The dust is settling on yet another success in the DDD juggernaut of free one day conferences. This one was Scotland's fourth started by Colin Mackay and run on the day by Andy Gibson who was a speaker at DDD Scotland 2, a co-organiser at DDD Scotland 3 and the main man at DDD Scotland 4 (I wonder what Andy will be doing come DDD Scotland 5 ?).

It was great. It was great on many levels. Personally it was great because I wasn't organising anything so I could sit back and watch and enjoy. From the outside it looks like everything just works (I know just how much work is involved in making it look like there's not much work involved). The dinner the night before went well (always good to catch up with everyone in the community), the day went very well (good presentations full of content) and the geek dinner was one of the best I have been to (an excellent All You Can Eat Chinese buffet which was cheap and very tasty).

I was very pleased to be drafted in as a replacement speaker on Friday morning (to replace David Muir who will now be presenting his Windows Workflow Foundation presentation in Glasgow and Edinburgh soon). I did my Touch Me, Stretch Me, Squeeze Me: The Windows 7 WPF Multi-Touch Story presentation (slides, source code) and was pleased that it went well. Thanks to everyone who attended especially as it was such short notice.

As for the stats, this was the biggest DDD Scotland ever: 88 submissions for presentations, 6 tracks (including a certain Alternative Track imported from DDD South West), 345 registrations (although Andy Gibson said it was 301 so I'm not sure which is right) and 225 attendees on the day.

Well done Andy Gibson, Colin Mackay, Craig Murphy, Barry Carr and the Scottish developer community. See you next year.

And if you had fun at DDD Scotland and you don't want the party to end come down to DDD South West 3 in Bristol on Saturday 11th June 2011 and we can do it all over again.

I will be presenting my WPF multi-touch presentation at:-

• TechEd North America on Wednesday 18th May 2011 at 1:30pm
• The Next Generation User Group in Hereford on Monday 9th May at 7:00pm

Here's the abstract:-

Arguably the most innovative and forward thinking feature of Windows 7 is its multi-touch support. And it should be no surprise to see that WPF 4 boasts the same multi-touch support that utilizes this Windows 7 multi-touch support where available. In this session we will explore this new feature in WPF 4 and see what we get for free (i.e. without having to do any work), what you can get with only minimal additional work and what takes a bit more time and effort. Along the way we?ll discover the basic touch support together with support for rotation, scaling and inertia as well as how to handle low level touch events using the raw API. Please note: the presentation shows true multi-touch - this is not a trick with two mice simulating multi-touch.

Members of the resistance, important developments are occurring. The Next Generation User Group Empire are expanding their territories yet again. First Poland now Shenfield (near Brentwood, Essex). Wednesday 23rd February 2011 sees the inaugural meeting of the Shenfield chapter with a presentation on "Touch Me, Stretch Me, Squeeze Me: The Windows 7 WPF Multi-Touch Story" (I'll be there as a spy for the resistance cleverly disguised as a presenter). As their inexorable march towards the capital city continues I ask "who will stop them ?". In the South West we are fighting back with the newly formed and, of course, free, SQL Server User Club. Indeed London has its own new (free) Canary Wharf .NET User Group but has the venerable giant of the community grown fat on its pizza ? How long before we see NxtGen London ? Scaremongering or inevitability - you decide.

When Windows 7 was first shown at PDC 2008 the feature that captivated me was the touch support. Truly this was a step towards multi-touch becoming mainstream and a significant step forwards in our industry. And now I get to share the joy that is multi-touch on Windows 7 using WPF in a presentation with the same name as this post's title. The first outing will be at VBUG Bristol on Wednesday 11th August 2010. The second outing will be at The Next Generation User Group in Cambridge on Tuesday 21st September 2010. Here's the abstract:-

Arguably the most innovative and forward thinking feature of Windows 7 is its multi-touch support. And it should be no surprise to see that WPF 4 boasts the same multi-touch support that utilizes this Windows 7 multi-touch support where available. In this session we will explore this new feature in WPF 4 and see what we get for free (i.e. without having to do any work), what you can get with only minimal additional work and what takes a bit more time and effort. Along the way we'll discover the basic touch support together with support for rotation, scaling and inertia as well as how to handle low level touch events using the raw API. Please note: the presentation shows true multi-touch - this is not a trick with two mice simulating multi-touch.

If you're around Bristol or Cambridge then come along and say hello.