News

Microsoft Goes Virtual with Developer Education in Face of COVID-19

Like many organizations that host developer educational events, Microsoft has gone virtual amid shelter-in-place directives and a surge in remote work stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We hope that everyone is staying safe and healthy. This month we are doing something a little different when it comes to upcoming .NET and Xamarin events. We are shifting our focus to awesome, new ways to stay active in your local community, virtually!" said James Montemagno, principal program manager, Mobile Developers Tools, in a blog post last week.

He detailed six upcoming .NET and Xamarin "virtual meetups" this month for user groups based across the country, from Seattle to Orlando. These follow the virtual .NET Conf "Focus on Xamarin" event presented on March 23, for which the content is available on-demand.

Montemagno suggested that user group leaders can glean ideas for their own events by browsing recent online conferences, the content of which is also available. In addition to the Focus on Xamarin event, these include: .NET Conf – Focus on Blazor and Visual Studio for Mac Refresh();.

Other online events include live community stand-ups from.NET teams held multiple times per week and continuing streaming participation from the Xamarin team on platforms such as Twitch.

Montemagno said Microsoft is willing to help organizers and group leaders with their own online virtual meetup initiatives.

"If you are a user group leader, we are here to help you host a virtual meetup & find presenters," he said. "The .NET Foundation has a great ongoing conversation about several different platforms to host a meetup on. We also recorded a full tutorial with our friend Jon Galloway using Microsoft Teams' new Live Event feature to host a meetup. If you are using meetup.com for scheduling your user group events, they recently added a new Online Event Feature to streamline hosting a meetup with one of these services."

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

  • Mastering Blazor Authentication and Authorization

    At the Visual Studio Live! @ Microsoft HQ developer conference set for August, Rockford Lhotka will explain the ins and outs of authentication across Blazor Server, WebAssembly, and .NET MAUI Hybrid apps, and show how to use identity and claims to customize application behavior through fine-grained authorization.

  • Linear Support Vector Regression from Scratch Using C# with Evolutionary Training

    Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the linear support vector regression (linear SVR) technique, where the goal is to predict a single numeric value. A linear SVR model uses an unusual error/loss function and cannot be trained using standard simple techniques, and so evolutionary optimization training is used.

  • Low-Code Report Says AI Will Enhance, Not Replace DIY Dev Tools

    Along with replacing software developers and possibly killing humanity, advanced AI is seen by many as a death knell for the do-it-yourself, low-code/no-code tooling industry, but a new report belies that notion.

  • Vibe Coding with Latest Visual Studio Preview

    Microsoft's latest Visual Studio preview facilitates "vibe coding," where developers mainly use GitHub Copilot AI to do all the programming in accordance with spoken or typed instructions.

  • Steve Sanderson Previews AI App Dev: Small Models, Agents and a Blazor Voice Assistant

    Blazor creator Steve Sanderson presented a keynote at the recent NDC London 2025 conference where he previewed the future of .NET application development with smaller AI models and autonomous agents, along with showcasing a new Blazor voice assistant project demonstrating cutting-edge functionality.

Most   Popular

Subscribe on YouTube