TechEd 2013, Day 0: Registration and Planning

By Shahed C on June 2, 2013
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I just flew into New Orleans on Sunday, a day before the conference begins. Day 0, if you will. During lunch, I met up with Matt Candler, CEO of 4.0 Schools, who I met through an introduction by fellow Excellian Matt Makai. We discussed the sights and sounds of the Big Easy, the importance of education and how software can be used to improve the educational system.

Panoramic shot of New Orleans from Loews Hotel

Panoramic shot of New Orleans from Loews Hotel

There was plenty of time to pick up my badge and backpack, after which I checked out the long line to get heavily discounted Microsoft Surface tablets.

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Game Development with G. Andrew Duthie

By Shahed C on May 27, 2013
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Last week, I had just attended a user group meeting for DCDNUG, hosted by G. Andrew Duthie, a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft. The topic was “Developing Games for the Windows Store with HTML5 and JavaScript” and was a great introduction to creating games for Microsoft’s new platform using familiar web technologies.

I downloaded Andrew’s Community Megaphone app for Windows 8 after the meeting, and learned about the interactive event, Game Development for Beginners, at Microsoft’s Reston VA office. This is one of many free Game Dev events from Microsoft listed in the app.

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Microsoft TechEd 2013: Intro

By Shahed C on May 18, 2013
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Once again, I’ll be heading to Microsoft’s annual TechEd conference for a week, with my colleague from Excella Consulting. Last year, I attended TechEd in Orlando, Florida. This year, it’s down in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the Morial Convention Center.

Ernest N. Morial Convention Center

 

Stay tuned to WakeUpAndCode.com as I plan to blog about my experience throughout the week, from June 2 through June 7.

This is the introductory post for a series of posts about TechEd. You can see the index page at:
http://WakeupAndCode.com/teched-2013/

Enjoy!
Shahed 🙂

Photo Credit: http://www.mccno.com/

Discord Games Q&A

By Shahed C on April 30, 2013
2 Replies
UPDATE, Mon May 6, 2013:
  • Now that the funding goal of $150k has been reached over the weekend, tell us about your expectations (and your plans) for the rest of this week. 

> We’re going to start focusing on trying to reach some of our Stretch Goals so we can give our fans the deepest and most fulfilling experience we can. Hopefully we’ll manage to get a little rest now too 😉

  • Care to elaborate a little about those stretch goals?

> Yea, sure! With the lower tiers we’ll be unlocking some nice little add-ons like extended soundtracks and Achievements. As we move up higher on the ladder we get to more content rich goals like Crafting, and new game modes like Arena and Roguelike. We also have some purely cosmetic goals like Gender Swap, as well as functional things like professional language translations. We’re hoping to be able to achieve all these things for the final game regardless of money raised, but hope to guarantee them by reaching the goals!

See the original Q&A below:

In this week’s post, we’re talking with fellow XNA developer James Petruzzi of Discord Games. James is responsible for the multiplayer action title Take Arms on Xbox 360, followed by labyrinth puzzler 48 Chambers. Up next is Chasm, a 2D Action-RPG Platformer, aimed at PC, Mac and Linux.

 

  • Welcome to WakeUpAndCode.com, James! Do you… umm… wake up and start coding every morning? 🙂

– I wish! It was like that for a while, and was amazing. Since GDC though,
it’s been pretty much full-time on marketing, promotion, and keeping things
running smoothly. Hopefully we’ll get back to coding soon!

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