Chris Bowen's Blog : User Groups

New England Data Camp v2.0 / SQL Saturday 34

cbowen — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:15:48 GMT

Back in January, the New England SQL Server Users Group and Southern New England SQL Server Users Group combined forces to host New England Data Camp v1.0. It was a solid success, bringing a focus on all things data to a large Code Camp style event.

I’m glad to pass along word that the event is making a return on January 30th!

This time, New England Data Camp v2.0 has joined forces with the SQL Saturday series of events and will be SQL Saturday #34!

Where? When?

      New England Data Camp v2.0 / SQL Saturday #34
      January 30, 2010
      All day (times TBD)
      Microsoft New England
      201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA
      [directions]

Who? What?

Anyone who works with data (yep, that’s a lot of us.) Developers, DBAs, Architects, Business Intelligence pros, etc.

Wondering what kind of content there may be? Nothing’s exact until the Call for Speakers closes, but the schedule from NEDC v1.0 should give an idea.

How?

Register here! (It’s free!)

Opportunities to Help

Like Code Camps, this event is being organized by and supported by volunteers and the community. Why not get involved?

Call for Speakers - All sessions are given by volunteers donating their time and expertise. Everyone is welcome to submit a session, and people new to public speaking are especially encouraged to join in.
Call for Sponsors – This event is made possible through the generosity and support of sponsors. It’s a great opportunity to help the community.

Grant Fritchey - “SQL Saturday #34/New England Data Camp v2.0”
Jim O’Neil - “Data Camp v2.0”
SQL Saturday Blog - “New SQLSaturday’s Announced”

-Chris

Code Camps in Albany, NY and Stamford, CT Coming Soon

cbowen — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:28:13 GMT

Next Saturday (November 7th) will bring two more Code Camps to the northeast, one in Albany, NY and the other in Stamford, CT.

Code Camps are free, community events for connecting with and learning from fellow developers. If you can make it to one of these, it will be a day well spent!

Tech Valley Code Camp 2009

Back after last year’s first event, Tech Valley Code Camp 2009 will be hosted at SUNY Albany and is organized by the Tech Valley .NET Users Group.

    Tech Valley Code Camp 2009
    November 7, 9 AM – 3 PM
    SUNY, Albany, NY
    http://www.techvalleycodecamp.com

Register today to attend and while you’re at it, why not throw caution to the wind and volunteer to share your interests in a session as well?

Fairfield/Westchester Code Camp 2009

For those of you in the southern CT area, Fairfield/Westchester Code camp returns for a 2009 edition, organized by the Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group.

    Fairfield/Westchester Code Camp 2009
    November 7, 8 AM – 6 PM
    UConn, Stamford, CT
    http://fairfieldwestchester.net/Code-Camp.aspx

Hats off to the community for putting these events together!

-Chris

New Cape Cod XNA Group – First Meeting Friday 10/23

cbowen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:56:50 GMT

The new Cape Cod XNA user group will offer a chance to learn and share knowledge about creating games with XNA (which builds on .NET to make games for the PC, XBox 360, and Zune.)

The group’s first meeting is this Friday, October 23rd, at Venture in Hyannis:

      Cape Cod XNA
      October 23, 6:30 PM
      Venture
      Suite 14, 540 Main St, Hyannis, MA [map]

If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at making a game, then drop by and put those .NET programming skills to work (er, play)!

-Chris

Announcing the Boston Azure User Group

cbowen — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:47:17 GMT

Cloud computing is capturing an increasing amount of mindshare recently, with the Windows Azure platform as a way to build new cloud applications and integrate cloud-based services with existing ones.

With that in mind, the Boston Azure User Group has just been formed, offering area developers, architects, and tech professionals a way to meet to discuss and learn about Azure and cloud computing in general.

The group will be meeting at the Microsoft Cambridge NERD center, with the first meeting on October 22nd. See BostonAzureUserGroup.org for details as they emerge and to join the group’s mailing list.

Thanks to Bill Wilder (blog) for volunteering his time to organize and run the group!

-Chris

The Northeast Roadshow Rides to Cambridge on 9/28

cbowen — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:39:32 GMT

We’re glad to announce that we’ve partnered with the Beantown .NET User Group to add an extra stop to our upcoming Fall 2009 Northeast MSDN Roadshow series!

This free event for developers and architects will be from 1-6 PM (doors open at 12:30) at the Microsoft New England Research & Development (NERD) Center’s first floor conference center.

http://beantownroadshow.eventbrite.com

See the registration page for descriptions, but we’ll be covering these topics:

Essential Patterns, Practically Served
7 Up(grade) Your Applications
Silverlight Snacks that Satisfy
Chips off the .NET Block

The Fall 2009 Series

This brings the series to seven cities:

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.]
w/ morning TechNet event [TechNet Reg.]

Sept 29 – Farmington, CT, 1–6 PM [Roadshow Reg.]
w/ morning TechNet event [TechNet Reg.]

Morning TechNet Events

As you see in the list, Cambridge is one of the four cities where there’s also a separate TechNet event for IT pros that same morning from 8:30 to 12:00 (doors at 8:00).

Separate registration is required at:

http://technetboston.eventbrite.com

Beantown .NET Meetings

In addition to the Roadshow, the Beantown .NET Group has some great meetings coming up:

9/10 - Richard Hale Shaw on “.NET on MultiCore Systems: Programming the .NET 4.0 Parallel Extensions”
10/1 – James Phillips on ‘SCRUM and Team Foundation Server”

Each of these meetings are also at NERD in Cambridge.

See you on the road!

-Chris

New Group! The Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group

cbowen — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:51:37 GMT

Good news for those of you who like to express yourselves in concise, yet powerful ways…

The Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group has just been formed for the Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse areas and focuses on ways to learn and utilize Windows PowerShell for administration and development.

Join organizers (and PowerShell MVPs) Joel Bennett and Jeffery Hicks for the group’s first meeting (from the event’s flyer):

Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group
September 9, 6:00 PM

New Horizons
50 Methodist Hill Drive, Suite 50
Rochester, NY 14623

Please join us as we kick off the Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group, serving IT Professionals from Central and Upstate New York interested in learning more about PowerShell . Meetings will likely be held in Rochester and Syracuse but please help us figure it all out by attending our first meeting.

Please RSVP to upnypug@gmail.com

For those of you in the area, it should be a great way to connect and learn about making life easier by using PowerShell!

-Chris

Speaking on ASP.NET MVC 1.0 – August 19, Waltham, MA

cbowen — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:50:51 GMT

I’ll be diving into ASP.NET MVC 1.0 with the New England ASP.NET Professionals User Group this Wednesday in Waltham, MA:

When: August 19th, 2009 at 6:15PM

Where: Microsoft Offices - Waltham

Speaker: Chris Bowen of Microsoft

ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC)

Released earlier this year, ASP.NET MVC 1.0 presents a new option for developing web applications. Bringing to ASP.NET the benefits of the Model View Controller pattern, ASP.NET MVC builds on core ASP.NET services to support control over HTML and URLs, clean separation of concerns, testability, flexibility, and more. In this session, we'll take a brief look at the main concepts behind MVC, but focus primarily on diving into code and looking at ways to implement various concepts using ASP.NET MVC 1.0 and Visual Studio.

All are welcome.

BTW, If you attended one of my Roadshow sessions on MVC, we’ll have more time at this meeting, so I plan to delve more deeply into the coding side.

-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

Boston XNA Developers Group June 24 Meeting – XNA Game Studio 3.1

cbowen — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:06:42 GMT

Tonight’s meeting of the Boston XNA Developers Group (6:00 in Waltham) will feature Michael Cummings speaking on what’s in the newly-released XNA Game Studio 3.1. XNA Game Studio helps you create games that can run on PCs, XBox 360, and Zune, all on top of the .NET Framework.

Some of the new features in 3.1 include:

Avatar Support
Xbox LIVE Party Support
Video Playback
Audio API
Content Pipeline Enhancements
XACT3 Support

Resources:

Publishers Offering Support for User Groups

cbowen — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:47:09 GMT

Run a user group? With funding and sponsors a constant challenge, you’re probably always on the lookout for things to give away at meetings.

Fortunately, many publishers have great relationships with the user group community and have established programs through which you can receive promotional copies of books and other items to use as giveaways or for book review programs.

Here’s a list to get you started:

O’Reilly User Group & Professional Association Program

http://ug.oreilly.com (and twitter @OReillyUG)

Wrox User Group Program

http://www.wrox.com/go/usergroups

Pearson Education User Group Program (Addison-Wesley, Sams, Que, etc.)

http://www.informit.com/user_groups

APress User Group Program

http://www.apress.com/community/usergroup

Manning Publications User Group Program

http://www.manning.com/ugprogram

Peachpit User Group Partners

http://www.peachpit.com/user_groups

(Know of any others? Please comment below or contact me. Thanks!)

It’s a symbiotic relationship - you get stuff to help the group, and they get visibility in your community. Be certain to take advantage of the opportunity.

-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

Have You Seen the Linked .NET User Group?

cbowen — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:17:57 GMT

The Linked .NET User Group, a virtual .NET user group with over 20,000 members, has a portal on Linked In and features online meetings. The group has been doing some great stuff recently and is definitely worth taking a look.

In particular, there are some extremely promising upcoming meetings. Events are online through LiveMeeting, so you can attend in your pajamas (for those of you who work from home, at least):

April 30 – 3:30 PM EST
”Visual Studio Team System 2010”
Brian Harry, Microsoft
May 7 – 3:00 PM EST
”.NET Parallel Extensions”
Stephen Toub, Microsoft
May 11 – 2:30 PM EST
”The Gu Talks Shop with Developers”
Scott Guthrie, Microsoft

The group also has lists pointers to resources, hosts active discussions, and is another way to connect with others.

Note that there’s also an unofficial group site that’s not based on Linked In.

-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

Beantown .NET Special Event – Rocky Lhotka on UI Design Patterns - April 29th

cbowen — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:55:10 GMT

Rocky Lhotka (blog), the respected author, Regional Director, MVP, and technologist from Magenic, will be visiting with the Beantown .NET User Group on April 29th at 6 PM. Rocky will be covering UI design patterns in a session titled “CSLA .NET as the 'M' in MVC/MVP/MVVM”.

The Beantown .NET User Group has recently moved to Microsoft’s Cambridge, MA facility (aka “NERD”) and is run by Benjamin Day (also an MVP!)

RSVP and view the session details on Ben’s blog.

Rocky is a natural speaker and very knowledgeable, so don’t miss this opportunity to hear from one of the best!

-Chris

Announcing the F# User Group in Cambridge, MA – April 6

cbowen — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:36:56 GMT

Wondering why there’s a buzz around F# and functional programming, and want to know when and how they can be useful? Maybe you’ve already on board with functional programming and want to find others in the same boat?

The new F# User Group (fsug.org) is dedicated to learning and sharing practices around F# and functional programming. The inaugural meeting will be on April 6th from 6:30-8:30 PM at the Microsoft Cambridge facility (aka NERD) [directions].

From the F# User Group site:

6:30pm - 7:00pm   Introduction to F#, Rick Minerich

7:00pm - 7:15pm   Pizza

7:15pm - 8:30pm   F# Coding Dojo (pair program the solution to a problem)

Everyone (complete beginner to expert) is welcome!

Rick (blog here) is extremely knowledgeable about F# and functional programming, and the hands-on dojo component will make for a great meeting to get up to speed. You may have heard that Microsoft is making F# part of .NET and Visual Studio going forward, these meetings will help you understand why this is a good thing.

The June 1st meeting will feature a session by the well-respected technologist and excellent speaker, Richard Hale Shaw.

Sincere thanks to Michael de la Maza, Talbott Crowell and Rick Minerich for bringing a new group to the Boston area! I’m looking forward to this and future meetings!

-Chris

Chris Bowen's Blog : User Groups

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Upcoming Northeast Developer Events: April-June 2009

Connecticut

Massachusetts

Maine

New Hampshire

New York (Upstate)

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Beantown .NET Special Event – Rocky Lhotka on UI Design Patterns - April 29th

Announcing the F# User Group in Cambridge, MA – April 6