Windows Phone camp in Pittsburgh: Part 1

So far, I am having fun at a Windows Phone camp in Pittsburgh, PA.  After the introductions, everyone started out with a talk on monetizing your app. From this, I learned that sometimes, making your app free, but with ads in the app, might be a better option  for more revenue intake for any apps that I publish than perhaps making my app paid.

After that, we started the programming with a look at Silverlight (for beginners). As a programmer for Windows Phone, I am already pretty familiar with most of the Silverlight basics (I only say most because I haven't had to use some of the more advanced silverlight concepts in my programs yet). We talked about the various controls and view models available in Windows Phone. However, we didn't learn how to create a custom control (but I already know how to do that).

After the silverlight part, we moved on to XNA. Here, those multi-variable calculus concepts which I (sort-of) despise came back to haunt me. As a programmer, I really haven't tried my hand at making games much (with any language or framework), so this part looked a little scary at first. We used a "Cheese Roller Game" as the XNA tutorial material. I think I came out of the XNA part unscathed.  However, I think I really need some more practice with these concepts before I try my hand at making a game to sell in the marketplace.

Now, we are going to break for lunch, so I will be getting part 2 to you later on today. After lunch, we will have some time to play around with what we have learned, and later, we will have a contest to see who can make the best app. Stay tuned for more. I will have some photos available for your viewing pleasure later as well.