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It’s Monday February 14, 3AM and i’m jet-lagged and back home from Las Vegas, where our three-day Developer Solution Conference ended – what seems like a few hours ago – on Thursday.

DSConf Las Vegas was the first conference we have ever organized, and has been the first state-side events of our partners in crime, the Developer Experts.

This being our first event, and having a lot of time, resources and money invested into this over the past three or four months since we started planning, we were of course nervous about how the conference would go. Did we have the right mix of content? would our one-track, half-sessions/half-workshop approach work? would people like the event? heck, would anybody show up?

To say that we’re very happy with how the event turned out would be a tremendous understatement. interest in the conference was great, and with 40 registrations, we certainly reached our goal as far as pure numbers of attendees go. But what’s more important, people really dug the concept of DSConf and our sessions+workshops approach, and again and again attendees approached me (and my fellow staff) telling me that the conference was “exactly what [they] were looking for” or “just perfect”.

DSConf was held at the MGM Grand, where we had access to three rooms, one for the main session and workshop, one for breakfast, lunch, afternoon sneaks and Embarcadero’s sponsor booth, and a third where attendees could break out to, to sit down and code, away from all the action.

Day 1 started (after a brief introduction of all the staff) with an overview of the development tools, with Jim and Olaf first looking at Delphi XE and Delphi Prism XE, and Daniel then giving an introduction into Xcode and Objective-C (with a little bit too much focus on how “weird” Objective-C is, if you ask me [i love it – i don't think it's weird at all ;], but people enjoyed it and learned a lot). After lunch (a great mix of Asian food provided by the awesome MGM Grand catering staff), Daniel Wolf started his session on UX design and paper prototyping, followed by a hands-on workshop on the same topic, which everyone seemed to agree was the highlight of the day:

Photo: Jim McKeeth

We closed with a workshop for the development tools shown earlier in the day, before releasing attendees to dinner and a free Poker Training session put on by MGM staff especially for our attendees. Those not interested in poker joined us back in the conference room for some late-night coding.

Day 2 came bright and early, with the keynote from Embarcadero’s David I – giving an overview of the current Delphi XI and the plans for the future, including a demo of Delphi/x64 and some hints at what’s coming down the road with VCL+. After that, we dove into multi-tier. First Jim gave us some background on why you’d want to bother with multi-tier in the first place, then Olaf and Daniel took the down-and-dirty road of showing attendees how to do data access the old fashioned way – custom REST and JSON parsing, and all those gruesome details.

After lunch (mediterranean food, which i did not get a chance to eat but was told was excellent once again) Holger and Jim dove into Data Abstract, showing how to create clients and servers with either Delphi or Delphi Prism.

Every conference needs it’s hick-up, so the last three hours of the day saw me on stage with Holger and Daniel leading developers thru our workshop and working with Data Abstract for .NET in Delphi Prism. I’m not an on-stage kind of guy, but things went well, and Daniel clearly enjoyed telling me how to use my product on the big screen .

If you’ve been to conferences before, you know that usually half the audience is checking their mail or catching up on twitter while talks are going on. But – just as in the workshop the day prior &dasnh; pretty much every attendee was following along with the workshop, as we plugged thru the details of DA/.NET, DA LINQ, RemObjects SDK Roles and creating custom web service methods that performed mathematical operations only Daniel will understand. While we were on stage guiding the workshop, the rest of the team roamed the room to answer questions and assist attendees who ran into problems.

After the dinner break (i went to eat an excellent Teppanyaki with the RemObjects crew and a few friends), attendees met again for an “open bar and networking” evening.

Day 3 was all about mobile development, with three sessions dedicated to iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android and Windows Phone 7, respectively. The iOS session touched briefly on MonoDevelop, but then focused on Xcode (personally my favorite way to develop for that platform); the Android session was given by our guest speaker Brian Long (who’s presentation, if i may say so, was one of the highlights of the conference), providing a great and in-depth introduction to MonoDroid (a topic unknown to myself, as well, up to that point). Last but not least, Jim introduced the attendees to Windows Phone 7 development with Silverlight.

All three sessions consisted of about two-thirds of an in-depth view at the platform and development tools themselves (with Delphi Prism being used for all three .NET based tool chains, although the principles shown would have applied just as well to C#), and one third of a look at how Data Abstract rounds those platforms off with multi-tier client functionality.

Next up came the part i was most excited about: Jim spent half an hour giving a sneak peak at a new top-secret project that has been brewing in our labs for a while now: “Cooper”. DSConf attendees were the first people outside of RemObjects to ever hear about Cooper, but now that the word is out: Cooper is a new compiler that brings the Oxygene language (that you all know an love from Delphi Prism) to the Java and Android platforms. Just like Oxygene, when first releases, aimed at bringing the “full .NET experience”to Pascal developers, Cooper does the same for Java. it links directly against the Java class libraries and generates 100% true Java (or Dalvik, Android’s variation of Java) executables, and is a “true” Next Generation Object Pascal for Java. (We’ll have a video reproducing the DSConf session up on RemObjects TV within the day, and stay tuned for more information, soon!).

“Cooper” was met with a lot of excitement from the attendees, and i believe it will be one of the most interesting products we’ll be shipping this year.

But, time to move on, and day three of DSConf ended with a set of workshops putting the knowledge from the morning to use – with the help from Daniel, Brian and Jim on stage, attendees went on to build mobile clients for the Data Abstract server created the day prior, for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7.

So people showed up, all the sessions went well, but the greatest part of the conference for me has been talking to all the attendees – many of which long time customers who’s names i’ve seen again again but who i had never met, and just as many who were completely new to our products.

There’s two things attendees said to me that i will never forget. The first was a long-time customer coming up top me, telling me how long he’s been using our stuff and saying “Thanks. You guys have made me a lot of money.” That must be among my favorite customer quotes ever. The second was a guy – new to DA – who looked me up, said he’d loved what he’d seen, and asked what Data Abstract would cost. I told him, and after looking at me – flabbergasted – for several seconds, he said “That’s all? That’s per deployment, right?” Nope, i told him. That’s the flat license, per developer.

Photo: Nate Woolls, TeamRO

So we’re very happy with how DSConf turned out. Tired, yes, but very happy. So happy in fact, that we’re already planning the next event. I cannot go into details yet, but stay tuned to http://dsconf.com for more information soon (and sign up to the DSConf newsletter to stay up to date).

It’s Tuesday January 25, and we’re only two weeks away from DSConf Las Vegas, the first of our Developer Solutions Conferences that RemObjects Software is putting on in partnership with our friends at Developer Experts.

A lot of things have been falling into place over the past few weeks, and we’re very excited about the event. We have finalized our time table, which i know many of you have been looking forward to seeing, and there’s a lot of exciting sessions there. We’re also very happy to welcome on board as guest speakers Brian Long, who will be joining our own Jim McKeeth on stage to cover Android development with MonoDroid, and David “I” Intersimone from Embarcadero who has agreed to kick off day two of the conference with a keynote on the state of Delphi, present and future.

New Mobile Platforms for Data Abstract

Personally, i’m most excited that we’ll be showing off support for not one, not two, but three new mobile platforms in Data Abstract for .NET: MonoTouch, MonoDroid and Windows Phone 7. All of these are new for our next upcoming “Spring 2011” release, and DSConf attendees will be the first to not only see this in action, but also get their hands on a pre-release of Data Abstract for .NET that supports these frameworks.

While we have long supported native development for iOS with our Data Abstract for Xcode edition (and that prefers my personal favorite for working with iOS, by a long shot), having all three platforms supported by DA/.NET gives a unique opportunity to share non-UI code between the three client platforms, if that is your goal – something we’ll be covering at the conference.

Meet the Team

Jim McKeeth will be representing RemObjects Software on stage, next to our guest speakers and the Developer Experts, but the entire RemObjects Software executive team will be on site in Las Vegas, including yours truly (Chief Architect), Carlo Kok (Chief Engineer on the Oxygene compiler that is the heart and soul of Delphi Prism) and Mike Orriss (General Project Manager). We’ll be looking forward to meeting and talking to all of you, discussing our products or answering any questions you may have.

And a Sneak Peek at “Cooper”

Also (and i’m not supposed to mention this , DSConf will be your chance to get a sneak peek at project “Cooper”, a very exciting technology that we have been working on related to (but not part of) Oxygene. I can’t go into more details yet, but suffice to say you will want to see this.

Come to DSConf

If you have not registered yet, don’t hesitate and head over to dsconf.com/registration now to reserve your ticket – at only $799 for the whole three-day event. We’re looking forward to meeting you in Las Vegas in two weeks!

yours,
marc

As you know from our agenda, DSConf is heavy on practical content, with labs and workshops making up a good half of the schedule. To get the most out of these workshops, you should definitely bring your laptop, and make sure it is capable enough for development work.

Depending on the technologies you are most interested in, your laptop can be a MacBook, a Windows machine, or either (and, of course, on most MacBooks you can nicely run Windows in a VM, giving you the both options for the weight of one). If you own a mobile device for or ore of the platforms we are covering (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch; an Android phone or a Windows Phone 7 phone), we recommend you bring that as well. All the tool chains come with simulators that let you run applications on your laptop, but the experience is not quite the same, and there’s nothing like seeing your app run on an actual device!

Of course, there’s also an Apple store close by to the MGM Grand, from what i see. We’ve certainly heard of other conferences where attendees went out during lunch to buy their first iPad or iPhone during lunch, so they could play along .

Most of the cross-platform and multi-tier development topics will focus on Delphi Prism, which you can run both on Windows (in Visual Studio or MonoDevelop) or natively on the Mac (in MonoDevelop). We’ll also be touching on Objective-C development using Xcode, for iOS devices; to work with that you will need a Mac.

As we get into mobile development, the platform choice becomes a bit less flexible: for iOS development (whether using MonoTouch in Delphi Prism, or using Xcode), a Mac is needed, while Windows Phone 7 development, using Visual Studio and Silverlight, is tied to Windows. For Android development with MonoDroid, either Windows or the Mac OS X will do.

To sum up, you’ll need:

• Laptop: Your best choice is a Mac with a Windows VM, as this allows you to use all the tools we cover; but even with Windows-only or a VM-less Mac, you will be able to follow along large portions of the workshops.
• Mobile device: if you have one, bring it! You’ll have more fun.

Of course, if you absolutely can’t bring a laptop (or don’t have a Mac but are interested in iOS), worry not — i’m sure you will find a fellow attendee to join up with for the workshops and work together.

Software

So, what about software? In general, if you can prepare by installing all the tools we’ll be using on your laptop before the conference, that will of course give you a good head start. If not, that’s not a problem though, as we’ll be providing media with most of the important tools, so you can easily install them (and without long download times over hotel WiFi), if needed. This includes:

• Delphi Prism XE+ Preview* Trial (Delphi Prism XE+ runs on Windows and Mac OS X)
• MonoTouch Trial (runs with Delphi Prism on Mac OS X)
• MonoDroid Trial (runs with Delphi Prism on Windows and Mac OS X)
• Windows Phone 7 Tools (run with Delphi Prism on Windows)
• Data Abstract “Spring 2011” Preview* for .NET Trial (runs with Delphi Prism on Windows or Mac OS X)
• Data Abstract for Xcode Trial (runs with Xcode on Mac OS X)

(*You’ll be the first to get your hands on new preview releases of Delphi Prism XE+ and Data Abstract for .NET, both with new and improved MonoTouch, MonoDroid and Windows Phone 7 support.)

Again, all of these we’ll provide for you at the conference. (RemObjects Software will also have very attractive offers for anyone looking to purchase licenses of Delphi Prism or Data Abstract at the conference.)

One exception is Xcode. Because the iOS SDK is tied to registering as an iOS developer with Apple, we cannot distribute Xcode at the conference ourselves. Since Xcode is a rather large download (~3GB), i would strongly recommend that (if you want to take part in the iOS portions of the workshops) you register for the iOS development program with Apple before the conference, and download and install Xcode from the comfort of your office or home. Hotel WiFis being what they are, dozens of developers trying to download Xcode at the conference at the same time will probably be problematic. You can register at developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios, it is free, and Xcode is a free download, once you have registered.

I hope this gives you a good idea for what to bring and how to prepare your laptop for DSConf. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment — and i’m looking forward to seeing all of you in Las Vegas next month!

Brian Long joins our technical speakers to present Android development using MonoDroid, and David I will be giving our guest keynote, with a fresh look at the current state of Delphi development and an outlook at what the future will bring for Delphi, moving forward, including a sneak peek at the upcoming cross-platform support for Mac, Linux and x64 Windows in native Delphi.

You don’t want to miss it, so if you have not done so, register now!