SCHEDULE: WORKSHOPS *

This class will spike your JavaScript skill sets. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) will quickly become valuable tools in your web development toolkit. This class is targeted at developers who are more comfortable writing back-end services than browser-based front-ends. You will learn about JavaScript -- both its strengths and its weaknesses. From there, you'll see how JavaScript mixes with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the Document Object Model (DOM), and the XmlHttpRequest (XHR) object to give you the suite of technologies known informally as AJAX. We'll also see how JSON is quickly replacing XML and SOAP for web services tailored for browser consumption.

One of the most popular Agile project management and development methods, Scrum is starting to be adopted at major corporations and on very large projects. After an introduction to the basics of Scrum like: project planning and estimation, the Scrum Master, team, product owner and burn down, and of course the daily Scrum, Stephen (a certified Scrum Master) shows many real world applications of the methodology drawn from his own experience as a Scrum Master. Negotiating with the business, estimation and team dynamics are all discussed as well as how to use Scrum in small organizations, large enterprise environments and consulting environments. Stephen will also discuss using Scrum with virtual teams and an off-shoring environment. We’ll then take a look at the tools we will use for Agile development, including planning poker, unit testing, and much more. There will be plenty of time for Question and Answer. This seminar is a jump start for a certified scrum master exam.

Cloud this, cloud that. It's all we are hearing about these days. And whether buzz-worthy or not, you need to get in-the-know so that you can talk effectively about how this could fit into the application strategy on your next project. Leverage 100s of hours of research distilled into a 90 minute presentation. Get bootstrapped with what cloud computing is and isn't, who the players are in this space, what unique features each offers, and then how Google is completely changing the game.

We'll navigate through a some demos of building and deploying an app live to the Google App Engine, and talk about the excellent tooling that the framework provides. Lastly, we'll put a reality check on cloud computing, and GAE specifically, looking at pitfalls and gotchas. You'll walk away having a thorough knowledge of cloud computing basics and the ability to build a practice app for GAE.

Programming in a language is not entirely about the syntax. You have to learn and get used to a different paradigm and the idioms it supports. Functional programming has some clear strengths that benefit high concurrency and multi-core processors. However, to take advantage of that you have to think functional which lot of us are not used to. In this hands-on workshop, we will take some familiar problems, solve it using traditional style and then refactor it to functional style. Even though we will use Scala and Erlang as vehicle to get the examples working, you don't have to be familiar with the syntax. You will participate to write pseudo code in these styles and the speaker will help you translate those into practical working examples in these languages.