Greg and I presented a Technology Showcase for ACM members last week on the UC Irvine campus. Aside from introducing Avanade to the UCI students, we wanted to get students excited about Microsoft's new technologies.
We showed demos of WPF as part of .NET Framework 3.0 and ASP.NET AJAX. We really wanted to emphasize how easy these frameworks and tools allow developers to focus on solving problems. At the end of our presentation, we gave away tech books on WPF and AJAX. I believe the books are in good hands and will be put to good use!
The one thing I regret about this demo is that I forgot to pray to the demo gods. Huge mistake. Never underestimate the live demo! The projector had a tough time displaying WPF. Luckily, I was still able to show some of the more polished apps like NY Times Reader, Otto Store, as well as the Ch9 Grand Piano WPF/E example.
I also went through a quick example of using (and switching between) Expression Blend and Visual Studio in creating a WPF video player. Mostly I followed tutorials from ContentPresenter.com, which has some cool tutorials that are easy to follow. Later on, I showed the students a version of the video player with WPF Interactive 3D.