Stacked Conference 2015 In Review
On Wednesday 18th November 2015, the third Stacked event was held. The Stacked events are community events primarily based around Windows development. The events are free to attend and are organised by a collective group of folks from Mando Group and Microsoft UK with sponsorship from additional companies. The last two Stacked events were held in Liverpool in 2013 and after a year off in 2014, Stacked returned in 2015 with an impressive line-up of speakers and talk and to a new venue at the Comedy Store at Deansgate Locks in Manchester.
Being in Manchester, it was only a short train ride for me to arrive bright and early on the morning of the conference. Registration was taking place from 8:30am to 9:10am, and I’d arrived just around 9am. After checking in and receiving my conference lanyard, I proceeded to the bar area where complimentary tea and coffee was on offer. After only having time for a quick cup of coffee, we were called into the main area of the venue, which was the actual stage area of the comedy club, for the first session of the day.
The first session was Mike Taulty’s Windows 10 and the Universal Windows Platform for Modern Apps. Mike’s session was dedicated to showing us how simple it is to create applications on the Universal Windows Platform. Mike first starts by defining the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) . The UWP is a way of writing applications using a combination of one of the .NET languages (C# or VB.NET) along with a specific “universal” version of the .NET runtime, known as .NET Core. Mike explains that, as Windows 10 is available on so many devices and different categories of devices (PC’s, Laptops, Tablets, Phones and even tiny IoT devices such as Raspberry Pi’s!), the UWP sits “on top” of the different editions of Windows 10 and provides an abstraction layer allowing largely unified development on top of the UWP. Obviously, not every “family” of devices share the same functionality, so API’s are grouped into “contracts”, with different “contracts” being available for different classes of device.
Building a UWP application is similar to how you might build a Windows WPF application. We use XAML for the mark-up of the user interface, and C#/VB.NET for the code behind. Similar to WPF applications, a UWP application has an app.xaml start-up class. Mike decides he’s going to plunge straight into a demo to show us how to create a UWP application. His demo application will be an application that connects, via Bluetooth, to a SpheroBall (which is a great toy – it’s a small motorized ball that can be “driven” wirelessly and has lights that can light up in various RGB colours). Mike will show this same application running on a number of different devices.
Mike first explains about the make-up and structure of a UWP application. The files we’ll find inside a UWP app – such as assets, pictures, resources etc. - are separated by "device family" (i.e. PC, tablet, phone etc.) - so we’d have different versions of each image for each device family we're targeting. Mike explains how UWP (really XAML) applications can be "adaptive" – this is the same as a "responsive" web site. Mike builds up his application using some pre-built snippets of code and fills in the blanks, showing us how using compiler directives we can have certain code only invoked if we’re running on a specific device. Mike demos his app first on a laptop PC, then a Windows 10 phone and finally a Raspberry Pi. Mike shows how we can deploy to, and control, the Raspberry Pi – which is running Windows 10 Core - by either remote PowerShell or alternatively, via a web UI built into Windows 10 Core on the device.
Mike says that when we’re building an app for IoT devices (such as the Raspberry Pi, Arduino etc.) we will often need a reference to an extension library that is specific to the Iot Core platform. This extension library, which is referenced from within our UWP project separately, allows access to additional types that wouldn't ordinarily exist within the UWP platform itself. By checking such things as Windows.Foundation.MetaData.ApiInformation.IsAPIContractPresent we write
code that only targets and is only invoked on specific classes of device.
Mike then shows us his application running on the RaspBerry Pi, but being controlled via a BlueTooth connected XBox One controller. After this Mike explains that Windows 10, on devices equipped with touch-sensitive screens, has built in handwriting and “ink” recognition, so the demo proceeds to show the SpheroBall being controlled by a stylus writing on the touch-sensitive screen of Mike’s laptop. Finally, Mike talks about Windows 10’s built-in speech recognition and shows us how, with only a few extra lines of code, we cannot control the SpheroBall via voice commands!
In rounding up, Mike mentions a new part of Windows 10, which is an open connectivity technology allowing network discovery of APIs, called "AllJoyn". It's an open, cross-platform technology and Mike says how there’s even light bulbs you can currently buy that will connect to your home network via the AllJoyn technology so you can control your home lighting via network commands!
After Mike’s session, we all left the theatre area and went back to the main bar area where there was more tea and coffee available for our refreshments. After a short 15-20 minutes break, we headed back to the theatre area to take our seats for the next session, which was Jeff Burtoft’s Windows 10 Web Platform.
Jeff starts by talking about the history of Internet Explorer with its Trident engine and Strict & Quirks mode - two rendering engines to render either quirks (i.e. old style, IE specific) or strict mode (to be more standard compliant). Jeff says how this was Ok in the past as lots of sites were written specifically for Internet Explorer, but these days, we're pretty much all standards compliant. As a result, Microsoft decided to completely abandon the old Internet Explorer browser and gave birth to the fully standards compliant Edge browser. Jeff then shows a slide from a study done by a website called quirksmode.com which is all about the proliferation of different versions of Chromium-based browsers. Chromium is used both by Google’s Chrome browser, but it’s also the basis for a lot of “stock” browsers that ship on smartphones. Many of these browsers are rarely, if ever, updated. Jeff states that some features of IE were actually implemented exactly to the HTML specification whilst other browser’s implementations weren't exactly compliant with the W3C specification. These browsers are now far more common, but Jeff states how Microsoft, with the Edge browser, will render things "like other browsers" even if not quite to spec. This creates a better parity between all possible browsers so that developing for web apps is more consistent across platforms.
Jeff shows a demo using the new Web Audio API and shows 3 different sound files being played on a web page and perfectly synchronised, each with their own volume controls. Jeff then shows a demo of a FPS game in the browser and controlled by the XBox one controller. The demo is using 3 major APIs for this. WebGL, Web Audio API and XBOX Controller API and manages a very impressive 40-50 frames per second, even though Jeff’s laptop isn’t the fastest laptop and the demo is running entirely inside the browser.
Next, Jeff talks about how we can write a HTML/JavaScript app (ala Windows 8) that are HTML and JavaScript and can be "bundled" with the EdgeHTML.dll library (the rendering engine for Edge browser) and Chakra (the JavaScript engine of Edge browser). Apps developed like this can be "packaged" and deployed to run just like a desktop application, or can be "hosted" by using a "WebView control" - this allows a web app on a phone to look and act almost exact like a native app.
Jeff then talks about a Microsoft developed, but open-source, JavaScript library called ManifoldJS. This library is the simplest way to create hosted apps across platforms and devices. It allows the hosted web app to be truly cross-platform across devices and browsers. For example, packaging up your own HTML/JavaScript application using ManifoldJS would allow the same package to be deployed to the desktop, but also deployed to (for example) an Android-based smartphone where the same app would use the Cordova framework to provide native-like performance as well as allowing access to device specific features, such as GPS and other sensors etc.
Jeff demos packaging an application using ManifoldJS and creates a hosted web app, running as a "desktop" application on Windows 10, which has pulled down the HTML, CSS and JavaScript from a number of pages from the BBC Sport website including all assets (images etc.) and wrapped it up nicely into an application that runs in a desktop window and functions the same as the website itself.
Finally, Jeff also demos another hosted web app that uses his Microsoft Band and is responsive gesture controls to automate sending specific, pre-composed tweets whilst drinking beer! :)
After Jeff’s session, there was another break. This time, we were treated to some nice biscuits to go with our tea and coffee! After another 15 minutes it was time for the final session of the morning. This one was slightly unusual as it had two presenters and was split into two halves. The session was by Jonathan Seal & Mike Taulty and was Towards A More Personal Computing Experience.
Jonathan was first to the stage and started by saying that his idea behind making computing “more personal” is largely geared around how we interact with machines and devices. He notes how interactions are, and have been until recently, very fixed – using a keyboard and mouse to control our computers has been the norm for many years. Now, though, he says that we’re starting to open up new ways of interaction. These are speech and gesture controls. Jonathan then talks about something called the “technological teller”. This is the phenomenon whereby man takes an old way of doing something and applies it to new technology. He shows a slide which indicates that the very first motorcars used by the US Mail service were steered using a rudder-like device, extended to the front side of the vehicle but controlling the the rear wheels. This was implemented as, at that time, we were used to “steering” something with a rudder as all we’d had before the car that needed steering was boats! He explains how it was many years before the invention of the steering wheel and placing the steering controls closer to where the user would actually steer the vehicle.
Jonathan shows some videos of new gesture control mechanisms in new cars that are shortly coming onto the market. He also shows a video of a person controlling a robotic ball (similar to the SpheroBall used earlier by Mike Taulty) by using advanced facial recognition, which not only detected faces, but could detect emotional expressions in order to control the robotic ball. For example, with a “happy” expression; the ball would roll towards the user, whilst with a “sad” or “angry” expression, the ball would roll away from the user.
After these videos, Jonathan invites Mike Taulty to the stage to show some of the facial recognition in action. Mike first talks about something called Windows Hello, which is an alternative mechanism of authentication rather than having to enter a password. Windows Hello works primarily on facial recognition.
Mike proceeds to show a demo of some very simple code that targets the facial recognition SDK that exists within Windows 10 and which allows, using only a dozen or so lines of code, to get the rectangles around faces captured from the webcam. Mike also shows that same image which can be sent to an online Microsoft Research project called Project Oxford, which further analyses the facial image and can detect all of the elements of the face (eyes, eyebrows, node, mouth etc.) as well as provide feedback on the detected expression shown on the face (i.e. Happy, sad, angry, confused etc.) Using Project Oxford, you can, in real-time, not only detect things like emotion from facial expressions but can also detect the person’s heart rate from the detected facial data!
Mike says that the best detection requires a “depth camera”. He has one attached to his laptop. It’s an Intel RealSense camera which costs around £100. Mike also shows usage of a Kinect camera to detect a full person with 25 points across all bodily limbs. The Kinect camera can detect and track entire skeletal frame of the entire body. From this, software can use not only facial expressions, but entire body gestures to control software.
Mike also shows an application that interacts with Cortana – Microsoft’s personal assistant. Mike shows a demo of some simple software that he’s written that interacts with Cortana allowing Mike to prefix spoken commands with some specific words that allow Cortana to interact with Mike’s software so that specific logic can be performed. Mike asks Cortana, "Picture Search - show me pictures of cats". The “Picture Search” prefix is a specifically coded prefix which instructs Cortana to interact with Mike’s program. From here pictures matching “Cats” are retrieved from the internet and displayed; however, using the facial and expression detection technology, Mike can narrow his search down to show only “happy cats”!
After this session, it was lunchtime. In previous years, lunchtime at the Stacked events was not catered and lunch was often acquired at a local sandwich shop. However, this year, with the event being bigger and better, a lunch was provided. And it was a lovely lunch, too! Lunch at conferences such as these are usually “brown bag” affairs with a sandwich, crisps etc. however on this occasion, we were treated to a full plate of hot food! There was a choice of 3 different curries, a vegetable curry and a mild and a spicy chicken curry. All served with pilau rice, a naan bread along with dips, sides of salad and a poppadum! After queueing for the food, I took a table downstairs where there was more room and enjoyed a very delicious lunch.
As I was anticipating having to provide me own lunch, I’d brought along some cheese sandwiches and a banana, but after the lovely curry for lunch, I decided the these would make a nice snack on my train ride home at the end of the day!
After our lunch-break, it was time for the first session of the afternoon and the penultimate session of the day. This was Mary J. Foley’s Microsoft & Developers – Now & Next.
Mary starts by saying that she’s not technical. She’s a technology journalist, but she’s been following Microsoft for nearly 30 years. She says that, with Windows 10, she really wanted to talk about 10 things. But the more she tried to come up with 10 things; she could only come up with 3. She says that firstly, there's been 3 CEO's of Microsoft. And today, there are 3 business units - there used to be many more – Windows Division, Applications & Services Division and Cloud & Enterprise Division. Mary says that previous CEO’s of Microsoft have “bet” on numerous things, some of which have not worked out. With the current CEO, Satya Nadella, Microsoft now has only 3 big bets. These are: More personal computing, Productivity & Business Processes and the Intelligent Cloud. There are also 3 platforms - Windows, Office 365, Cloud.
Mary takes the opportunity to call out some of the technologies and projects that Microsoft is currently working on. She first mentions the “Microsoft Graph” which is a grand, unified API that allows access to all other API’s provided by Microsoft i.e. Office 365 API, Azure etc. Developers can use the Microsoft Graph to extend the functionality of Office 365 and its related applications, for example.
Mary mentions she loves codenames. She says she found out about Project Kratos - which is new, as-yet-unannounced technology building on top of Office365 and Azure called "PowerApps". Not much is known about Project Kratos as yet, however, it appears to be a loose set of micro-services allowing non-programmers to extend and enhance the functionality of Office365. It sounds like a very interesting proposition for business power users.
Mary talks about the future for cloud, and something known as PaaS 2.0 (Platform as a Service) which is also called Azure Service Fabric. This is essentially lots of pre-built micro-services that can be consumed by developers. Mary then quickly discusses one of her favourite project codenames from the past, “Red Dog”. She says it was the codename for what eventually became Azure. She says the codename originally came from some of the team members who were aware of a local strip club called the “Pink Poodle”, and so “Red Dog” was born!
Next, Mary goes on to talk about Bing. She says that Bing is not just a search engine but is actually a whole developer platform as there are quite a lot of Bing related API’s. Bing has been around for quite some time, however, as a developer platform, it never really took off. Mary says that Microsoft is now giving the Bing platform another “push”. She mentions Project Satori, which is an “entity engine” and allows Bing and newer technology such as Cortana to better understand the web and search (i.e. a distributed knowledge graph).
Mary then proceeds to mention that Microsoft has a team known as the "deep tech team" within the Developer Division. She says how their job is to go out to companies that may have difficult technology problems that require solutions and to help those companies solve the problems. Interestingly, the team are free to solve those problems using non-Microsoft technology as well as Microsoft technologies – whatever is the best solution to the problem. The team will even help companies who are already committed to non-Microsoft technologies (i.e. pure Linux “shops” or pure Apple shops). She says they have a series of videos on YouTube and Channel 9 known as the “Decoded” series, and that these videos are well worth checking out.
Mary then talks about another project, codenamed “Red Stone”. This is the codename for what is effectively Windows 11, but which will be released as a significant update to Windows 10 (similar to Threshold2, however Red Stone is predicted to be 2 or 3 updates on from Threshold2). She also talks about a few rumours within Microsoft. One is that Microsoft may produce a Surface Phone, whilst the other is that Microsoft, if Windows Phone doesn’t gain significantly more market share, may switch their mobile phone operating systems to Android!
Finally, Mary talks about another imminent new technology from Microsoft called “GigJam”. It’s billed as “a blank canvas you can fill with information and actions from your business systems.” Mary says it’s one of those technologies that’s very difficult to explain, but once you’ve seen and used it, it very impressive. Another one to watch!
After Mary’s session, there was a final coffee break after which was the last session of the day. This session was Martin Beeby’s My Little Edge Case And IoT. Martin had created something called "Edge Case", which was built to help him solve one of his own business problems that he has as a developer evangelist. He needed a unique and interesting "call to action" from the events that he attends. Edge Case is a sort of arcade cabinet sized device that allows users to enter a URL that would be sent to Microsoft’s SiteScan website in order to test the rendering of that URL. The device is a steampunk style machine complete with old fashioned typewriter keyboard for input, old pixelated LCD displays and valve based lightbulbs for output and even a smoke machine!
Martin outsourced the building of the machine to a specialist company. He mentions the company name and their Italian domain, we wemakeawesomesh.it which raises a few laughs in the audience. Martin talks about how, after the full machine was built, he wanted to create a "micro" edge case, essentially a miniaturized version of the real thing, running on a single Raspberry Pi and made such that it could fit inside an old orange juice carton!. Martin mentions that he’s placed the code for his small IoT (Internet of things) device on Github.
Martin demos the final micro edge case on stage. Firstly, he asks the audience to send an SMS message using their phones to a specific phone number which he puts up on the big screen. He asks that the SMS message simply contain a URL in the text. Next, Martin uses his mini device to connect to the internet and access an API provided by Twilio in order to retrieve the SMS messages, one at a time, previously sent by the audience members. The little device takes each URL and displays it to a small LCD screen built into the front of the micro edge case. Martin reads out those URL’s and after a slight delay whilst the device sends the URL to the SiteScan service, Martin finally tells us how those URL’s have been rated by SiteScan, again, displayed on the small LCD screen of the micro edge case.
After Martin’s session was over, we were at the end of the day. There was a further session later in the evening whereby Mary J. Foley was recording her Windows Weekly podcast live from the event; however, I had to leave to catch my train back home. Stacked 2015 was another great event in the IT conference calendar, and here’s hoping the event will return again in 2016!
