Last Sunday, a group of local developers gathered at the Burroughes building to attend a new workshop series organized by DevTO, HTML5 Toronto, TorontoJS, and Make Web Not War. 

The focus of the workshop was Windows 8 app development. In the near future, DevTO will host two additional workshops on Windows 8–one on developing games for the platform, and another on Microsoft’s cloud computing solution, Azure. However, in the spirit of past DevTO events, future workshops will cover a wide range of topics. ”We’re technology agnostic,” tells me Nael El Shawwa, one of DevTO’s organizers. He goes on to say, “We don’t focus on any one platform or technology; we want to be the place where any developer come and learn something.”

Indeed, for El Shawwa and the rest of the DevTO team, the goal of the organization’s events is less about helping developers learn specific toolsets; instead, they hope those that decide to attend their events leave with a set of methodologies and best practices that they can take to any platform. And with tickets to the workshop priced at only $5, the idea is to make the workshops accessible to the entire community. 

For its part, Microsoft sent its Montreal-based technology evangelist, Frédéric Harper, to teach the workshop. Harper, who comes from an open-source background and is a part of the Make Web Not War Community group, travels the country attending events like this one. Besides teaching the workshop, he was also there to show attendees that Microsoft, in contrast to its past behaviour, has an interest in things like the open web. In fact, a significant portion of Harper’s presentation is spent illustrating to attendees how they can easily turn one of their HTML5 apps into a Windows 8 app. For Harper, events like this give him the opportunity to give developers the tools they need to succeed, and, of course, a chance to get out of the office and socialize. 

The turnout for the workshop was modest–a lot of that had to do with the switch to daylight savings time. Thankfully, for those that could not attend the workshop, its presentations were streamed online via Justin.tv; in fact, one viewer even caught the workshop from Athens, Greece. Although he doesn’t mention it to me, I think El Shawwa sees viewer from Athens as a good sign: after all, if a person halfway across the world saw the value in setting aside the time to watch the presentations, then it shouldn’t be a problem to persuade locals to come as well. Moreover, the team has another reason to be hopeful. About 20 people attended DevTO’s first meetup. Now, almost two years later, more than 115 people attend on a consistent basis. 

Those there didn’t seem to mind, though, and for someone like Stephen Cunliffe, the workshop was a chance to see and tryout Windows 8’s developer toolset, meet some new people, and an opportunity to take some time to do what he loves. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  

____

Igor Bonifacic is a writer working for the Toronto Standard. You can follow him on twitter @igorbonifacic. 

For more, follow us on Twitter @TorontoStandard and subscribe to our newsletter.