During my visit in Poland I was doing I was asked to make a 3-hour workshop for people who have never worked before with ASP.NET MVC
I was wondering about the best solution to lead that workshop.I tried to remember how it was when I started to learn ASP.NET. But.. I was a different case.. I studied it on university and 3 hours to show what ASP.NET MVC is and what we can do with it is really not enough. It’d be an only first step to show that creating a website with .NET is actually easy.
Requirements
I created a requirements list with knowledge attendees should have before they get a ticket for this workshop:
• The attendee should know basics of JavaScript, Html, and CSS. Why? Because the course was only focused on ASP.NET MVC and attendee will need that knowledge.
• The attendee should install Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition. Why? Because they can see more futures what VisualStudio have.
Workshop day
About 20 people participated in the workshop. Unfortunately, some of them didn’t try to install Visual Studio before they came and some of them came with Macintosh. Now I know that next time I have to create an installation instructions. Lesson learned.
Application
I tried to create an application to be as simple as possible.- I created a TodoList. A simple model using dblocal, a simple read/write controller and a default view for them. Easy? Yes. So what can come unexpectedly? Dblocal has not been installed with VS. Installing dblocal separately or even SqlExpress didn’t help.
Solution? I really don’t know. I asked attendees to check if dblocal is installed and asked them to reinstall Visual Studio at home and contact me in the case of any problems.
People who use Macintosh (or even Linux) can still coding in .NET but using third party product like MonoDevelop.
My computer
And what else came unexpectedly? My computer doesn’t have an HDMI port. So with a little luck, I displayed presentation on WiT organizer Ania’s computer with Visual Studio 2013. It was a very stressful workshop.
What have I learned?
1. I cannot check everything before the workshop. Something unexpected always can happen.
2. I should write a course specification to help attendees prepare before workshop
3. I should check if my comupter will work with given devices before the workshop!
How do I feel after that workshop?
Really nice. It was my first workshop (short workshop). I was getting stressed out a lot. Attendees were great. They wanted to study and do all stuff I prepared . I hope attenees were happy after all.
Future?
Yes, in future I would like to create some more workshops. Maybe longer, maybe more difficult. I got a new achievement.
But yes, all thanks for the success of this workshop should go to Ania and all attendees, who came and wanted to get knowledge! 🙂
