The organizers of ‘thatConference’, including Clark Sell and Scott Seely, today launched the new thatConference website and newsletter. Head on over to thatConference.com and register for the newsletter to receive any upcoming announcements for thatConference including when registration opens up as well as when the agenda is finalized. What is thatConference?

thatConference is your “Summer Camp for Geeks”. Held at the Kalahari Resort in the beautiful Wisconsin Dells, it’s your last chance to get away before summer slips away. Spend three days with a thousand of your fellow campers, geeking out on everything Cloud, Web and Mobile.

Your camp counselors are the best survivalists in the industry, and will make sure you leave with the skills you need. With over 125 sessions to choose from, your head may overheat, so cool off in one of the many nearby pools. Unlike your usual technology conference, you will be camping at the best waterpark in the region. Not happy with all the content we crammed under the tent? Feel free to join our open spaces and tailor your conference experience.

UPDATE: We’ve added another Boot Camp to take place in Chicago on November 18th! Register at http://aka.ms/wpchicago.

Last year, my team ran a series of boot camps to introduce the ins-and-outs of developing Windows Phone applications to the masses. In honor of the upcoming release of Windows Phone 7.5, I’m happy to announce a new round of events taking place to lay down the new development features in Windows Phone 7.5. These boot camps are a free, full-day learning environment to help you become a Rock Star developer on Windows Phone.

We kick this round of boot camps off with a special 2-day event in Austin, TX on October 3-4. The first day will be our standard boot camp, where as the 2nd day will be a full hands-on lab learning opportunity with experts on hand to help you along the way. We’ll follow up with events in Dallas (Oct. 11), Columbus, OH (Oct. 12), Minneapolis (Nov. 10) and Chicago (Nov. 18).

Get more details for each city at:

For additional cities across the US, check out http://msdnevents.com.

As part of the upcoming Chicago Ideas Week, I am excited to be leading a discussion on opportunities for Mobile Developers on Windows Phone. Here are the details…

Start Something! Bring your apps to life on Windows Phone

Do you have the next million dollar idea that you just can’t find the time to finish? Do you already have an app for Android and iPhone that you want to expand into new markets? Windows Phone is here – and with it comes a new world of opportunity for passionate, creative developers. Windows Phone gives you the power to build complex, robust applications using consistent hardware specs, a comprehensive development toolkit, and the all-new, full-service Marketplace for selling your apps.

Date & Time: Tuesday, Oct 11^th; 5:30pm-7:30pm

Location:
Tribeca Flashpoint Academy Stage at the Merchandise Mart
222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza
20th floor Chicago Illinois 60654
Map

Registration: http://aka.ms/ciwphone

Update: the webcast is available for on-demand viewing. You do need to sign up as part of the AT&T Developer program to view the webcast, however. The good news is that it’s free!

Tomorrow afternoon, in partnership with the AT&T Developer Program, I will be giving an overview of the new Windows Phone “Mango” features for developers. In this talk I will discuss at a high-level the new features in the next major release of the Windows Phone OS. Also, one lucky participant will walk away with a brand new Windows Phone!

What: An Overview of Windows Phone “Mango” for Developers
When: Thursday, May 26th, 2011 @ 12PM CST/10AM PST

You can register at http://developer.att.com.

Back in the Fall, my team and I held several training events around Windows Phone 7. It was an opportunity to bring developers together to learn the facets of creating great Windows Phone 7 applications. We’ve done these sort of events in the past. However, with the sure volume of upcoming technologies coming out of Redmond, these events tended to focus on a plethora of topics and give you a taste of each one. With our Windows Phone 7 Boot Camp events, we tried something different. Focus on one topical area and give developers an opportunity to kick the tires in a semi-structured environment. We’ve taken some of the feedback with these events and have brought more of these free learning opportunities to you:

I’m happy to announce the upcoming Boot Camp series of free developer training events including: Web Camp, Windows Dev Boot Camp and Azure Boot Camp.

Web Camp

Microsoft’s Web Camps are events designed to teach you all about building websites using ASP.NET MVC, WebMatrix, OData and more. There are 1-day and 2-day events being offered with interactive sessions on:

• Introduce ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Pages and WebMatrix; discuss possible uses of these
• Explore new features of ASP.NET MVC 3
• Take a dive deep into jQuery
• Facilitate an in-depth discussion on when to migrate ASP.NET WebPages applications to ASP.NET MVC
• Discuss configuration and deployment of web applications.

Clark Sell has more details on the Web Camps taking place in the Central US.

Windows Dev Boot Camp

The Windows Development Boot Camp is a one-day deep dive class on client development. The event covers developing for Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9, and Silverlight 4 out of browser. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience presenting content, as well as a series of labs so you can write some code and practice what you just learned.

Interactive sessions will include topics from throughout the Windows development platform. We will look at application compatibility and transitioning your applications to Windows 7, integrating with the Windows taskbar, developing for IE9, utilizing the cool functionality in the Sensors and Location Platform so that your application better responds to its current environment, leveraging the multi-touch capabilities (especially in kiosk scenarios), and creating Silverlight 4 out of browser applications.

Azure Boot Camp

Windows Azure Boot Camp is a two day deep dive class to get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience with Azure, as well as a series of labs so you can practice what you just learned. The agenda will cover:

• Introduction to Cloud Computing and Windows Azure
• Web Roles and Worker Roles
• Queues, Tables and Blobs
• Convincing the Business to use Windows Azure
• Diagnostic and Management API’s
• SQL Azure
• App Fabric
• Cloud Scenarios

For details and locations for each of these events, visit the respective website for each boot camp.