Prairie Dev Con West–Sessions Announced, Registration Open!

I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve posted sessions and speakers on our site, and opened registration for Prairie Developer Conference West!

http://www.prairiedevcon.com

Three Days of Fantastic Sessions!

Prairie Dev Con West happens March 13 – 15, and will be three days of software development, IT Pro, and Agile sessions delivered by world class speakers and experts in the technical industry! We’ve currently posted 45 of the 72 sessions we’ll be providing, so check out what’s on the site and check back over the next few weeks as we fill out the session list!

http://www.prairiedevcon.com/sessions

http://www.prairiedevcon.com/speakers

Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell’s .NET Rocks Show LIVE at Prairie Dev Con!

We’re excited to have Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell attend the conference! They’ll be presenting sessions, but also doing an episode of their .NET Rocks internet show live from the conference! For more info, visit:

http://www.dotnetrocks.com/

Pre Conference Workshops!

We have two pre-conference workshops happening on Monday, March 12^th! Dylan Smith will be doing a full day on “Creating Powerful Build and Deploy Processes with TFS Build” and Bil Simser will be doing “Windows Phone 7 Developer Workshop”! Both of these guys are respected experts in their field and we’re very proud to be able to offer these workshops.

Attending either workshop is $399.99, but you can get 50% off if you bundle a workshop with a conference registration!

http://www.prairiedevcon.com/Workshops

Early Bird Pricing!

Registration is now open! For the month of December you can register at our early bird price of $499.99, which is $300 off the regular price! Also, groups of 3 or more get an additional $50 off each registration!

You can register online or request an invoice. For more information, visit our registration page:

http://www.prairiedevcon.com/Registration

Hotel and Venue!

The conference will be held at the TELUS Convention Centre, and the official conference hotel is the Calgary Marriott right next door! We have a limited number of hotel rooms at a conference rate of $209.00 a night, so book your hotel accommodations early! Call 1-800-896-6878 and mention Prairie Developer Conference when booking. More venue information can be found here:

http://www.prairiedevcon.com/About

Keep In Touch!

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! There’s many ways to connect with the conference and receive announcements/updates:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/prairiedevcon (We’re also using #PrDCWest as the conference hashtag)

Blog: http://prairiedevcon.blogspot.com/

Email: darcy@prairiedevcon.com

Join us!

Prairie Dev Con West will be *the* technology event to attend in Alberta in 2012! In addition to the three days of fantastic sessions by amazing speakers, there are a number of community events being planned the week of the conference! You’ll definitely want to be in Calgary this March to be part of it!

Thanks,

D’Arcy Lussier

Prairie Developer Conference

Microsoft HTML 5/Windows Azure Workshop

Microsoft will be putting on a full day HTML 5/Windows Azure workshop on Wednesday, November 23rd!

This will be a hands-on workshop where you bring your laptop and get led through examples on how to use these technologies.

This event is free for conference attendees, but if you’d like to attend and aren’t coming to the conference you can still register for $25! Just visit the workshop’s registration page here:

http://www.regonline.ca/microsofthtml5azureworkshop

Any questions, let me know!

Thanks,

D’Arcy

Confirmed–.NET Rocks Show from Prairie Dev Con West!

Many of you have heard of Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell, who host the very popular .NET Rocks internet talkshow. Both are accomplished technologists with decades of industry experience and knowledge.

I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve got both of them coming to Prairie Dev Con West and they’re going to record a show at the conference! Richard will also be presenting on Scaling Habits of ASP.NET Applications!

If you want to receive more information about the conference, including updates on sessions, pricing, and registration, please get on our mailing list at www.prairiedevcon.com/west.

Extending PrDC West Speaker Submission!

There were a number of events happening over the last few weeks, including European and Canadian conferences. To ensure those speakers who may have missed the cut off for submitting talks due to other conference involvement don’t miss out, we’re extending the cut-off for PrDC West session submissions to November 11th!

That means there’s still two weeks to get your sessions in, but don’t wait until the last minute! Submit them today to help us start sorting through and planning for this fantastic conference!

You can get the speaker request form from the Prairie Dev Con West site at www.prairiedevcon.com/west (its a link towards the bottom).

Thanks,

D’Arcy

Prairie Dev Con West–We Want to Hear From IT Pros!

Prairie Dev Con West will, for the first time, include IT Pro sessions! We’re very excited about this, and want to ensure that we meet the needs of the IT Pro communities in Alberta!

We’ve got a very short survey set up to capture some information that will help us ensure the IT Pro component of the conference is top notch! You can access the survey at this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HK9KPV5

One clarification on the first question – we’re trying to decide how to best schedule the various sessions between IT Pro and Software Development. There are three options we’re looking at:

1) We make the Tuesday “IT Pro” day of the conference, with all IT Pro sessions scheduled on that day.

2) We make Tuesday an “IT Pro” day, with Wednesday being split between IT Pro and Software Dev sessions, and Thursday being just Software Development.

3) We integrate the IT Pro and Software Development sessions throughout all three days of the conference.

The thought for options 1 and 2 is that we want to be sensitive about people’s time, and we realize that a three day conference might be a lot to commit to (compared to one or two days).

Please let us know if you have any other comments or feedback!

Thanks,

D’Arcy

Announcing Prairie Dev Con West in Calgary March 2012!

I’m very excited to announce that we’ll be bringing the Prairie Developer Conference to Alberta in early 2012!

I started Prairie Developer Conference in Regina in 2010 as an option to high cost remote conferences, and its become a huge success! With the announcement that Microsoft TechDays won’t be returning to Alberta this year, I think Prairie Dev Con can definitely fill that gap and provide Albertans with a fantastic professional development opportunity!

Here are the details:

When: March 13 – 15 2012 (3 days!)
Where: Telus Convention Centre, Calgary AB

One new aspect to this conference from others we’ve done is that we’ll be including IT Pro focussed sessions in addition to the great software development ones the conference is known for!

There’s a few call to actions:

Get on Our Mailing List for Conference Updates

Head on over to http://www.prairiedevcon.com/west and submit your email to stay informed of all the news and announcements around Prairie Dev Con West!

Interested in Speaking? Fill Out The Presenter Request Form!

If you’d like to submit sessions for the conference, please download and fill out our presenter request form, which you can get here. Session submissions are due October 28th.

Interested in Sponsoring? Contact Us!

Sponsoring the Prairie Dev Con West is about more than just getting your name up on the website. We offer ways to leverage sponsorship to connect with attendees whether it be through vendor sessions at the conference, a booth to showcase your product or service, and special offers to pass on to clients and colleagues. If you’d like to receive more information about becoming a sponsor, please drop us an email at sponsors@prairiedevcon.com!

Sessions and pricing information will be released in early November, so get ready Alberta for an amazing three days of technical sessions you can’t get anywhere else!

Thanks,

D’Arcy Lussier
Prairie Developer Conference Organizer

Early Bird Price Extended Another Month!

We started talking about Prairie Dev Con back in August, which is a horrible month to market anything with so many Manitobans away on vacation. Then in September we started leveraging the user groups in Winnipeg, but the combination of late-scheduled meetings and issues with mailing lists meant the word about Prairie Dev Con got out late or not at all.

So, in light of all that, we’re going to extend the early bird price of $349.99 until the end of October! We’re still an amazing value, with two days and over 40 sessions worth of technical content presented by world-class presenters!

We’re still offering our two other incentives as well:
- Groups of 3+ get an additional $50 off each registration
- Groups of 15+ get an additional $75 off each registration

You can check out our full list of sessions and speakers on our website: www.prairiedevcon.com

Register to reserve your seat today!