Last week I created my first ‘How do I?’ video that will be published on Microsoft’s MSDN website. I definitely feel honored to participate in this series of videos. You can find lots of information about all kinds of topics, categorized like this: ASP.NET; ASP.NET Ajax; Devices; Native Coding; Silverlight; Visual Basic; Visual Studio; Visual Studio Tools for Office; Visual Studio Team System; Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation. If you want to find out right now what videos are currently available you can check this link. The real cool thing about these videos is that most of them don’t require any pre-requisites. Yes, it would probably help if you have some knowledge around the area you are watching one of those videos. At the same time though, most of the code explained during these videos will be created from scratch and you can witness entirely what the presenter is doing. You can also download all the sample code. For me personally it was kind of interesting to create my first video to be published under the ‘Devices’ section. Unlike webcasts, where you know that you have an audience listening to you, and unlike presentations at conferences, where you really meet the audience, this is different. Surely, I was talking through a microphone and recording everything that happened on my development machine. At the same time, nobody was listening to the things I was saying, because these videos are for offline viewing. I found out that this material is much harder to create. Acting excited when nobody else is around is much more difficult than showing your enthusiasm about cool tools when you have a real audience in front of you. Even though webcasts seems sort of anonymous, I always have the feeling that I am presenting for real people. To show my enthusiasm during these video recordings was much more challenging. I still hope that you like the result. Again, not only do we have lots of videos available for device developers (so far thanks to my good friend Jim Wilson), but there are lots of videos covering other Microsoft technologies. Being a good device developer, you definitely should check out some of the other videos as well. Hopefully you accept my invitation and start looking at some of the great “How Do I” video content that is out on MSDN right now. And don’t forget to check this link regularly because we have new content each and every week. For content around smart device development only, you can check here.

Maarten Struys