This hands-on workshop will take you from 0 to a fully working, cloud connected, AI powered mobile app. We'll help you get setup with Visual Studio and the Xamarin tooling on either Windows or Mac, and connect your iPhone or your Android device ready to run an app. Once you are set-up, we'll cover some basics of Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms, then it's heads down setting up cloud services for storage, processing and authentication, and writing a cross-platform client app - using one code base for a fully-native app that runs on both iOS and Android. We’ll also give you small lectures on relevant topics such as Serverless Functions applications for processing, Cognitive Services for Image recognition, Cosmos DB for storage.

The app we build will combine accessing device hardware using Xamarin plugins, online AI services for face and emotion detection, and other services like authentication and blob storage, all built using a serverless architecture. By the end of the workshop, you will have a production ready, AI and cloud powered mobile app.

Attendee Requirements:

You must provide your own laptop computer for this hands-on lab.

Laptop Computer Configurations

You can develop for Xamarin using Windows or Mac. However, if you use Windows and want to build Xamarin apps for iOS, you need a Mac computer too. This is because of Apple restrictions and cannot be avoided. During the workshop, we will support the following configurations:

From a Windows PC:

• Preferred: Develop for Android devices using a physical device connected through USB.
• Develop for Android devices using an emulator running on the PC directly.

From a Mac:

• Preferred: Develop for Android devices using a physical device connected through USB.
• Develop for iOS devices using a physical device connected through USB.
• Develop for Android devices using an emulator running on the Mac directly.
• Develop for iOS devices using a simulator running on the Mac directly.

Keys to success:

• Bring your own Windows PC and/or Mac PC to the workshop. Make sure to follow the instructions below for the Xamarin setup.
• If you have one, we recommend that you bring your own Android or iOS devices to the workshop. This is the easiest way to test your application