I’m back in Melbourne after 9 days on the road for Tech Ed New Zealand and Tech Ed Sydney. I had a great time, meet lots of interesting people and had many great conversations. I’ve already blogged about my Silverlight session, and all the content is now available online. Thanks to everyone who came to the session, and for the good evaluations.

Microsoft New Zealand have also published a lot of content on their Tech Ed Live site, and you can now watch my full Silverlight session online. So if you missed the session, or want the full story behind the Dive Log sample I recommend checking out the video.

In addition to my Silverlight session I also sat on a “the next 18 months - the future of the web” panel. Suzanne Tindal from ZDNet picked up some of the discussion around JavaScript and has written an article questioning if Chrome’s JavaScript poses a challenge to Silverlight. On the panel we started talking about how JavaScript is getting faster and faster, and how Chrome is upping the performance bar with its JIT compilation and JavaScript Virtual Machine. I got quoted several places in the article, which is really cool. As most of you guys who read my blog know I’m deeply into Silverlight and I have no doubt that it’s going to be an important technology in the years to come. That being said I do think that JavaScript will turn out to be a bigger competitor to Silverlight than Flash for developers deciding which technology to use for their rich Internet applications.

The ZDNet article is well written and should be an interesting read if you want to learn more about mine, Scott Hanselman and Harry Piersons perspectives on the future of JavaScript, web applications and Silverlight. The ZDNet  article also got cross posted on CNet. Paul Glazowski followed up with a new article about Silverlight battling Flash AND JavaScript over at at BuzzYa and Mashable.

With Tech Ed ANZ now being history the next big event is the Microsoft PDC conference in LA in October. I’m going and hope to see many of you guys there!

  

We did an interview with Aftenposten, on of the top three largest newspapers in Norway, after the presentation in BT Tower. The article was printed in the Sunday issue of the paper in the job/education section! The article is available online, so check it out!

We're also featured in the latest version of the Norwegian Microsoft Magazine. The magazine is available as a PDF download from Microsoft Norway (we're on page 38 and 39 in the printed version and page 20 in the PDF version).

Yesterday I had my Channel9 debut. During TechEd in Barcelona Hans Olav and I did an interview with Charles from Channel9, and now the video is finally up. We talk about our Imagine Cup experience and demo our application. Head over to Channel9 and check out the video and post a comment!

Just a quick post with some link to various press coverage during and after the Imagine Cup World finals. I've allso uploaded some new pictures to my Flickr page.

• Adressavisen: NTNU-bronse i India
• Adressavisen: NTNU-studenter i verdenstoppen
• Dagbladet: Nerde-bronse
• Computerworld: Cup-feber i India
• Computerworld: Tredjeplass for NTNU-studenter
• Fredrikstad blad: Til topps i Imagine Cup?
• Fredrikstad blad: Til "data-VM" i India
• Nordlys: Lakselv-studenter kan nå helt til tops
• Nordlys: Gjør suksess i India
• Nordlys: Lakselvgutter i verdenstoppen

 

Today is the fourth day of the Imagine Cup in India. We arrived one day earlier than most of the other contestant, so during Sunday more and more students where arriving. On Sunday night we had the welcome party, with opening speeches and videos, music and food. The "band" that played on the opening night was an Indian version of the Norwegian band "Ralph Mayers and The Jack Harren Band". I don't remember the name so I'll look it up later. The Norwegian team left early from the party to work on out application, and we weren't in bed until 04 AM.

 

Monday was the first day of the contest. We started out by doing a 7 minute lightning round which didn't count. This round was held just to get us warmed up. Later that day we had the first real round of the Imagine Cup, a 20 minute presentation and 10 minutes of questions. The presentation went excellent and all the demos worked perfectly. Later that day we (team Norway), Japan and UK where invited to do a press briefing talking about our projects and our experience as contestant at the Imagine Cup world finals.

 

Tuesday morning was spent in our team booth giving presentations to media, other teams and guests of the competition. There where quite allot of people interested in our project, so we where quite really busy. The 12 teams who made it to the next round where announced around lunch. I don't remember all the other teams who made it, but both Norway and Denmark made it to the next round. 41 teams are now down to one. We did our second round presentations Tuesday afternoon, which now was 35 minutes and 15 minutes of questions. The judges gave us great feedback, and actually said that they where blown away… So no our fingers are crossed, and hopefully we'll move on to the final 6 teams to present tomorrow Thursday.

 

Today, Wednesday, we've been relaxing and visiting and old mausoleum for some important Indian guy from the early 1600's. I don't remember his name, so I'll post a Wikipedia link later on. We spend the day divided into groups doing different kinds of work at the site. Some people where working in the garden, while others where filling cracks in the floor and walls, or  where swiping dust. Now we just had lunch before heading over to Taj Mahal, something I'm definitely are looking forward to.

 

Gøran have posted som pictures on his Flickr site. Check them out over at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22075141@N00/sets/72057594128196432/

The Norwegian online edition of the Norwegian magazine “Teknisk Ukeblad” has published an article about the Nordic Imagine Cup finals. The printed version of the magazine comes out 40 issues a week, with a print of 90.000 copies. You can check out the article over at http://www.tu.no/nyheter/ikt/article53247.ece.

The last couple of days have been super busy. After the Microsoft days in Stavanger I went straight to Oslo to compete with Team NTNU in the Nordic finals of Imagine Cup. After a nice dinner at Aker Brygge we went straight to the hotel room to finish the prototype. We had some issues, and weren’t finished with the scenarios we wanted to implement until 07 in the morning!

Guess what, we actually won the finals! We competed against a Finish and a Danish team, who both had nice projects to show off. The first price was a brand new Qtek Smartphone and a trip to the world finals in India in beginning of August!

 

For those of you waiting for the slides from Bergen and Stavanger, I’ll have them ready after Microsoft days in Trondheim Monday.

Have to run, barely time for a quick shower before heading out on town for some celebrating!

In the mean time, check out Jan Kristians “live” coverage of the Nordic finals on his Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-k/sets/72057594125728297/