What Is This WPF Thing?!

Posted on January 28th, 2009 by Kevin

So at the next meeting of the Hampton Roads .NET Users Group, I’m going to be giving my first professional presentation.  It’s a bit exciting, because I feel this is my next step in contributing to the developer community.  Also, I have learned in the past that the best learning tool is to teach others.

Therefore, my first presentation is entitled “What Is This WPF Thing?!” and the subject is Windows Presentation Foundation (duh!).  Here is the abstract I wrote to send off to Roanoke Code Camp:

WinForms have been good to us over the ages. In the world of rich media, however, WinForms falls flat. They do not have the aesthetic appeal we’re looking for in graphically appealing applications. Windows Presentation Foundation has allowed us to go to a whole new level by providing tools for developing powerful, easy to customize applications. In this presentation, Kevin Griffin will give you an overview of the features of WPF and the tools in Visual Studio and Expression Blend. He will discuss why you might want to consider using WPF for your next client application. This discussion is focused towards people with no WPF experience.

Here’s my idea behind this presentation: I love the idea behind WPF, but my knowledge level is at that point between newbie and familiarity.  I’ve learned that WPF is a completely different way of thinking of when it comes to building client applications.  My goal is to present the knowledge I have on how to get started with WPF, and explain why I fell in love with WPF.

My hope is that after my presentation, people will go home, create a WPF application, and try to relate what I showed them in my presentation to something real.  My job is done if they can do that easily.

Of course, all my presentations will always start with this disclaimer: “I am not an expert.  If you have a question, I will do my best to answer it.  If I can’t, I will do my best to get the answer for you.”  I think with that attitude, I’ll be able to help a lot of people out while reinforcing what I’ve already learned.

Tags: Add new tag, community, WPF

Categories: Developer Community