this month called MIX. You should really come visit MIX sometime maybe next year, say around March 18-20th in 2009?

We like to have 72 hour conversations and talk about all the things we have going on for the web. This year we announced Silverlight 2 Beta 1.

Man I was excited, and maybe after listening to these two interviews a bit overly excited. On Wednesday I received two emails within 20 minutes of each other notifying me that my interviews had been posted.

First, I was interviewed by Erik Mork from the Sparkling Client podcast. Sparkling Client is podcast they have recently started, but judging by the production quality and the content, I feel they are off to a good start. My interview is available as Show 6: interview with Adam Kinney of Microsoft.

Erik and Monica do nice job leading into the content and my favorite interviewee-caught-in-the-headlights quote is when I say "algorithms to be figured out". Other than algorithms we discuss Silverlight 2 and the direction that we are headed with it.

The goal of Sparkling Client is to be concise 15-minute podcast that entertains as well as informs their audience about Silverlight and the rich web to come. You can find more shows on their site SparklingClient.com.

The Thirsty Developer is another podcast that I interviewed for at MIX. Dave Bost and Larry Clarkin two Microsoft evangelists from the Midwest produce this show which has a nice "hanging out in Chicago" feel.

Dave interviewed me about Silverlight 2 and we cover what it is and what some of the great new features are.

I listened to this one and found a few errors that I should clear up.

Templates - when discussing styling and skinning, I meant to discuss templates but ended up discussing the ContentPresenter and its ability to composite arbitrary controls. This is not changing the template of the control but rather changing the content. Jose Fajardo has an interesting post covering skinning and styling which is a bit more accurate.
Installation - I just wanted to strengthen the point that the installation process is still as customizable as before in 1.0. Hard Rock has a nice custom screen and FaceOut does too and they include a timer to start the application as soon as Silverlight is installed. Kudos for the timer!

It was a very fun process to be a part of and I thank both parties for their kind words.

ZamDes a new WPF and Silverlight user group

Adam Kinney — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 08:41:00 GMT

A new Wellington NZ based user group focused on WPF and Silverlight for designers will be holding their first meeting on Thursday the 13th of September. This is awesome to see. Now if only Wellington wasn't so far from here, I'd stop by :)

From their about section:

If you want to join ZamDes you can email Nas with your name and email address or leave us a comment. Our monthly meetings are scheduled to start in mid September, the first session will be an informal introduction to WPF and Silverlight and info on how it can be used by designers to produce functional, visually rich frontends for web and client applications (and all without writing managed code!).
We’re still finalising the exact dates and locations as we’re keen to keep the venue and frequency consistent. We also have heaps of cool events in the pipeline, including a remote presentation from Lee Brimelow (frog Design, USA), the latest info from major MSFT events, and celebrations to coincide with major industry events and technology releases. And of course they’ll be loads of time to drink, eat and just chill out.

What do I mean by "Devigner at Work"?

Adam Kinney — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 08:48:00 GMT

In December of 2006, I blew up my blog.

It was Christmas break and I had decided to update the code base of my blog. It was a small update, but something I could just throw up there on the way out the door. It didn’t work. In fact nothing was working. I could no longer run the application on my local machine. Somewhere I had lost something and had mismatched my assemblies. I had half-assed my blog code as much as I had half-assed my blog. This resulted in frustration and a hand-illustrated "Boom".

In 2006, I hadn’t done much on my blog at all. Sure I was busy at work, which I do put a lot of energy into and enjoy, but I knew it was just sitting there languishing. It had become an events blog, “Something happened here, something happened over here, too. I have thoughts to share, but no inclination to write them down.”

Blogs can be useful in different ways and mine has not been useful since post PDC 2003 days when I was blazing a trail through Avalon (now named WPF). I learned Avalon by digging in, trying to create and then sharing and garnering feedback. I liked that and I want to do something like that again. I want to learn and share again and interact.

So I’ve laid out some goals for my site.

Site news and feature updates — We do move quickly at work and often update our sites. By logging our progress here I can provide news for those who are interested (friends and community members who are often developers), keep track for my personal recollection and hopefully share useful information for other developers.

Create a gallery of personal work — As a designer type person, I have a large amount of side projects I have started, if only in my head. My belief is that if I have a platform to share these and receive feedback, I will be more apt to complete these projects and get some of that creative energy out in the process.

Explore the role of the Devigner — Finally the “devigner” term comes up. If you have not guessed by “devinger” is a combination of the words “designer” and “developer”. And I believe it is a term that describes what I do. I started my life out more on the designer side, drawing everywhere, loitering in art rooms and painting. Not until later in my life (much later than most geeks) did I get into technology and bending it to my will. Nowadays, I really enjoy and study User Interface design, but I also really enjoy coding and application development.

I believe I showed up at Microsoft (2005) at a very good time. Having been a heavy user of C# and ASP.Net, I was pleased to learn the direction Microsoft was going in the design and Web direction. ASP.Net 2.0, with its improved standards awareness and awesome new advancements (can someone say VirtualPathProvider?), WPF, with its vector and extensible sweetness, Atlas (now ASP.NET Ajax), with it simplifying Ajax for ASP.NET and better web experiences, "WPF/E", with its cross-browser rich Web experience promise, and then there is the whole Expression suite of products which enables building on all this technology.

The technology behind the web is growing quickly, and I want to follow along and explore what this means for people like me. People who design and develop. People who from this day forward will be known “Devigners”.

(All right, so I agree, the end may have been a bit dramatic, but I think it gets the point across…and I do know the term “devigner” has been used before, but I'm going to run with it...)