GrapeCity sponsored an incredible evening at the WP7 UG in Tampa!

Wow. Wow. Wow! Talk about a great evening of knowledge and demonstrations of a wide variety of Phone 7 apps! Everyone really enjoyed all the speakers last night… we had nine in total and I was the emcee.

See all the photos on the Facebook GrapeCity Fan page and become a fan!

Pictured left to right are the presenters at the “Show and Tell” WP7 UG meeting last night:

MVP Bill Reiss, Microsoft’s Jim Blizzard, MVP Kevin Wolf, Michael Stark, James Browning, Alex Perez, Luis Perez, Brian Kassay and Jay Kimble with Russ Fustino in front.

Brian Kassay started the user group meeting off with a bang, by showing his incredible APODViewer7 app and several new ad control options… the ad rotator on codeplex looks like a must have for developers to maximize profits.

Then the Perez brothers amazed us with a new Theme Park app they are working on which should be out in a month or so. Their app ‘Love Text” is a huge hit and they are receiving rave reviews on it. Alex and Luis Perez of Neuralnet are pictured below… These guys are totally awesome and shared some great insight to video production in apps at the after party, which I plan on using in my upcoming ‘Russ Cam’ Phone 7 app.

Pictured below, Michael Stark, of Stark Network, then took the stage showing his IMA Shaking app, an earthquake reporting app. It is just fascinating! He mentioned the the week of the recent Japan Earthquake, that there was more activity world wide that he has ever seen before. He showed how he did his mapping, using the Bing maps and SDK with use of pushpins (thanks Michael, just what I needed to see!)… www.bingmapsportal.com

The night just kept getting better, James Browning came on stage next. He he just got back from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference where he received the best Phone 7 app award for his Executive Caddie app! The audience exploded with applause with his announcement. Congrats James! James provided over $8000 of free software licenses for Phone 7 controls to those in attendance! James, you rock!

Wow man, this blog is taking forever to write! It was that kind of a night though with amazing contributions from the local Phone 7 developer community. It is the least I can do to provide a recap of the highlights.

Jay Kimble, leader of the Tampa Silverlight User Group, provided excellent information on doing gestures in an app. He used this in his Zoom it app… and of course we love his GrapeCity shirt! He provided some great resources for Phone 7 developers at: Joe Healy’s wiki: http://dfwiki.devfish.net and http://wp7dev.wikispaces.com . Jay will be doing a session on background tasks at the next WP7UG meeting on August 23 along with an introductory topic by Kevin Wolf.

Then MVP Bill Reiss got up the the podium next. He showed his Dr. Popper 2 game and shared his extensive gaming knowledge with us. In fact, he wrote a gaming engine! He would live feedback on it, so phone 7 game developers check it out on codeplex at: http://frolic.codeplex.com/ . Look for Bill in a future WP7 UG meeting doing a session on Game Development on the Phone 7.

Then MVP Kevin Wolf encouraged Florida Phone 7 developers to register their apps on the site http://www.flwp7.com . Once this is done, your app will be included in the list of apps on the Windows Phone 7 app called: Florida Apps. It’s a great way to support our community and provides a way to cross promote apps in this geo. Thanks Kevin! Then he blew us all away with a 3D Phone 7 app wrote… he showed us a reasonably priced tool (about $50) for doing the assets, 3D World Studio .

Microsoft’s Jim Blizzard finished the evening up sharing his first app on Marketplace! Congrats Jim! “Team Picker” is a very useful app when you need to organize teams at your next company outing! He shared his learning curve and thoughts for new phone 7 developers, like “don’t worry about making it perfect the first time, just publish it”! Words of wisdom Jim!

Thanks once again to all the presenters and to those that attended this memorable event! See you next month!

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