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

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

By David Ramel
04/06/2020

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.

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