Yesterday I delivered my talk, “Build Your Own MVVM Framework,” at Mix.  Thanks to all who came out to listen and allow me a short time to share some of my ideas.  I’m very grateful to have had this opportunity.  Thanks also to all who voted for the talk.  If you were not able to make it in person, Microsoft has made the video of the session available online along with the slides.  You can now watch it at http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/EX15. I’m also providing the full source code for the sample application as an attachment to this blog post.  If you look at the source code, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• The backend is fake.
• The framework is not intended to be used “as is.” It was built for this specific application. You should adapt it to your application, or use Caliburn, which was designed for general use.
• There are a number of other interesting things in the sample, which I did not discuss in the talk. It’s worth poking around a little bit…

I hope this talk and sample give you some ideas. I would love to hear your feedback.  Enjoy!

Tomorrow I kiss the wife and baby goodbye (sadly) and hop on a plane heading to Mix in Las Vegas.  This year I have the unique honor and privilege to present “Build Your Own MVVM Framework.”  I’ll be speaking Monday afternoon at 3:30 PM in Lagoon F.  Here’s the official description of my talk:

You’ve heard a lot about MVVM, but you’ve struggled to see how it can help you in your day to day work. Or, you are experienced at implementing MVVM, but looking for some ways to maximize on your investment in this methodology. In this talk, we look at a simple MVVM application and see how a small, application-specific framework can help eliminate pain points in our UI development and provide simple and effective solutions. Attendees will walk away with code, but more importantly with an understanding of how to apply some simple ideas to improve productivity with MVVM in their own projects.

This is an intermediate level discussion of MVVM and presupposes knowledge of either WPF or Silverlight and a grasp of the basic MVVM pattern.  If you are new to MVVM, let me encourage you to attend Laurent Bugnion’s talk “Understanding the Model-View-ViewModel Pattern,” conveniently scheduled just before me at 2:00pm in Lagoon F.

During the conference, I’m planning to spend plenty of time in the lounge.  I’ll probably be working on Caliburn :)  If you’re interested in Caliburn and will be at Mix, let me know.  If there is enough interest, I can do a small demo/presentation in the lounge at some point.  I’m looking forward to seeing you there and thank you to everyone who voted for my talk!

On February 28, 2010, Activision issued a Cease and Desist order against Phoenix Online Studios, creators of “The Silver Lining,” an unofficial sequel to the King's Quest series  The sequel had, in 2005, been approved for non-commercial release by the owner of the King’s Quest IP, Vivendi Universal.  The team has been working on the 5-part episodic King’s Quest Sequel for eight years (they started before 2005).  They had just completed their final milestone and were preparing to submit the game for approval to Vivendi Universal right before Activision and Vivendi merged. Immediately upon acquisition of the King’s Quest IP, Activision shut down Phoenix Studios, with no intent to uphold the previous agreements.

As a long time fan of adventure games, and someone who has always wanted a real sequel to KQ6, I am really saddened by this.  Personally, I plan not to have anything to do with Activision until they make this right.  I hope you will join me in this.  If you have a few minutes, please sign the online petition and consider sending a letter to Activision.  Resources are below.  Thank you.  Now, on with your regularly scheduled programming…

Online Petition:
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/savetsl/
Facebook Group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=382202612795&ref=mf
MySpace Page:
http://www.myspace.com/savetsl
Form Letter for Contacting Activision:
http://www.tsl-game.com/forum/index.php?topic=8406.0