Victoria .NET Dev Association Monthly Meetings

Feb 2010 Monthly Meeting

2009-11-30T03:11:00Z

The Victoria .NET Developer's Association welcomes Richard Campbell on Thursday Feb 4th!

Richard Campbell has more than 30 years of high-tech experience and is both a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). He has consulted with a number of leading North American organizations; Barnes&Noble.com, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson Health Care Services, Reuters, Subaru/Isuzu and the U.S. Air Force. Richard is co-host of the “.NET Rocks!, the Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers” podcast, host of “RunAs Radio, the Internet Audio Talks for IT Professionals” podcast, has been co-authoring of the “Advisor Answers” column on SQL Server for more than ten years.

Title: Moving to Windows 7: Using Code Pack to Improve User Experience

Description:

Spend two hours with an expert learning what makes a good Windows 7 application. See how taskbar jumplists and taskbar previews and controls give your users an intuitive, productive, and fun user experience on Windows 7. Learn about restart and recovery, network awareness, power awareness, and more. Then see how simple it is to leverage a free library from Microsoft and add these features to your application with just a few lines of code. You can even create a single executable that runs fine on older versions of Windows and “lights up” on Windows 7.

This session will drill in to the features provided by Windows 7 and how to add them to your application using the Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework. Samples in both Visual Basic and C# will cover shell integration (taskbar, previews, and more), restart and recovery, power awareness and more. Learn how to add your own tasks to a jumplist taskbar, to recover from a reboot or a crash without losing any user data, and to modify your application’s behavior to conserve battery power. When you leave this session you’ll be ready to transform the user experience your application provides and take full advantage of Windows 7.

Intended Audience Skill Level: All

Date/Time: Thursday, Feb 4th, 2009 from 6:30-9:30pm (talk starts at 7)

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS108 see map

Registration: Please register for the event. Note that the different registration process is different from our usual process.

Thanks, hope to see you there!

Dec 2009 Food Bank Raffle

2009-11-25T15:37:00Z

[UPDATE] We also have a Microsoft Technet Subscription to give away.

The Food Bank fundraising raffle is ON, after our meeting this Thursday Dec 3rd!

The Victoria .NET Dev Association, the Victoria IT Pro group, and the Victoria Sharepoint group are all meeting on the same night and participating in the raffle. So far we have a bunch of leftover swag for prizes including Windows 7, Visual Studio 2008, Office 2007, and a good collection of misc t-shirts, books, hardware and other software (including XBOX360 games).

In addition, we've had someone donate a 5-inch USB lava lamp to include in the raffle (Thanks Ian!). If you'd like to contribute, either let us know or bring it with you to the meetings on Thursday.

Last time we did this, we raised $171 plus 2-3 dozen cans of food for the food bank:

http://www.vicdotnet.org/Content/Receipt_MustardSeedDonationDec06_2006.jpg

If you want, you can also make a donation directly to the foodbank in-person or online here: http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s32135. Just bring your receipt to the meeting and we will give you raffle tickets for your donated amount.

A couple of notes:

- We will be capping the maximum number of draw tickets at 10 per person (tickets will be 1 for $2).

- We are not taking food donations this time, only because last time there was too many and we had problems getting them all to the food bank.

Please pass the word, we hope to get a great turnout and raise a good chunk of change for a good cause.

December 2009 Monthly Meeting

2009-11-23T20:07:00Z

The Victoria .NET Developer's Association welcomes Richard Campbell on Thursday Dec 3rd!

Title: From One Web Server to Two: Making the Leap to Web Farms

Description:

Every web application starts out on a single web server. And while we've been told over and over again that you can always move to multiple web servers, it's not as simple as that! This session digs into the details of what it takes to make that leap - all the changes needed to let your application function properly with more than one server. You'll learn about replicating your web application between two servers and how to keep the content in sync. The techniques and challenges of load balancing are explored. And you'll learn the critical challenge of moving to multiple servers - getting rid of affinity. There's more affinity than just the session object, but that is a key starting point. Moving to multiple servers isn't easy, but this session will give you the check list of what to do to be successful.

Intended Audience Skill Level: All

Date/Time: Thursday, Dec 3rd, 2009 from 6:30-9:30pm (talk starts at 7)

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS108 see map

Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Dec 3rd Event"

Thanks, hope to see you there!

October 2009 Meeting - New Sharepoint Group

2009-09-17T18:46:00Z

I lieu of a meeting this month, we are hosting the first meeting of the new Sharepoint User Group!

Here's a blurb about the meeting tonight, from the website:

"On Thursday, October 1st the Victoria SharePoint Users Group hosts its first event. We will kick things
off with two talks. As it is our first event, it makes sense to start with a 'SharePoint 101' which will be
presented by Gerry Brimacombe of Sector Learning Solutions. Once Gerry has laid the groundwork,
Sean Wallbridge of itgroove will drill into SharePoint Document Libraries, demonstrating what they are,
how they work and how you can get more out of them."

Please check out the website and RSVP for the meeting if you plan to come:

http://www.meetup.com/vSharePoint/

Hope to see you there!

Devteach contest winners

2009-05-11T19:50:00Z

Here are the winners of the recent DevTeach contest. The free DevTeach pass was drawn from everyone who sent an email naming why DevTeach appealed to them. The copy of Expression Web 2 was given to the person who gave the best reason "Why" a particular session appealed to them.

Devon from Clover Point Cartographics won the draw for the free registration, and Steve from OA Solutions won the free copy of Microsoft Expression Web 2.

Steve won for the description of his most appealing session at DevTeach:

"
Unfortunately, wittisicms and pithy comments escape me this afternoon, and, after numerous attempts at humour in an attempt to differentiate myself from the rest of the entrants, I have given up.

So, here is my completely straight-laced no-attempt-at-humour entry into the contest. While many courses look interesting, the one that catches my eye is:

'Are Agile and Domain Modeling Frenemies?'

For a couple of reasons. Firstly, anything that uses hip cool lingo like 'frenemies' has to be good, perhaps that coolness will rub off on me. Secondly, there seems to be a potential of conflict in this session, and, after far too many Rambo movies, I crave conflict. And there are also going to be some models. Hopefully swimsuit models. While I am not sure what domain the models are from, I am pretty open minded, any session that combines agile models and domain models competing sounds fantastic! Sign me up!
"

Well done Steve, it's too bad you gave up on humour so early. Think of how funny it could have been. Your prize is in the mail.

Finally, if you haven't already, take a look at the DevTeach sessions again. There are some excellent learning opportunities to take advantage of at DevTeach, if you can make it you won't be disappointed.

May 2009 Monthly Meeting

2009-05-07T15:03:00Z

On Thursday May 21st the Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Paul Litwin from Seattle WA. Paul will be combining two seperate Reporting Services talks into one long talk. Stay as long as you are interested.

Paul Litwin is a developer specializing in ASP, ASP.NET, C#, Visual Basic, SQL Server, and related technologies. Paul is a programming manager with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He is also the owner of Deep Training, a developer-owned training company specializing in .NET developer training (www.deeptraining.com). Paul is the conference chair of Microsoft ASP.NET Connections, a Microsoft MVP, an ASP.NET Insider, and a member of the INETA Speakers Bureau.

Title: The Reporting Services Mega Show

Description:
Part 1: Designing Reports with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

Microsoft has overhauled SQL Server Reporting Services for the 2008 release of SQL Server. Gone are the separate table and matrix regions, replaced by the Tablix region. Much has been improved, including visualization and the exporting report results to CSV, Excel, and now Word. Come to this session to hear all about designing reports with the latest and greatest version of Reporting Services.

Part 2: Programming SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

In this session, you’ll learn how to programmatically manipulate SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) and integrate SSRS into your ASP.NET applications by employing URL Access, Report Viewer controls, and the Reporting Services Web Services.

Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate Reporting Services

Date/Time: Thursday, May 21st, 2009 from 6:30-9:30pm (talk starts at 7)

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS116 see map

Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "May 21 Event"

See you there!

October 2008 Monthly Meeting

2008-10-07T15:55:00Z

On Thursday October 16 the Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Donald Belcham from Edmonton.

Donald Belcham is an independent contractor in Edmonton. He has worked with .NET for the last 5 years and currently works with both web and smart client applications. Donald is an avid practitioner of agile development methodologies, pragmatic coding practices and delivering quality and value to the business. A Microsoft MVP in C#, Donald is active in the community as the President of the Edmonton .NET User Group, an organizer of the Edmonton Code Camp and a speaker at User Groups and Code Camps across Canada and in the United States. His thoughts on software development, .NET and C# can be found at http://www.igloocoder.com

Title: Introduction to ORM Fundamentals

Description:

What is ORM (Object Relational Mapping) and what does it have to do with your applications? Come to this session to find out. We'll explain what ORM is meant to do, and go over the available tools like Entity Framework and NHibernate. If you've ever wondered what all the buzz is about with ORM, this is the session for you.

Topics:

What is an ORM...really...what is it?
Persistence Ignorance
Persistence By Reachability
Unit of Work
Lazy Loading
Re-usabilty
Where do ORMs start to cause pain

Intended Audience Skill Level: All

Date/Time: Thursday, October 16, 2008 from 6:30-9:30pm (talk starts at 7)

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS124 see map

Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Oct 16th Event"

September 2008 Monthly Meeting

2008-09-15T16:03:00Z

The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Richard Campbell on Tuesday September 30.

Richard Campbell is one of the co-founders of Strangeloop Networks and today serves as product evangelist, introducing the company’s unique story to advisors, investors, patent attorneys, beta-customer candidates, potential employees, etc. Richard has more than 30 years of high-tech experience and is both a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). He has consulted with a number of leading North American organizations; Barnes&Noble.com, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson Health Care Services, Reuters, Subaru/Isuzu and the U.S. Air Force. Richard is co-host of the “.NET Rocks!, the Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers” podcast, host of “RunAs Radio, the Internet Audio Talks for IT Professionals” podcast, has been co-authoring of the “Advisor Answers” column on SQL Server for more than ten years.

Title: Performance Isn’t Optional – Making Web Services Work

Description:

Often the motivation for bringing web services into the enterprise is not performance – it’s about interoperability. But performance is NOT optional, without performance, interoperability becomes an exercise in frustration. This session digs into the strategies that an architect can employ in the design web services so that performance is a feature of web services, rather than an obstacle.

Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate+

Date/Time: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 from 6:30-9:30pm (talk starts at 7)

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room is ECS108 (this is at the other end of the lobby from where we usually are) see map

Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Sept 30th Event"

May Monthly Meeting

2008-05-12T16:51:00Z

The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Greg Young on Wednesday May 21.

Greg is co-founder and CTO of IMIS, a stock market analytics firm in Vancouver BC. With over 10 years of varied experience in computer science from embedded operating systems to business systems and everything in between, he brings a pragmatic and often times unusual viewpoint to discussions.

In his spare time you can often find Greg on experts-exchange.com where he runs the .NET section of the site, writing articles for InfoQ.com, speaking at local .NET groups throughout the south eastern US and now the pacific northwest, or floating upside down through rapids in his kayak.

Title: Re-thinking the Relational Database Management System

Description:

This talk will focus on the past, present, and future of Relational Database Systems and data storage/retrieval.

Databases were created in a time that had very different parameters to what we have today, so should we continue to use them like we always have? A lot of technical resources have changed since the first databases. Things like:

The length and distribution of a running transaction
Ratio of resources like disk/memory/cpu to network bandwidth
Personnel changes
Total cost of ownership

Its time we re-think the RDBMS as the centerpiece of our applications. Tools like OR mappers, while helping domains become the behavioral centers of our applications, still force us to deal with an impedance mismatch that gives little benefit. This session looks at our current architectures and identifies new approaches for us to deal with these issues in a more scalable, reliable, and behaviorally centric manner.

What happens when we remove the OLTP RDBMS? We can use architectures including SimpleDB, prevalence layers, or move to an additive only distributed architecture (can be scaled massively to millions of nodes in a consistent fashion). How can we get ourselves out of the everything-is-always-consistent model we have become dependent upon because it is provided by databases? Do we want to?

Topics include:

How the OLTP RDBMS is currently failing us.
Command and Query Separation.
Importance of the life cycles of objects.
Introduction of SLAs to the ubiquitous language.
Introduction of business value.

Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate / Advanced

Date/Time: Wednesday May 21, 2008 from 6:30-9:30pm (talk starts at 7)

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS125 see map NOTE: This is the big room across the lobby from the regular room

Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "May 21st Event"

April Monthly Meeting

2008-03-30T18:08:00Z

Mark Miller is a C# MVP with strong expertise in decoupled design, plug-in architectures, and great UI. Mark is Chief Architect of the IDE Tools division at Developer Express, and is the visionary force behind productivity tools like CodeRush and Refactor!, as well as the DXCore extensibility layer for Visual Studio. Mark is a member of INETA, a popular speaker at conferences around the world and has been writing software for over two decades.

Title: "The Science of Great UI" and "High Speed Development in Visual Studio with CodeRush and Refactor Pro"

Description: (Mark has decided on two short sessions, rather than one long session)

The Science of Great UI - Explore the how and why of great UI. If you believe you’re not an artist, that UI is merely subjective, or that a great UI is not worth the effort, then this session is for you. We’ll learn how to measure UI quality, covering user models, entry points, orienteering and discoverability, with tips and code samples for the WPF and .NET developer sprinkled throughout. Regardless of whether you’re building WPF applications or the traditional WinForms or Web ones, you’ll learn how to reduce visual noise, lower barriers to entry, enhance clarity and in general make your applications a pleasure to use. It’s all about making your customers happy, and this session will show you how.

High Speed Development in Visual Studio with CodeRush and Refactor Pro - Get an introduction to powerful developer tools for Visual Studio. We’ll start with CodeRush templates – they’re a lot like code snippets on steroids, and show how easy it is to exploit them for significant productivity gains. Then we’ll look at other features designed to make code creation easier, faster, and more efficient, and finally wrap up the session with a focus on refactoring while you code.

NOTE: Mark is a very "high energy" individual. The content of this talk will be aimed at an intermediate- to advanced-level developer, but regardless of your skill level be prepared to drink from the firehose!

Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate / Advanced

Date/Time: Tuesday April 1, 2008 from 6:30-9:30pm

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS128 see map

Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "April 1st Event"

December Pub Night

2007-11-28T22:17:00Z

Join us Monday December 10th for a Pub Night at Swans. The night will be an informal networking opportunity with no pre-set schedule or presentation. Just come and hang out, have some good food, good beer, and chat with other local devs.

Date: Monday, December 10th 2007
Time: 7-9:30pm
Cost: $5 per person to cover the cost of the room, includes food and a drink or two (see below)
Place: Swans Hotel, Collard Room (the small private room between the pub and the restaurant)

Food and Drink: A bunch of appy’s and drinks (beer and pop) will be included, plus cash bar at Swans

Due to room capacity, we can only take a maximum of 50 people for this meeting, so please register early.

Bring your questions for the Developers Association or any .NET development-related questions, there will be a good number of .NET experts in the room!

How to register: Please send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the Subject “December Pub Night”.

November Monthly Meeting

2007-11-08T06:07:00Z

UPDATE: Don's slides and content are here: www.vicdotnet.org//Content/DonKiely-ASP.NETDebugging.zip

Don Kiely - Advanced .NET Debugging

Don Kiely, MVP, MCSD, MSDE, is a senior technology consultant specializing in developing desktop and Web applications that integrate databases, Microsoft Office, and related technologies, using tools including SQL Server, ASP.NET and XML. Don trains developers and speaks regularly at industry conferences, including TechEd, VSLive!, DevConnections, and others. He earned a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the University of Colorado, but fortunately learned the error of his establishment ways. In his spare time he roams the Alaska wilderness by foot, dog sled, skis, and kayak, with his dogs Mardy and Izzi.

Title: "Power ASP.NET Debugging"

Description: The debugging features in Visual Studio are a marvel of the modern software world, with rich support for data visualization, customizing objects to improve debugging, and many other features. Far too often, however, developers fall back on the familiar Step Into and Watch window to solve problems, tediously stepping through line by line by line by…. And even if you use other debugging features, often the problem is that these features produce far too much information, making the debugging experience more of a data mining excursion than a logical approach to problem solving. During this session we'll explore many of the new and improved debugging features in Visual Studio 2005, including standard and custom features, how to customize an object to help with debugging, some of the more obscure debugging windows and framework debugging classes, and how to make ASP.NET debugging far more productive.

NOTE: Some of the tools and concepts in this talk are available in WinForms applications, but the focus is primarily on ASP.NET technologies.

Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate / Advanced

Topics:

What’s new, cool, and underused in Visual Studio 2005?
Customizing debugging for specific objects
Write your own debugging visualizers
Setup and debug client-side and resource file scripts
Advanced tracing with TraceSource
Using assertions in ASP.NET

Date/Time: Tuesday November 13th, 2007 from 6:30-9:30pm

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS128 see map

Note: We have moved to a new room! We've been having problems getting the key for our evening meetings, so to keep things simple we are moving to the main floor of the same building.

Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Nov 13th Event"

October 2007 Monthly Meeting

2007-09-30T01:54:00Z

This is a reminder that in two weeks the Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Rod Paddock!

Important Note: The meeting date in the last newsletter is wrong! The correct date is Wednesday October 10th.

Rod Paddock is president and founder of Dash Point Software, Inc. DPSI is an award winning software company based in Seattle, WA. Dash Point Software specializes in application architecture, development and software training. Clients include Six Flags, First Premier Bank, Microsoft, The US Coast Guard and US Navy. Rod is also editor in chief for Code Magazine (http://www.code-magazine.com/) and has written numerous articles and books on software development.

Rod can be contacted via his web site http://www.dashpoint.com/ or his blog http://blog.dashpoint.com/

Title: Ajaxing your Application

Description: Last Year Microsoft released a set of ASP.NET Ajax extensions. These extensions enable you to add Web 2.0 Style features to your ASP.NET Applications with little or no effort. In this session you will learn how to create new ASP.NET Ajax applications, how to incorporate Ajax into existing ASP.NET applications, what happens when you incorporate Ajax features into your web forms and overall how you can make your web forms smoother and more interactive. You will also learn how to incorporate the controls provided by the ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit.

Date/Time: Wednesday October 10th, 2007 from 6:30-9:30pm

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map

Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to mailto:event@vicdotnet.org?subject=Oct10thEvent with the subject heading of "Oct 10th Event"

See you there!

May 2007 Monthly Meeting

2007-04-18T14:24:00Z

The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes back speaker John Bristowe from Microsoft.

About John: John Bristowe is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Canada based in Calgary, Alberta. John is an experienced speaker and frequently presents Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) events across Canada. Prior to joining Microsoft, John was a member of the Microsoft Regional Director (RD) and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) programs.

Title: "The Exciting Adventures of the Microsoft Application Platform Developer"

Description: At the meeting John will demonstrate how the .Net Platform provides a foundation for building data-driven applications and Web sites. Specifically, this session will examine some of the tools and technologies available for developers including Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals and examine some of the exciting new features of ADO.NET.

Date/Time: Tuesday May 1st, 2007. Doors open @ 6:30pm Talk from 7:00pm - 9:30pm

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map

Registration: Please register for the event at: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032330937&Culture=en-CA

See you there!

April 2007 Meeting - New Presentation Topics

2007-03-31T17:57:00Z

Don Kiely had to cancel but we're going to have the meeting with two topics from local speakers:

1) Jason Kemp on Test-Driven Development

Test-Driven Development and unit testing are becoming an increasingly popular discipline in the software industry. There are all sorts of advantages to unit testing that will save you time in the long run, so you can do a job in 16 hours but bill for 40. Who can argue with that? We'll cover what unit testing is, how to do it for a simple class, the .NET unit testing tools (NUnit, TestDriven.NET, NCover, ReSharper) and some tips and tricks for testing maintaining your test suite.

2) Brian McKinnell on Application Virtualization

You’ve probably heard of, or are using, virtual machines for some of your development. Application virtualization is the same idea, except it’s only the application, not the entire O/S. In this talk you’ll hear about Microsoft SoftGrid, an application virtualization technology that is all about:

- how to get your rich client .NET applications (or any other app), deployed quickly

- not having to worry about application compatibility problems like conflicting DLLs

- running multiple versions of the same application on the same PC.

We hope to see you there!

If you previously registered for Tuesday’s event and are still interested in attending, could you please re-register for the event.

Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate

Date/Time: Tuesday April 3, 2007 from 6:30-9:30pm

Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map

Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Apr 3rd Event"

See you there!