Chris Bowen's Blog : Northeast

Northeast MSDN Roadshow - “Don’t Fear the Coder” Tour

cbowen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:17:05 GMT

As in 2007 and 2008, we like to run a pre-winter Roadshow series before the really deep snow blankets the roads. I’m glad to say everything’s lined up for us to to get the word out for the next series!

These are free events, running 9:30 to 3:30, featuring five sessions for developers and architects. Topics include Expression/Silverlight MVVM, ASP.NET Webforms/AJAX, LINQ, finding developer help, and WCF. The full agenda (in all of its themed glory) is below.

We’ll be piling into whatever vehicle we can find (that has plenty of cup holders for coffee) to visit seven cities in November and December:

November 10 - Burlington, VT [Register] New Venue
November 12 - Troy, NY [Register]
November 13 - Rochester, NY [Register]
December 3 - Farmington, CT [Register]
December 8 - Waltham, MA [Register]
December 9 - Providence, RI [Register] New City!
December 15 - Augusta, ME [Register]

P.S. There’s now a directions/parking/updates page to help with any venue updates before each event.

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And now the full agenda (prior Roadshow attendees know we just love a theme). Read on if you dare, but you’ve been warned…

MSDN Events Presents

The MSDN Northeast Roadshow:
"Don't Fear the Coder" Tour

It was a dark and stormy night. Your heart races as you wonder how you'll survive the looming deadline. Technology questions abound. A cat jumps at you for no reason. The stack of unread developer magazines casts a threatening shadow. What to use? When? How?

Worried? Don't be. Road and code warriors Jim O’Neil and Chris Bowen will clear up the fog surrounding key developer technologies. From current practices and tools, to glimpses of the near future, you'll escape with new insights and many stories to tell.

The Northeast MSDN Roadshow is a free series of deep technology sessions for developers and architects. Join Chris and Jim for these relaxed events to gain practical insights (and of course they’ll use their wits to transform “horrors” into “har hars”).

Registration is required, and seating is limited, so register today and join the Roadshow!

The Agenda: Clever Hacking, Slashed Efforts, and Killer Applications

Something WCF This Way Comes

The mysterious figure of Windows Communication Foundation approaches from the swirling mist, but are its intentions good? Rumors abound that it can be complex and not for the faint of heart. We'll take a renewed look at WCF, discovering a practical tale of services, connectivity, integration, and more. Our focus will be on WCF’s current nature, but we'll briefly preview what’s in store for us with .NET 4.0. WCF turns out to be a great ally, so you’ll be glad you stood your ground.

RIA Window – Expression, Silverlight, and MVVM

You’ll code your next Silverlight application with grace after you catch this session, which presents the primary motives for using the MVVM pattern. Focusing on the use of Expression Blend, we’ll cast a designer’s lens on Silverlight development enabling you to plot a hitch-free course for your future projects.

"Help!" – Grasping at Lifelines

In the fight to slay invading bugs and put fearsome requirements to rest, sometimes you need a helping hand. In this brief lunchtime session, we'll review options for finding assistance – ways to report and view issues you find, help systems, websites, team options, communities, and more. Breathe easy, there’s no need to wander alone in the dark.

LINQ De-crypted

Although it’s part of the foundation of the .NET 3.5 release, many developers have yet to uncover the amazing power buried in LINQ (Language Integrated Query). This session will bring to light important concepts found lurking in the shadows of the technology: the IEnumerable and IQueryable interfaces, extension methods, lambda expressions, and more. With LINQ’s defining components unearthed, you’ll vault to new heights in your development efforts.

Tales from the Webside - ASP.NET WebForms, AJAX, and More

Your journey through web development may at times seem like a montage of foreboding images. There are many paths to consider, but in this session we return to the main roads of essential ASP.NET development. From WebForms and server options, to scripting, AJAX, and other tools, we’ll catch up with the latest developments and take a quick glimpse down the road at what awaits us ahead. Until next time, enjoy trying your new web development options.

Code Camp 12 – The Schedule!

cbowen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:56:26 GMT

We’re on the home stretch for this Saturday’s New England Code Camp 12: “The Developer Dozen” (what is Code Camp?), a free day filled with with technology sessions given by the area developer community.

       New England Code Camp 12
       Saturday, October 17th
       8:30 AM to 6:40 PM
       Microsoft, 201 Jones Road (6th Floor), Waltham, MA

Registration is still open!

http://TheDevCommunity.org

Sessions and Schedule

CC12 will feature 45 sessions by 29 speakers in 7 rooms, all for free!

The session grid (as always, subject to change) is below, and session descriptions are online.

We’ll have printouts of the grid and descriptions waiting for you at registration.

The Schedule (click to expand):

Saturday Evening Geek Gathering

A Code Camp tradition for years, we're informally gathering over at the Waltham Westin's lobby bar for a chance to unwind on Saturday night.

Drop by after sessions are over to relax, chat, and network with fellow New England devs!

Thanks to Our Contributors!

Last but certainly not least, thanks to the contributing companies who have made this event possible:

Lunch courtesy Magenic

O’Reilly

Pearson/Addison-Wesley

Pluralsight

Red-Gate

Wiley/WROX

See you at Camp!

-Chris

Upcoming Northeast Developer Events – August, September, October

cbowen — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:30:42 GMT

Though we’re still enjoying the warm weather, and groups often take it easy in July and August, there are plenty of events starting to appear on the radar, so I’m rounding them up here.

September promises to be very busy - with Vermont’s very first Code Camp, our Fall Northeast MSDN Roadshow series, and user groups returning to regular meetings. Then October will feature the 12th of immensely popular New England Code Camps.

Also, scroll down to the bottom for some online events, that don’t care where you live (or that you’re attending in your jammies.)

Know of any other events? Please comment or let me know.

Connecticut

September 29 – 1-6PM
Fall 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Farmington, CT
Join Jim and me for Roadshow series #10 – free events featuring deep dives into Silverlight 3, Windows 7, Patterns, and .NET programming tips.

Bonus Event! Same Location, Same Day – A morning TechNet Unleashed event from 8:30 to 12:00, with great content for IT Pros.

Schedule TBD
Connecticut .NET User Group - Microsoft Offices, Farmington, CT
Agile Project Leader Network - Microsoft, Farmington, CT
Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT
Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - UConn, Stamford, CT

Massachusetts

August 6
New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA
"Silverlight Application Development" – John Garland

August 6
The Agile Bazaar – Cambridge, MA
”A Practical Roadmap to a Great Scrum” - Jeff Sutherland

August 7
North Shore Web Geeks – Newburyport, MA

August 11
Build Guild – Salem, MA

August 12
Boston .NET User Group - Waltham, MA
5:00 - "ASP.NET MVC Discussion" – Bob Goodearl
6:00 - “On a Clear Day You Can See Cloud Computing” – Michael Stiefel

August 13
Boston Cloud Services – Waltham, MA

August 19
New England ASP.NET Professionals – Waltham, MA
"ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC)" – Chris Bowen

August 19
New England Windows Mobile User and Developer Group - Waltham, MA
"State of the Union: Mobile Application Development”

August 19
Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA

August 20
Refresh Boston – Cambridge, MA

August 21
Virtualization Summer Camp – Waltham, MA
Special free all-day event by the Virtualization Group - Boston

August 26
Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA

September 1
Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Chicopee, MA
”Prototyping and Designing in Expression Blend 3” – Pete Brown

September 7
New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA
Robert Pickering

September 9
Boston .NET User Group - Waltham, MA
“Best Practices for Using Virtualization in Development Environments” – Liz Hatch & Chuck Duncan

September 10
Beantown .NET User Group - Cambridge, MA
Richard Hale Shaw

September 16
Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA

September 22
New England SharePoint User Group - Waltham, MA

September 23 – 1-6PM
Fall 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Waltham, MA
Join Jim and me for Roadshow series #10 – free events featuring deep dives into Silverlight 3, Windows 7, Patterns, and .NET programming tips.

September 23
Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA

September 23
Cape Cod .NET User Group - Hyannis, MA
"Best Practices for Working with SQL Server Execution Plans" – Grant Fritchey

September 23
Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA
Johanna Rothman

October 5
New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA
Chance Coble

October 17
New England Code Camp 12 – Waltham, MA Join hundreds of fellow developers for this free, full day of community-driven content and networking!

October 28
Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA
Pollyanna Pixton

October 28
Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA

Schedule TBD
IASA New England - Boston, MA
Boston JavaScript Meetup Group – Cambridge, MA
New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA

Maine

August 25
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
“jQuery and XML” – Jeff Hall and Greg Howe

September 24 – 1-6PM
Fall 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Augusta, ME
Join Jim and me for Roadshow series #10 – free events featuring deep dives into Silverlight 3, Windows 7, Patterns, and .NET programming tips.

Bonus Event! Same Location, Same Day – A morning TechNet Unleashed event from 8:30 to 12:00, with great content for IT Pros.

September 29
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
“T4” – Mark Blomsma

October 27
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
TBD

Schedule TBD
Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME
Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME
Maine Microsoft Certification Study Group – Online!

New Hampshire

September 10 – 1-6PM
Fall 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Manchester, NH
Join Jim and me for Roadshow series #10 – free events featuring deep dives into Silverlight 3, Windows 7, Patterns, and .NET programming tips.

September 24
Nashua Scrum Club – Nashua, NH
6:00 – Roundtable: “Converting a waterfall software project to Agile”
7:15 – David Spann on Agile Leadership

Schedule TBD
New Hampshire .NET User Group - Nashua, NH
NH SQL Users Group - Nashua, NH

New York (Upstate)

August 20
Western New York .NET Users Group - Amherst, NY
"History of Microsoft Programming, Part I" – Jesse Smith

August 26
VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY

September 2
Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY
“Full Text Search in SQL Server” – Michael Coles

September 17
Western New York .NET Users Group – Buffalo Area (TBD), NY
"VSTO" – Shaun Hayward

September 18 – 10 AM – 3:30 PM
Fall 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Rochester, NY
Join Jim and me for Roadshow series #10 – free events featuring deep dives into Silverlight 3, Windows 7, Patterns, and .NET programming tips.

September 22 – 1-6PM
Fall 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Troy, NY
Join Jim and me for Roadshow series #10 – free events featuring deep dives into Silverlight 3, Windows 7, Patterns, and .NET programming tips.

Bonus Event! Same Location, Same Day – A morning TechNet Unleashed event from 8:30 to 12:00, with great content for IT Pros.
September 23
VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY

Schedule TBD
Tech Valley .NET Users Group - Latham, NY
Rochester SharePoint User Group - Rochester, NY

Rhode Island

August 12
Southern New England SQL Server User Group, Warwick, RI

September 9
Southern New England SQL Server User Group, Warwick, RI

October 14
Southern New England SQL Server User Group, Warwick, RI

Schedule TBD
Rhode Island .NET User Group - Bristol, RI

Vermont

August 10
Vermont .NET User Group - S. Burlington, VT
“Don’t Fear the XAML: How Silverlight and WPF development can make you a better developer” – Zac Morris

September 12
Vermont Code Camp – Burlington, VT
Vermont’s first Code Camp is going to be great! Join fellow developers for a full day of community-driven content and networking!

October 14
Vermont .NET User Group - S. Burlington, VT
Topic TBA – Jeff Hall & Greg Howe (leaders of the BAND)

Schedule TBD
Vermont SQL Server User Group - Burlington, VT

Online

August 13
Linked .NET Users Group – LiveMeeting
”Life Inside the Big Blue Monster” – Scott Hanselman, Microsoft

August 25
Linked .NET Users Group – LiveMeeting
”Talking Shop with Developers II” – Scott Guthrie, Microsoft

Announcing the Fall 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow!

cbowen — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:36:54 GMT

September seems a long time from these warm days of July, but we’ve set the dates and locations for the next Northeast MSDN Roadshow and wanted to tell you about it now!

Join Jim O’Neil and me for one of our stops of the Fall 2009 series as we bring developer goodness to a town near you, including our first Roadshow stop in Rhode Island*.

*Update – 7/31: Sorry for the inconvenience, but we couldn’t get the timing to work in Warwick, RI. Signs are excellent that we’ll make a stop there for our Winter series, though!

Update 8/31: Thanks to the Beantown .NET User Group and the Microsoft New England R&D Center, we’ve just added a new stop on September 28th in Cambridge, MA!

But there’s something else new as well - four of our events will be in partnership with morning TechNet IT Pro events! (The TechNet events are separate events you’ll need to additionally register for if you wish to attend both.)

Sept 10 - Manchester, NH, 1 PM–6 PM [Roadshow Reg.]
Sept 18 – Rochester, NY, 10 AM–3:30 PM [Roadshow Reg.]
Sept 22 – Troy, NY, 1–6 PM [Roadshow Reg.]
w/ morning TechNet event [TechNet Reg.]
Sept 23 – Waltham, MA, 1–6 PM [Roadshow Reg.]
Sept 24 – Augusta, ME, 1–6 PM [Roadshow Reg.]
w/ morning TechNet event [TechNet Reg.]
Sept 28 – Cambridge, MA, 1–6 PM [Roadshow Reg.] NEW!
w/ morning TechNet event [TechNet Reg.] NEW!
Sept 29 – Farmington, CT, 1–6 PM [Roadshow Reg.]
w/ morning TechNet event [TechNet Reg.]
Oct 6 – Warwick, RI, 1–6 PM [Canceled]
w/ morning TechNet event [Canceled]

Please note of the times of each event, because they’re not all the same and not the usual times of previous Roadshows.

For those of you in Burlington, VT, while won’t have a Roadshow there this time, we will be in town on September 12th as part of the VT Code Camp and hope to see you there!

Here’s our agenda, the humor of which will provide you countless minutes of enjoyment:

The Fall 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow: Food for Thoughts Tour

After a long summer, you’re probably hungry for more tools and techniques to feed your development efforts. Touring the northeast this fall for the tenth Roadshow, road and code warriors Jim O’Neil and Chris Bowen have cooked up a select menu of sessions that are sure to please the heartiest of appetites. From current tools and technologies to practical insights, there is plenty to digest!

Reservations are required, so register today for a seating at these free and relaxed technology events.

You’ll see how Chris and Jim handle the heat of the demo kitchen, dish out knowledge, and pepper guests with half-baked humor, all the while being grilled by audience questions.

The Agenda – A Four Course Meal for the Mind:

1:00 - Essential Patterns, Practically Served

Design patterns, they’re important but often presented with unappetizing formality, like getting only the oat bits from a box of marshmallow cereal. We’ll sample a small set of key patterns, but also show you how free frameworks and tools (such as Enterprise Library, Prism, Unity, Velocity, and others) put each of those patterns directly into practice – so you can too. You’ll leave with a mind full of practical technology and a healthy understanding of how to turn underlying patterns into recipes for success.

2:15 - 7-Up(grade) Your Applications

Refresh your existing applications by pouring in some the new features of Windows 7 via the managed-code Windows API Code Pack. We’ll quench your thirst for how to incorporate the Taskbar, jumplists, and Libraries by taking the cap off an existing Windows Forms application and adding new capabilities, all the while retaining compatibility for your XP and Vista users. We’ll have you bubbling with excitement, able to give your applications that extra pop.

3:30 - Silverlight Snacks that Satisfy

There’s a generous amount of delicious ingredients in Silverlight 3 and we’re going to focus deeply on some of the most enriching. We’re going beyond the standard fare in this code-heavy session to create an application that leverages the new out-of-browser and offline execution features, local and remote connections, local data storage, and more. You’ll see that Silverlight 3 applications can be fortified with features so they can go well beyond being eye candy.

4:45 - Chips off the .NET Block

As seasoned developers, we know there’s a mix of options on the trail to implementing requirements. From staples like value types vs. reference types, interfaces vs. classes, Strings vs. StringBuilder, to other more exotic ingredients you may have yet tried, this session will dip into ways to leverage .NET, offering a taste of the impact they have on code execution, performance, and extensibility.

5:50 – “Check Please!” – We’ll box any leftovers, collect your comment cards, and distribute an array of giveaways.

-Chris

Summer Northeast Roadshow Resources and Wrapup

cbowen — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:18:51 GMT

Our Summer 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow is done and was an absolute blast! Bob, Jim, and I returned to many (oh so many) miles of open road to bring six sessions to five northeastern cities in June.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to attend in each city!

Roadshow Resources

As promised, we’ve posted the materials from each of the sessions on the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery, but here are quick links to each:

We’re also working on recording screencasts for each of the sessions, which we’ll post to the Northeast Channel 9 Site in the coming weeks.

The Fall 2009 Series

We’re already hard at work on the next set of events! Things are shaping up for a September/October series, and we’re hoping to mix things up a bit this time (I’ll be purposefully vague here), so keep an eye on our blogs for news.

Thanks

This time, we had extra help with our (very large!) Waltham event. Thanks to both Sybase and Burntsand for providing the food for the show!

Special thanks to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the State of Maine Office of the Fire Marshal for again generously donating use of their facilities for our stops in Rochester, NY and Augusta, ME respectively.

Sincere thanks to coffee and chocolate-covered espresso beans (which melt in a car surprisingly quickly) for keeping us (or at least Bob who was the driver) awake for our travels.

And again, thanks to you for attending and investing your time with us!

-Chris

New Channel 9 Screencast on XNA Game Development

cbowen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:04:32 GMT

I’ve created a new screencast on creating games with XNA and, thanks to my teammate Brian Johnson, it’s now available on our Northeast page on Channel 9!

Northeast Roadshow - XNA Game Development

Based on the Spring Roadshow session, this is an introduction to the world of XNA and game development. You’ll learn how XNA fits in with .NET and Visual Studio, see how the XNA Creators Club Online site will help you download what you need to create games and find resources to learn about your options.

The bulk of the screencast focuses on creating a very (oh, so very) basic 2D game with XNA Game Developer Studio 3.0. The code is available on the Northeast Code Gallery.

Just don’t forget to send me a note once you become a famous game developer!

-Chris

Building Community at the Northeast User Group Leader Summit

cbowen — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:27:24 GMT

On Saturday, May 2^nd, O’Reilly Media and Microsoft partnered to host the first Northeast User Group Leader Summit (NEUGLS) at the Microsoft NERD campus in Cambridge, MA.

The event brought together about 100 community leaders, representing over 70 user groups (listed here) in the northeast, for a day to network and discuss community. A wide variety of tech areas were represented (.NET, PHP, Linux, Hacking, Ruby, and others), and leaders came from as far away as northern Vermont, Maine, New York City, and Philadelphia.

The Concept

Tech community groups face many of the same challenges – “Where can we meet?” “Who will speak?” “Are there legal concerns?” “How do we pay for this?” With so many shared concerns, it seemed there was a chance to strengthen the northeast community by getting together to talk about community (yes, very “meta”.)

By leaving behind the specific tools and technologies our groups represented, everyone found there was a great deal in common to discuss.

The diversity of groups was key, helping leaders forge new connections and exchange many new ideas.

David Christian (leader of the NYC Python group) captured the essence in his blog post:

I'd like to see these same connections form around the country. This type of event benefits particularly from having many local meetings as opposed to one national one, due to the benefits of simply getting tech leaders in the area to meet and exchange information in ways they might not do if when siloed into their particular communities.

The Event

The goals for the day were to share ideas and to make connections. The content was facilitated with an “unconference” approach, where the schedule had no fixed sessions and attendees created and scheduled sessions as conceived throughout the day. Ideas were posted off the schedule/grid, discussed, and popular ideas were moved to open slots.

All told, there were 24 sessions ranging from converting members to leaders, to finding venues, to dealing with finances.

Like many, I was sad not to have a clone who could attend every session, but “scribes” volunteered for each session to record notes to the event Wiki so people could benefit from the ideas in sessions they couldn’t attend (up to seven sessions were run concurrently). You can view the full list of sessions and notes.

There were three primarily social parts of the schedule. After some initial networking, everyone introduced themselves (name, group, and three descriptive words) in the opening session then adjourned for lunch and to create the schedule.

The afternoon break was a relaxed chance to break into smaller groups to make meeting others easier. The break featured technologist and “food hacker” Jeff Potter hosting an extreme ice cream making social, where teams made different flavors using liquid nitrogen to quickly freeze the mixtures. The event closed with an evening social with drinks and appetizers to relax, share a few more ideas, and make some final connections.

Buzz and Feedback

The hashtag for the event was #NEUGLS, and it was good to see the general buzz on Twitter.

Thanks to these attendees for their summary posts:

John Eckman
http://www.openparenthesis.org/2009/05/05/what-are-communities-made-of-northeast-user-group-leader-summit
Rob Hale
http://bigpigvt.blogspot.com/2009/05/notes-from-new-england-user-group.html
David Christian
http://communitiesintech.blogspot.com/2009/05/user-group-leadership-summit.html
Jason Robb
http://jasonrobb.com/2009/05/11/new-england-user-group-leaders-summit-2009/

Thanks!

Sincere thanks to the team who made this event possible:

O’Reilly – Marsee Henon, Laurel Ruma, Laurel Ackerman
Microsoft – Chris Bowen, Gus Weber, Jim O’Neil
Community – Jeff Potter, John Ross, Ron Thibeau, Jon Pierce, Shimon Rura

First, thanks to our fantastic event partner O’Reilly Media for their monumental efforts in making this event a success. They did a huge amount of work to help bring this together, and I can’t wait to work with them again on another event!

Special thanks to Jeff Potter for hosting the incredibly fun (and tasty) afternoon ice cream social break!

Thanks to Jon Pierce and Shimon Rura for sharing ideas on the event and for a great job reaching out to community leaders, and to John Ross and Ron Thibeau (of BostonUserGroups.org) for helping with planning and registration.

Thanks to O’Reilly’s own Rachel James for taking and sharing a wonderful set of pictures from the event.

Thanks to O'Reilly, Pragmatic Programmers, Sams, Que, Peachpit, Addison Wesley, Make, and APress for donating the many books used as giveaways.

And finally, thanks to everyone who took precious weekend time to attend and participate in the event!

Next Time?

Based on feedback from attendees, it’s clear there’s a need for this kind of event and an interest in holding another one of these next year, if not sooner.

It would be great to hear your feedback. When should this be done again? Would you change anything about the logistics? What would you like to see next time?

For more on the event, including participating groups and notes from each of the sessions, see the NEGULS wiki.

If you live elsewhere and are interested in hosting something like this in your area, feel free to contact me and I’ll share details on how the team organized this event.

-Chris

The Northeast Roadshow Rides to Channel 9

cbowen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:13:49 GMT

Jim, Bob and I are very excited to announce that we have a brand new home for northeastern US developers on Microsoft’s developer site Channel 9!

What will you find there?

Pictures of our smiling faces (no extra charge)
Posts from our blogs
Screencasts of past sessions
Links to presentations and code
Links to other resources

Check it out at http://channel9.msdn.com/northeast

We’re in the process of recording screencasts from our recent Northeast MSDN Roadshow events (Spring ‘09, Winter ‘08, Fall ‘08) and will have them listed for you there at the bottom of the page.

We also have a Northeast Code Gallery, where you can download the presentations and, if you’re daring, code samples from our events. Links to screencasts are here as well:

Whether your a regular attendee or not, we hope these sites give you the content you need, whenever you need it.

Immense and sincere thanks to our teammate Brian Johnson for the great work he’s done to get us going (his help is why you’ll see his name as publisher of the screencasts we’ve posted). Thanks also go to Jim for tuning the sites to make sure the water was fine before we all jumped in.

Please let me know if you have any questions about either site, and enjoy!

-Chris

Upcoming Northeast Developer Events: April-June 2009

cbowen — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:24:55 GMT

Here’s the latest roundup of upcoming events to help you expand your knowledge and connect with other developers.

Another good way to find events and groups is to check out the Boston User Groups site.

Know of any other events or user group meetings? Please let me know.

[Update 4/30/09 – Added Summer Northeast MSDN Roadshow]
[Update 5/26/09 – Added IASA June Meeting (MA), Architect Factory (MA) and XAMLFest (Online), Cape Cod .NET Second June Meeting (MA)]

Connecticut

May 5
Agile Project Leader Network - Microsoft, Farmington, CT
”Effective Agile Adoptions” - Amr Elssamadisy

May 12
Connecticut .NET User Group - Microsoft Offices, Farmington, CT

June 2
Agile Project Leader Network - Microsoft, Farmington, CT
”Boundary, Authority, Role and Task: Scrum’s Secret Sauce” – Dan Mezick

June 13
Hartford Code Camp 2 – Hartford, CT
Join fellow CT-area developers for this free, full day of community-driven content and networking!

June 24
Summer 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Farmington, CT
Join Bob, Jim, and Chris for a free day of Windows 7, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 2 & 3, Developing for IE8, and Data Access Guidance.

Schedule TBD
Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT
Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - UConn, Stamford, CT

Massachusetts

April 28
Microsoft TechNet IT Pro Tiki Hut Tour – Microsoft, Waltham, MA
Three sessions: “Moving to the Modern OS Roadmap”, “Windows Security and Application/Driver Compatibility”, and “Windows 7 Beta Sneak Peek”

April 28
New England SharePoint User Group - Waltham, MA
"Sizing and Scaling Options for Large MOSS Document Management Implementations” – Jeff Borghoff

April 28
Tallan Presents “Adopting ALM with Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server” – Microsoft, Waltham, MA

April 29
Beantown .NET User Group - Cambridge, MA
”CSLA .NET as the ‘M’ in MVC/MPV/MVVM” – Rocky Lhotka

April 29
Refresh Boston – Cambridge, MA
”Making Agile Work for Design” – Dan Pickett & Jon Follett

April 29
Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA
”Requirements by Collaboration” – Ellen Gottesdiener

April 30
Boston JavaScript Meetup Group – Cambridge, MA
”JavaScript Library Comparisons”

April 30
No Excuses Boston Geek Dinner – Waltham, MA
With Shawn Wildermuth

May 4
New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA
”Introduction to F#” – Antonio Cisternino

May 6
Boston Area Windows Server User Group - Waltham, MA
“Windows 7” – Paul Thurrott

May 6
Western Mass .NET Users Group - Chicopee, MA
”Introduction to Build Automation using NAnt and Cruise Control”

May 7
New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA
"Beyond the Core Concepts of OOP" – Claudio Lassala

May 7
Beantown .NET User Group - Cambridge, MA
Joseph Hill

May 8
Boston Area Windows Server User Group - Waltham, MA
Windows 2008 Load and Lab Event

May 12
Cape Cod .NET User Group - Plymouth, MA
"At Your Break(ing) Poing?: .NET Debugging Techniques" – Jim O’Neil

May 13
Boston .NET User Group - Waltham, MA
"Load and Performance Testing: How to do Transactional Root-Cause Analysis with Visual Studio Team System for Testers" – Andreas Grabner

May 14
New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA
"Managing SQL 2000/2005 with SQL 2008 Policy Based Management" – Chad Gronbach

May 18-19
Microsoft’s Business Action World Tour – Microsoft, Waltham, MA
2 day training where you’ll learn the developer fundamentals for building on Dynamics CRM and numerous other Microsoft technologies.

May 20
New England ASP.NET Professionals – Waltham, MA
"Preparing your ASP.NET sites for Globalization and Localization" – Phil Denoncourt

May 20
Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA

May 27
Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA

May 27
New England SharePoint User Group - Waltham, MA

May 27
Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA
”Learning Agile via Agile Games” – Michael de la Maza"

May 28
Boston JavaScript Meetup Group – Cambridge, MA
”GenevaJS Demo – An Extension to the Prototype Library”

June 1
New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA
Richard Hale Shaw

June 2
The Architect Factory – Cambridge, MA
A great (and free) event at the Microsoft Cambridge office (NERD) for experienced developers to learn the fundamentals for making transitions into architect roles!

June 3
Boston Area Windows Server User Group - Waltham, MA

June 4
Beantown .NET User Group - Cambridge, MA

June 4
New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA
"Visual Studio Report Control" – Walt Crosby

June 10
Boston .NET User Group - Waltham, MA
"Using Web Expresssion and Visual Studio 2008" – Viatcheslav (Slava) Kokaev

June 11
New England SQL Server User Group - Waltham, MA
"MDM on the Microsoft Stack" – Larry Barnes

June 12
Western Mass .NET Users Group - Chicopee, MA
”Reflection, with Custom Attributes” – Dan Mezick

June 16
Summer 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Farmington, CT
Join Bob, Jim, and Chris for a free day of Windows 7, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 2 & 3, Developing for IE8, and Data Access Guidance.

June 16
Cape Cod .NET User Group - Plymouth, MA
”T-SQL Power! Learning to Harness the Under-Used OVER Clause” - Adam Machanic

June 17
Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA

June 23
IASA New England - Boston, MA
Roundtable on Cloud Computing, hosted by Michael Stiefel

June 24
Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA

June 24
New England SharePoint User Group - Waltham, MA

June 24
Agile Boston User Group - Waltham, MA

June 25
Cape Cod .NET User Group - Hyannis, MA
Special Presentation: How to think about your Future and your Career - William J. Fallon

Schedule TBD
New England Windows Mobile User and Developer Group - Waltham, MA

Maine

April 28
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
“Introducing jQuery!” – Greg Howe

May 14
Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME
”.NET and Java Integration” – Stuart Jones

May 26
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
“SQL 2005 XML” – Jeff Hall

June 11
Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME

June 18
Summer 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Augusta, ME
Join Bob, Jim, and Chris for a free day of Windows 7, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 2 & 3, Developing for IE8, and Data Access Guidance.

June 23
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
“Test-Driven Development (TDD)”

Schedule TBD
Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME
Maine Microsoft Certification Study Group – Online!

New Hampshire

May 20
New Hampshire .NET User Group - Nashua, NH

June 17
New Hampshire .NET User Group - Nashua, NH

Schedule TBD
NH SQL Users Group - Nashua, NH

New York (Upstate)

April 29
VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY
”Code Analysis, Metrics, and Style” – Kyle Korndoerfer

May 4
Western New York .NET Users Group - Buffalo, NY
"Refactoring with Generics" – Kathleen Dollard

May 5
VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY
”Your Application in Pieces – MEF and MAF” – Kathleen Dollard

May 6
Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY
"Your Application in Pieces – MEF and MAF" – Kathleen Dollard

May 7
Tech Valley .NET Users Group - Latham, NY
”Your Application in Pieces – MEF and MAF” – Kathleen Dollard

June 1
Western New York .NET Users Group - Buffalo, NY

June 9
Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY

June 10
Tech Valley .NET Users Group - Latham, NY

June 12
Summer 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Farmington, CT
Join Bob, Jim, and Chris for a free day of Windows 7, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 2 & 3, Developing for IE8, and Data Access Guidance.

June 24
VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY

Schedule TBD
Rochester SharePoint User Group - Rochester, NY

Rhode Island

May 13
Southern New England SQL Server User Group, Warwick, RI

June 10
Southern New England SQL Server User Group, Warwick, RI

Schedule TBD
Rhode Island .NET User Group - Bristol, RI

Vermont

May 18
Vermont .NET User Group - S. Burlington, VT
“What’s LINQ for, Anyway?” – Rick Martin

June 8
Vermont .NET User Group - S. Burlington, VT

June 10
Summer 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow – Farmington, CT
Join Bob, Jim, and Chris for a free day of Windows 7, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 2 & 3, Developing for IE8, and Data Access Guidance.

Schedule TBD
Vermont SQL Server User Group - Burlington, VT

Online

April 30
Linked .NET Users Group – LiveMeeting
”Visual Studio Team System 2010” – Brian Harry, Microsoft

May 7
Linked .NET Users Group – LiveMeeting
”.NET Parallel Extensions” – Stephen Toub, Microsoft

May 11
Linked .NET Users Group – LiveMeeting
”The Gu Talks Shop with Developers” – Scott Guthrie, Microsoft

June 1-4
XAMLFest Online – LiveMeeting and Recorded
Learn about XAML, Silverlight, WPF, and Expression with a full syllabus of live and recorded content