If you are organizing a conference and need to build a web site for you attendees, feel free to use this template. If you want to give conference-goers a Windows Phone 7 application to organize their schedule, this template is yours.

MyCon is an ASP .NET MVC, Silverlight, and Windows Phone application that you can customize to run your own conference web site and mobile app. The code is free and open source. You just cover your own hosting.

The web site

Your conference web site lists your speakers, complete with photo and bio. Click on a speaker’s name to see all of the sessions that they are presenting.

Or break down sessions by track or by schedule. Please see the demo site.

The Windows Phone app

Your attendees will use their Windows Phones to manage their own schedule. They can browse sessions by time slot, speaker, or track, and can even search.

The scheduling app

Use the Silverlight application to enter speaker, session, and schedule data. Everything you enter is synchronized to the web site and the phone app.

How to use the template

It’s easy to use the template. Simply fork the git repository and start making your changes. Here are the changes you need to make to the web app.

1. Create a database in SQL Express called “MyCon”. The application will initialize it for you. If you don’t use SQL Express, edit the connection string in web.config.
2. Enter a Conference ID in CommonSettings.cs. Just run the application and it will generate a new ID for you.
3. Enter your own content in Views/Home/Index.cshtml and Views/Sponsors/Index.cshtml.
4. Add your own banner to Views/Shares/_Layout.cshtml.
5. Deploy the web application to AppHarbor, Azure or your own hosting provider. If you use AppHarbor, choose the SQL Server add-on.
6. Run the Silverlight 4 application to create your session schedule.

And here are the changes you need to make in the Windows Phone app.

1. Replace the images (ApplicationIcon.png, Background.png, and SplashScreen.png).
2. Change the settings in WMAppManifest.xml (generate a new GUID for ProductID, set the Title, Author, Description, and Publisher).

Once you are ready to publish, you can pre-load the conference schedule so attendees don’t have to download it when they first use the app.

1. Run the Capture desktop application.
2. Copy the binary files that it generates from C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\FacetedWorlds\MyCon to the Data folder in the WP7 project.

If you change the schedule after you publish, don’t worry. The app will automatically download the updates.

Give back

You are free to use this template for any purpose. If you love it, there are many ways that you can give back.

• Make a suggestion on how to improve the template.
• Send me a git pull request on improvements that you have already made.
• Tweet a link to this page (copy me @michaellperry).
• Help someone else set up their conference app.
• Include the “Powered by Correspondence” logo on your app’s splash screen.