dougturn's WebLog

Birmingham's Steel City SQL User Group - May meeting

May Meeting

The May meeting of the Steel City SQL user group will be next Tuesday the 20th at New Horizons Learning Center on Beacon Parkway.  New Horizons has offered to sponsor the group by providing pizza for the meeting (Thanks New Horizons, for doing that!), if you are planning to attend please RSVP so they can get an accurate count for the food.

Networking

As the goals of PASS are to Connect, Learn and Share, they will begin the May meeting as usual with a thirty minute networking session to allow attendees to connect with other SQL Server professionals beginning at 5:30pm.

Presentation

SQL Server Guru and Microsoft MVP, Kevin Boles, will be presenting SQL Server 2008 - New Stuff for Developers this month beginning at 6:00pm.  Kevin is a SQL Server expert, working exclusively with the product since version 6.5.  He has 15 years of IT industry experience and holds pretty much every SQL Server certification available.  He teaches both public and private courses and has been consulting for the last 10 years.  He is a regular speaker at area user groups and Code Camps.

Nice explanation of threading options in Silverlight 2.0

http://adoguy.com/2008/05/06/Executing_Code_on_the_UI_Thread_in_Silverlight_2.aspx

Nice info (as usual), Shawn.

New User Group is forming in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Details are here:

http://hubcitynug.org/

It's a great time to get involved with helping run the UG. Many thanks to Keith Elder and Aubrey Cote for getting the ball rolling on this.

Make sure you get on the mailing list (available on the site) to stay up to date on this.

Huge weekend community event in Orlando, wedged between TechEd weeks

My colleague Joe Healy has assembled an amazing weekend of activity, nicely squeezed between the Developer and Infrastructure weeks at TechEd Orlando. There is a site that lists all the activities, which include Code Camps, .NET Us, Open Space discussions SQL seminars, and a bunch of other awesome stuff.

Since I am helping him out with the .NET U stuff, I figured I'd blog that stuff here as well.

We are having 3 .NET Universities run concurrently on Sunday. All registered attendees will receive their .NET U Alumni t-shirt, a .NET U *graduate* certificate, and a couple of books. And we may just drop class pictures on the site as well. Here are the courses with the Registration links:

.NET U presents: BizTalk Basics - A 4-part technical overview of BizTalk Server 2006, covering the essential aspects of getting BizTalk rolling in your IT department. This series is being delivered by BizTalk guru extraordinaire Jeff Barnes. Jeff is also including a bonus topic on RFID.

http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=128288

.NET U presents: SharePoint Fundamentals - a 4-part series discussing everything from installation through Web Parts with Windows SharePoint Services. This track is being delivered by some of the top SharePoint talent in the community, including Josh Carlisle, Mikhail Dikov, Jacob Sanford, Doug Ware, and Ted Pattison.

 http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=128289

.NET U presents: Building Service-based applications in .NET - This session includes thorough technical primers on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows WorkFlow Foundation (WF), WorkFlow Services, and the new *Web programming* model in WCF (REST, JSON, and RSS). Rockstar presenters Bill Zentmayer, Bayer White, Noah Subrin, and Glen Gordon will show you the way to get started building service-based applications with the .NET Framework.

 http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=128291

Hope to see a bunch of you there. Remember, this event is a free, community event, and not just for TechEd attendees. So feel free to come down, catch some sun, and enjoy a monster weekend of content.

Augusta, Georgia .NET User Group meeting on May 29

The next Augusta Developers Guild meeting will be held on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 6PM at Augusta State University. Karl Shifflett will be presenting Mole Visualizer For Visual Studio. Please RSVP so we know how much food to order. More information is available at our website http://www.augustadevelopers.org.

Meeting Summary
When: Thursday, May 29th, 2008 @ 6PM
Where: Augusta State University, University Hall, Room 170 ( Directions )
Who: Karl Shifflett

Agenda
6:00 Food and Networking
6:20 Announcements and Sponsors
6:30 Presentation
8:00 Closing and Giveaways

Topic - Mole Visualizer For Visual Studio
The Mole Visualizer For Visual Studio has taken the developer community by storm. It has been written up on major developer blogs all over the world including several at Microsoft. It has been downloaded by tens of thousands of developers worldwide.

This presentation will cover using Mole on WPF, WinForms, ASP.NET, WCF and WF Visual Studio project types.  Mole is a very complex Visual Studio Visualizer designed to not only allow the developer to view objects or data, but to also allow the developer to drill into properties of those objects.  Mole allows unlimited drilling into objects and sub-objects.  When Mole finds an IEnumerable object, the data can be viewed in a DataGridView or in the properties grid.  Mole easily handles collections that contain multiple types of data. Mole also allows the developer to view non-public fields of all these same objects.  Depending on the type of object you are visualizing you can view properties, fields, IEnumerable collection data, an image of the data/control, and run-time XAML.  Mole also allows editing of displayed properties, including properties in the heap.

Presenter - Karl Shifflett
Karl is a software architect, Microsoft MVP, Code Project MVP and MCAD from Charlotte, North Carolina. He has been designing & developing business applications since 1989 and transitioned to .NET in March of 2003. In April of 2007 he joined the list of WPF and Microsoft Expression fanatics & evangelists. Currently working on new full featured City Government and Utility Billing WPF product.  Karl is an exciting and enthusiastic speaker who is a regular at the Enterprise Developers Guild events, Raleigh Code Camps and has presented in Columbia and Charleston SC. He is a member of Team Mole that delivered Mole Visualizer For Visual Studio to the world. His blog:  http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com

MSN/Live ranked above Google, Yahoo, and Facebook in survey

Thought this was an interesting survey.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9082558

I'm still not sure exactly how you specifically classify someone as a *Web 2.0 developer*, but whoever they are, they gave us nice marks in this survey.

Chad Brooks shows off the Ford Sync for Fox 6 in Birmingham

That's the first time I've seen Sync. I have to say, it's pretty cool.

http://blogs.msdn.com/chabrook/archive/2008/04/10/ford-sync.aspx

Nice blog entry and SL content by Bob Familiar

Check out Bob's blog, which includes a 4-part series on Silverlight 2.0. Wow, monster blog entry, Bob! nice job!

http://blogs.msdn.com/bobfamiliar/archive/2008/04/04/rich-internet-applications-using-silverlight-2-0.aspx

Keith Elder speaking at Lower Alabama .NET UG in May

Microsoft MVP and overall nice guy Keith Elder will be speaking at the Lower Alabama .NET User Group's May 27th Meeting. Keith is a great speaker, so you want to be sure to make this one.

 
Presenter: Keith Elder

Topic: Windows Workflow Foundation

Time: 6:00 PM

Location:
  Office Mall South
  3100 Cottage Hill Road
  Building 3
  Mobile, AL 36606

Slides available at: http://keithelder.net/Presentations/IntroToWorkflow/IntroToWorkflowFoundation.ppt

Introduction to Windows Workflow

Foundation Scenario: Your boss gives you a task with fairly complicated business rules one day at work. You spend weeks coding it and as soon as you get done he/she informs you the business rules have changed. Your first thought is to lash out at your boss because this is a major change. Instead you politely smile and say thank you, "I'll get right on it". Little does your boss know you've used Workflow Foundation to map out all the business logic and rules. You quickly make the change declaratively within Workflow Foundation and all of a sudden you are a hero.
Workflow Foundation enables developers to quickly and easily map out complex business tasks that turn their code into declarative models. In this session we'll explore the ins and outs of Workflow Foundation from the ground up so you'll have a good sense of where to get started when you head back to the office.  

Gwinnett, Georgia Microsoft User Group location has changed

Please be aware that the user group meeting location has changed, and will now be held at Gwinnett Technical College (thanks to Sean Gerety for helping out with that). The meeting will be in Building 100, Room 401. 

Great events coming up at the .NET User Group in Knoxville

The East Tennessee .NET User Group has some interesting events on the horizon. Here's a snippet from their latest newsletter:

"Next week, Tommy Norman will be showing us how to use Team Foundation System in a Scrum development environment.  Starting in May, the volunteers of ETNUG are bringing some rapid-fire exciting events to Knoxville.  On May 12, we have DonXML (Don Demsak) presenting thanks to INETA, then we have the Microsoft Launch Wave at the usual meeting date of May 27th.  In June, we are planning an all day conference (date, name, and details to be announced) as well as our speaker on the regular meeting day."

That first meeting is April 29th at 6PM, and details of the upcoming events are listed on their website.

SOA Society of Birmingham, Alabama - April 21 meeting

SOA Society Meeting

Monday April 21, Starting 6:00 PM

New Horizons Birmingham

Dashboards, Collaboration, Portals and MORE!

The SOA Society is going to meet on Monday April 21 this month. This is a change from our usual meeting time of the 4th Tuesday of each month.

Microsoft is holding a major roll out of their 2008 products all day on Tuesday the April 22 at Heroes Happen Here at the Sheraton Birmingham. I wanted to be sure that the SOA Society had a chance to see the work being done in our community before that.

Lola Flippo, with ACP Incorporated, will be presenting "Collaboration Using Dashboards". She will include her most recently published project about BE&K along with some of her other award winning collaboration projects.

Lola has served on the Microsoft virtual teams for SharePoint. She is currently the SharePoint Services Practice Manager at ACP.

Meeting Date: Monday April 21, 2008

Meeting Time: Gather at 6:00 PM, Presentation @ 7:00 P.M.

Place: New Horizons Learning Center, Birmingham, AL  35209

Refreshments will be served. The meeting is free to attend.

New Code Camp site template - powered by Silverlight

If your community is planning on holding a Code Camp, please feel free to use the new Silverlight Code Camp Site template built by MVP Todd Miranda and hosted on CodePlex.

http://www.codeplex.com/silverlightcodecamp

Also, feel free to get involved as Todd and friends move the template over to 2.0.

New .NET User Group in Gwinnett (Atlanta) Georgia (update: location change)

The Gwinnett Georgia Microsoft User Group (GGMUG) will have their inaugural user group meeting on May 8th at 6:00PM at Gwinnett Technical College (note, this is a location change).

Noah Subrin and I will be speaking for the first meeting. I'll do a talk on WCF 3.5 features (REST, JSON, Syndication), and Noah will cover WorkFlow Services.

A lot of people have been asking for a UG for the East side of Atlanta, so this is your opportunity to get involved. And many thanks to Jeff Ammons, Anupam Chakravarty and Thanh Le for getting this thing rolling.

Steel City SQL - Birmingham PASS Group meetings

The Steel City SQL users group has their April Meeting tonight  (April 15th) with Joseph Gordon of Comframe presenting on db development using VS2008 Team Suite.

On May the 20th the plan is for SQL Guru Kevin Boles to present on SQL 2008.

June 17th (a mighty find day for a birthday, I might add :-) ) Andy Warren of End-To-End Training will be presenting.

The Steel City SQL group meets on the third Tuesday of the month at New Horizons Learning Center (thanks for letting the group use your facility, New Horizons) starting at 5:30, with a little networking session. Presentations begin at 6:00pm. Upcoming meeting dates can be found on our Calendar page at http://steelcitysql.org/calendar.aspx