The Week Ahead-January 28, 2013

After launching our Meetup series last week, it’s going to be a quiet one on the home front, since Chris, Michael, and I, along with the rest of the US Microsoft Evangelism team, will be in Las Vegas for our annual off-site meeting.

Given the brief lull, I thought I’d take the opportunity to point out a few changes I recently made to my blog to help support your Windows and Windows Phone development efforts.  If you look at my blog header, you’ll see three centrally located icons:

	Developer Learning Opportunities This section explains the roles of the various types of events we are running in the area and is where you can sign up for the Boston Windows App Developer Meetup, Generation App, and our new Live Groups.
	Technical Events Calendar This is the monthly calendar of non-recurring events of interest in the Northeast. You’ll find Microsoft-sponsored as well as 3rd party events, like BarCamps and Startup Weekends. I also include links on this page to a User Group map of the Northeast and to the Boston Windows App Developer Meetup.
	Developer Promotions and Contests Microsoft and its partners are continually running promotions and contests to encourage development and innovation within the technical community. This page provides a running list of various promotions in market along with links on how to take advantage of the various offers, some of which provide significant cash and other awards.

So for this week, while we’re away in Vegas, here are a few things to put on your agenda:

Sign up for Generation App if you haven’t yet. My promotion of giving away 20,000 Xbox LIVE points a day to new subscribers continues through Thursday, January 31st

Join the Boston Windows App Developer Meetup so you’ll be informed of all the in-person workshops and events we are running in the greater Boston area. In the next couple of days, expect to see a few more events added for the week of February 4.

Sign up for our Windows Developer and/or Windows Phone Developer Live Groups. This is a new addition to our community outreach, and we hope that *you* will drive the conversation and interaction. It should be a great way to find out what other developers are doing, particularly those you don’t have a chance to see face-to-face.

Register for the Windows 8 JumpStart on February 8th in Cambridge.