LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–February 2012

Well I know I’m a little late getting this one out but I’ve been busy travelling all over the world and trying to sell and move out of my house so I apologize, it’s been a busy month! If you missed the previous rollups you can view them here.

The big news last week of course was the release of Visual Studio 11 Beta which includes LightSwitch in the box! Very exciting to be on the Dev11 train.

Download Visual Studio 11 Beta

You can read about the major new features of LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 beta on the team blog:

Announcing LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta

We’ll be releasing more content weekly on all the new features so keep tuned into the LightSwitch team blog and the LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta page on the Developer Center. And please visit the LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta forum to ask the team questions.

Of course a lot of other things happened in February…

LightSwitch Star Contest – Grand Prize Winners & Mini Case Studies

The LightSwitch Star Contest has come to a close over on Code Project and all the prizes have been announced. However, even though the contest is over, CodeProject has created a dedicated LightSwitch section of their site to host the submissions as well as any new tutorials that people want to contribute. Check out all the submissions, particularly ones that have been deployed to Azure, to give you an idea of the types of applications you can create quickly with LightSwitch.

In early February they announced the grand prize winners. Here are all the winners of the contest. Congrats to all!

Most Efficient Business Application

• 1st prize November: App name: Security Central – winner name: Keith Craigo
• 2nd prize November: App name: PTA LightSwitch – winner name: Matt Milner
• 1st prize December: App name: Patient Tracker – winner name: Netsuper
• 2nd prize December: App name: Instant Assets – winner name: Delordson Kallon
• 1st prize January: app name: LightSwitch Job Hunter Application – winner name: stuxstu
• 2nd prize January: app name: Orion – winner name: TheRegan
• Grand Prize: app name: Security Central – winner name: Keith Craigo

Most Ground-breaking Business Application

• 1st prize November: app name: Church+ – winner name: Ihesie Peter Onyebuchi
• 2nd prize November: app name: Engineering App – winner name: Laurentz Tonniau
• 1st prize December: app name: Health and Safety Management System – winner name: PaulSPatterson
• 2nd prize December: app name: Orion – winner name: Julio Iglesias Vázquez
• 1st prize January: app name: MyBizz Portal – winner name: Jan Van der Haegen
• 2nd prize January: app name: Light Enterprise Solution – winner name: Chun Te
• Grand Prize: app name: MyBizz Portal – winner name: Jan Van der Haegen

LightSwitch at TechDays Netherlands

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of returning to one of my favorite countries, The Netherlands, to speak at TechDays. I delivered two LightSwitch talks, one intro and one advanced. Read my trip report on the fun adventures and check out the videos of my sessions:

• Video Presentation: Introduction to Visual Studio LightSwitch
• Video Presentation: Advanced Development & Customization Techniques 

LightSwitch at MVP Summit

Last week over 1500 Most Valuable Professionals visited Microsoft for a week of meetings with the product teams. It’s always great to see folks helping drive our developer communities face-to-face. I saw a lot of friends and the team got a lot of great feedback on LightSwitch (as well as Azure, Office & SharePoint development). While I was there, Jay Schmelzer and myself chatted with MVPs Andrew Brust and Michael Washington about LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta. Jay and Andrew talked about what developers can look forward to in the next release of LightSwitch and me and Michael chat about the community (of course!). Check out these short videos:

• Beta Time at the MVP Global Summit 

LightSwitch Unleashed – Book Released!

One of the things me and Michael spoke about in the interview is Alessandro Del Sole’s book released last week. Congrats Ale!! I know it was a long road but you did it! I was the technical reviewer for the book and I know how much work it was to get it right.

Book: Visual Studio LightSwitch Unleashed

Michael Washington also interviewed Alessandro on his website: An Interview With Alessandro Del Sole.

And Alessandro also made chapter 3 available to download for free! Thanks!

More Notable Content this Month

LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta

• Announcing LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Enhance Your LightSwitch Applications with OData
• LightSwitch Filter Control For Visual Studio 11 Beta
• LightSwitch Team Chats with MVPs about Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Microsoft LightSwitch – A First Class Citizen to Visual Studio 11
• What’s new in Visual Studio LightSwitch 11 (LS VS vNext Beta) – a hacker’s view
• Visual Studio 11 Beta Released!
• Sample: Vision Clinic Walkthrough & Sample (Visual Studio 11 Beta)
• Sample: Contoso Construction – LightSwitch Advanced Sample (Visual Studio 11 Beta)

Visual Studio LightSwitch – RTM

• Calling Your Custom WCF RIA Services Using OData
• Creating a LightSwitch Business Type Extension
• Creating A LightSwitch Collection Control Extension
• Creating A LightSwitch Group Extension
• Creating a very dynamic LightSwitch shell extension in 15 minutes or less
• Enhancing A LightSwitch Detail Control Extension
• Integrating LightSwitch Into An ASPNET Application To Provide Single Sign On
• LightSwitch Screen Tips: Scrollbars and Splitters
• Making integers searchable in LightSwitch
• Microsoft LightSwitch – Add Granularity to Reference Data
• Microsoft LightSwitch – Data First and Breaking Some
• Microsoft LightSwitch – A Little Productivity
• MyBizz Portal: The “smallest” LightSwitch application you have ever seen (Thank you!)
• The DELORDSON LightSwitch OutlookBar Shell
• Trip Report–Techdays 2012 Netherlands

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

Become a fan of Visual Studio LightSwitch on Facebook. Have fun and interact with us on our wall. Check out the cool stories and resources. Also here are some other places you can find the LightSwitch team: 

LightSwitch MSDN Forums
LightSwitch Developer Center
LightSwitch Team Blog
LightSwitch on Twitter (@VSLightSwitch, #VisualStudio #LightSwitch)

Enjoy!