I thought I would take the time to post up a little bit about the Ready Summit, in particular the developer track which I am involved with. There are three tracks for the event, IT Manager, IT Professional and Developer. They all start out with the same keynote but then we break out into the different streams. In the developer track the agenda (click ont he Developer tab) the following topics will be presented.

• Developer Vision (Andrew Coates)
• Building Differentiated User Experiences with Windows Vista (Mitch Denny)
• Connecting Users with Data in New Ways (Mitch Denny)
• Development with WSS 3.0 / Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Angus Logan)
• Windows Vista Security Enhancements for Developers (Mitch Denny)
• Solution Development Using the 2007 Microsoft Office System OpenXML File Format (Andrew Coates)

Canberra has a different agenda which is actually compressed, although I'm not exactly sure what the reason for that is. I suspect it might be something to do with the tight timeframes between the Adelaide and Canberra events.

The three sessions that I am presenting are bolded, and I'll talk a little bit about the first one, I am hoping that Andrew might be able to blog a little bout his presentations before the event, and I can see that Angus has already been jumping into the technical detail.

So what is a differentiated user experience anyway?

When I first saw the title of this presentation I thought "wow, thats a cool title - I wonder what it means?" - then I found out that I was presenting it so I thought that I should find out. When the public first got site of Vista (under the codename Longhorn) back in 2003 developers in particular were swept up in a frenzy when we saw what we could do with the new Windows Presentation Foundation capabilities (then codenamed Avalon).

The bit that was missing was a clearer picture of what the overall user experience was going to be in Windows Vista - basically because much of the shell enhancements were still under construction. As time went by we started to get a better feel for the final look and feel of Vista and I think we've finally reached a standard where we can apply some of these new capabilities in our applications in a way that actually enhances the user experience.

The "Building Differentiated User Experiences" presentation is all about providing guidance and inspiration as well as the technical how-to for accessing these features. The areas that I will be targetting specifically are:

• Windows Presentation Foundation and XAML; along with some coverage of how to use the new tools like the Expression Interactive Designer to build these applications up (no spinning text boxes - I promise).
• Sidebar Gadgets; remember when this thing disappeared last year? There was outrage that such a cool feature went missing. Well, its back and I'll talk about the kinds of things that it can be useful for - beyond clocks and weather.
• "Windows Vista User Experience"; the kind of stuff that falls under this topic includes things like using glass and how some of the widely implemented enhancements such as Link Buttons make the world a better place - actually - I've got a really good real world example of where a link button-style approach makes a real difference.

Hopefully this is enough of a taste for you to decide that you want to come along to the Ready Summit day in your major city - I'm actually looking forward to getting out and meeting people who are already planning their first Vista powered applications.