Previous Meetings
August 9, 2010
| Speaker: | Dennis Bottjer |
| Topic: | Stop Drowning In Technical Debt! |
| Summary: | Technical Debt is a metaphor introduced by Ward Cunningham to describe the result of “Quick and Dirty” Software Design. Eventually, software projects will incur either accidental or strategic Technical Debt. What is the price of accumulating to much technical debt? How do we measure our Technical Debt? How do we pay down our Technical Debt? This session will provide the answers to these questions through a balance of presentation and real-world examples using various code analysis and metrics available within Visual Studio 2008. |
| Speaker Bio: | Dennis J. Bottjer is a solutions architect, consultant, teacher, blogger and speaker. As a three time Microsoft ASP/ASP.NET MVP, he specializes in SharePoint and Web Development. Dennis has over 12 years of industry experience with an emphasis on the Financial and Banking Sectors. As an associate for a Fortune 100 Financial Services Company, Dennis was a key contributor during the development of an underwriting system and fulfillment system. Dennis builds community by regularly participating in user groups and community events. He has been a user group president and is currently an INETA.org membership mentor. Dennis lives in Tulsa, OK with his wife Carrie, daughter Kate, son Will and two cats. |
July 12, 2010
| Speaker: | Todd Anglin |
| Topic: | HTML 5 |
| Summary: | The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML 5 HTML 5 may take some time to find full support in all major browsers, but you may be surprised to discover how many of HTML 5's features are available today! HTML 5 is the next generation standard for web applications, and it promises to give plug-in based RIAs a serious challenge. In this demo heavy session, you'll see HTML 5 in action and learn what you can do with today's browser support for the new standard. If you're building rich web applications and you've never touched HTML 5, this session is a must see. |
| Speaker Bio: | Todd Anglin is Chief Evangelist for Telerik, a provider of development tools and user interface components for .NET. Before joining Telerik, he worked for a large Fortune 200 financial services company IT shop where he learned the way of the “Enterprise” – big budgets, big projects, legacy systems, and incessant measurement. He now leverages this Enterprise experience to help Telerik make components that make the lives of all developers as easy as possible. Todd is an active author and speaker in the .NET community, focusing on web development technologies, a Microsoft MVP, founder and President of the North Houston .NET Users Group, and an O'Reilly author. |
May 10, 2010
| Speaker: | Dennis Palmer |
| Topic: | XML is Everywhere! |
| Summary: | XML, XHTML, XAML, app.config, web.config, Office Open XML, WiX, RSS, SOAP and sometimes REST. These days it's getting rare to find a software application that does not use some form of XML. It's everywhere! Remember ages ago (back in 2001) when you wrote your own xml parser? Hopefully you've been using XPath and the .NET classes inside System.Xml like XmlDocument and XmlNode for the last few years. But that's so 2003.
With the 3.5 release of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2008, there is a whole new way of working with XML. Whether you're creating, editing or consuming XML, you need to know LINQ to XML and the XML Literals within Visual Basic. But don't take my word for it! Kathleen Dollard on Hanselminutes show #152 said, "If you code in any language and do not understand XML Literals in VB9, you're selling yourself short. Go learn about it... It's a really powerful mechanism." We'll cover LINQ to XML, how to enable XML Intellisense, and using VB XML Literals for dynamically generating XML. Demos will include:
While this technology was introduced with Visual Studio 2008, the code and demos will be shown in Visual Studio 2010. |
| Speaker Bio: | Dennis cut his coding teeth by teaching himself BASIC on a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer in the early 80's. His earliest memory of debugging a program was when he found that his mother had typed the letter O instead of the digit 0 in a hexadecimal string that defined the graphics of a program she copied from the listing in a magazine.
After discovering Delphi 1.0 during college, he went to work on a fax broadcast system and other telephony projects. In the late 90's he worked with a few record labels to put software on their music CD's. This included Windows screen savers of album art work and a music player that scrolled the lyrics of each song across the screen -- all written in Delphi. After that, he spent about 5 years doing web development in PHP (even working with a PHP MVC Framework) before discovering ASP.NET and C#. He remained somewhat proud of the fact that he had never worked with Visual Basic until starting his current job where it is the company's language of choice for developing Microsoft Office customizations for the legal industry. Even though he still gets lost when looking at VB6 code, with the advent of LINQ to XML and XML Literals in VB9, he is happy to be a VB.NET developer. In his spare time, he is learning Python, Silverlight, iPhone development and returning to C# for some ASP.NET MVC projects. Dennis was recognized as the 2nd runner up for the Inland Empire .NET User Group (http://iedotnetug.org) Most Valuable Member award for 2008-2009. He moved to Texas with his wife and young daughter in August 2009. |
| Resources: | Dennis' blog entry about the meeting |
April 12, 2010
| Speaker: | Shan Pesaru |
| Topic: | Usability-Driven Design for Developers |
| Summary: | You've probably heard phrases like "easy to use", "user friendly", and "intuitive". Usability is everywhere around us and the less you notice it the more effective it is. As developers, we are often forced to play the designer role in our projects whether we like it or not. This presentation will teach you how to design and develop effectively while keeping the user in mind. We'll cover everything from layout and navigation to good button design and interface feedback. You'll leave this presentation with a sense that even the simplest user enhancements can make an impact and positive impression on your supervisors, users, and customers. |
| Speaker Bio: | Shan Pesaru is CEO and lead engineer at Sharp Hue, Inc. of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Shan presents web-related small business topics for local Chamber of Commerce organizations and the Arkansas Small Business & Technology Development center. Sharp Hue specializes in helping small businesses with the visual appeal, usability, and search engine optimization of their web sites. Sharp Hue uses Microsoft ASP.NET, SQL Server, and Windows Server hosting technologies along with a unique business process for design, programming, and search engine optimization. The unique process lends to professional and user-friendly web sites that are affordable for small business clients. |
March 8, 2010
| Speaker: | Brian Sullivan |
| Topic: | Introduction to Object-Relational Mapping with NHibernate |
| Summary: | Object-Relational Mappers (ORMs) have started to make their way into mainstream .NET development with the advent of LINQ-to-SQL and the Entity Framework from Microsoft. Before that, though, there was NHibernate. Based on the Java Hibernate project, NHibernate is one of the most mature .NET ORMs in the marketplace. The Fluent NHibernate project builds on this to make NHibernate a breeze to configure. In this presentation, Brian will discuss the pros and cons of ORMs in general, and demonstrate how NHibernate can take the pain out of writing your persistence layer. |
| Speaker Bio: | Brian Sullivan is a developer analyst for Praeses, LLC in Shreveport, LA. He has been working with Microsoft technologies for about 5 years, and is interested in increasing the exposure of agile techniques and methodologies in the Microsoft developer community. He is a graduate of Harding University in Searcy, AR. |
January 11, 2010
| Speaker: | Chris Koenig |
| Topic: | ugPDC: Best of PDC Tour |
| Summary: | Join Developer Evangelist Chris Koenig for a whirlwind tour of the major announcements from PDC '09. We'll look at the changes and improvements to Windows Azure, new features introduced in Silverlight 4.0, and Visual Studio 2010/.NET 4.0. |
| Speaker Bio: | Chris Koenig is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris worked as a Senior Architect on the Architecture Strategy Team for The Capital Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect, Developer and Development Team Lead for the global solution provider Avanade. As a consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. Chris is a devoted husband and father of four awesome children who keep him very busy. In his spare time, Chris serves as Scoutmaster for his oldest son's Troop, and Committee Chair for his youngest sons' Pack. Chris also enjoys traveling, cooking, camping and playing guitar. You can contact Chris through his blog at http://chriskoenig.net/, via email at chris.koenig@microsoft.com, or via Windows Live Messenger at chris@koenigweb.com. |
November 9, 2009
| Speaker: | Michael Johnson |
| Topic: | ASP.NET MVC from Basics to Tip and Tricks |
| Summary: | ASP.NET MVC is a new framework for developing website applications utilizing the model-view-controller pattern. How does it compare to ASP.NET WebForms? There is nothing wrong with ASP.NET WebForms, but ASP.NET MVC allows for clean lightweight code while giving you more control. In this session we will cover what I learned developing a site for Wolff Wire Office Organizers using ASP.NET MVC. |
| Speaker Bio: | Michael Johnson is a software developer at SSW Holding Company, Inc. in Fort Smith, AR. Michael has over 10 years of experience developing desktop applications, websites, and services using Microsoft technologies. Michael is also involved in the .NET community and is part of the Fort Smith .NET User Group leadership. You can follow Michael on his blog http://www.michaelcodes.net or his tweets at http://twitter.com/michael_johnson. |
| Resources: | Michael Johnson's Blog Entry |
October 12, 2009
| Speaker: | Jimmy Bogard |
| Topic: | Testing the Last Mile with UI Testing |
| Summary: | The ASP.NET MVC framework greatly improved the web testability story in .NET, allowing for testing of the various components of MVC including controllers, filters, binders and more. But testing these components in isolation still doesn't prove that your site works as a whole. Action methods tested by themselves don't prove that the view shown has the correct information on it, or that links work as expected. For these types of tests, an end-to-end, browser-based test is needed. But just as it is difficult to test APIs not designed for testability, views not designed for testability can lead to brittle, difficult to understand tests. In this session, we'll look at the popular UI testing frameworks, and pros and cons of each. We'll also look at design for UI testability in our MVC application, and how we can greatly ease our testing burden with design techniques in our views. Finally, we'll look at UI test design as a whole, and examine how we can develop a complete UI testing strategy that eliminates the difficulty in testing the last mile. |
| Speaker Bio: | Jimmy Bogard is a principal consultant at Headspring Systems. He is an agile software developer with six years of professional development experience. He has delivered solutions from conception to production for many clients. The solutions delivered by Jimmy range from shrink-wrapped products to enterprise e-commerce applications for Fortune 100 customers. He is also a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and is an active member in the .NET community, leading open-source projects, giving technical presentations and facilitating technical book clubs. Currently, Jimmy is the lead developer on the NBehave project, a Behaviour-Driven Development framework for .NET, AutoMapper, a convention-based object-to-object mapper and the facilitator of the Austin Domain-Driven Design Book Club. Jimmy is a member of the ASPInsiders group, and received the "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional" (MVP) award for ASP.NET in 2009. |
September 14, 2009
| Speaker: | Cory Smith |
| Topic: | LINQ - An Average Joe's Guide (or "It's not all about SQL") |
| Summary: | Microsoft Language Integrated Query (LINQ) offers developers a new way to query data using strongly-typed queries and strongly-typed results, common across a number of disparate data types including relational databases, .NET objects, and XML. By using strongly-typed queries and results, LINQ improves developer productivity with the benefits of IntelliSense and compile-time error checking. In this discussion, Cory will demonstrate the basics of LINQ and how it provides much more than just the ability to query a SQL Server database. |
| Speaker Bio: | Cory Smith maintains a .NET related blog at AddressOf.com and is very active in the .NET community. His community involvement includes: President of the Dallas/Fort Worth DNUX group, Vice President of the Fort Worth .NET Users Group, VBInsider Member, Microsoft MVP, member of the South Central District Developer Guidance Council and a member of the INETA Speakers Bureau. A veteran developer (professionally writing software for almost 20 years) working on projects ranging anywhere from major e-commerce sites such as RadioShack.com and InterstateBatteries.com to applications that are at the heart and soul of over 4600 radio stations around the world. His work history includes working for Tandy/RadioShack, Rare Medium, Inc., Electric Works Corp., Scott Studios Corp. and Shiny Stone Digital. In his spare time, Cory also owns and operates a combative martial arts academy, coaches a MMA fight team, is an avid motorcycle enthusiast and attempts to watch every action movie ever released. |
August 10, 2009
| Speaker: | Jay Smith |
| Topic: | Introduction to Agile Software Development |
| Summary: | In today's world of software development the challenge of delivering quality value added software quickly and often have brought rise to a new approach in software development. Agile software development is becoming a widely proven and accepted alternative to heavy up front software development. There are many misconceptions with the processes and practices of Agile software development. This sessions is designed to give you a grounding on concepts that are used in many forms of Agile development including Scrum and Extreme Programming. |
| Speaker Bio: |
Jay Smith works for Tyson Foods, Inc. as a PMO Architect and Evangelist where he works with teams to test bed processes and technologies. Jay is also a founding member of the Northwest Arkansas .Net User’s Group, and the Northwest Arkansas Chapter of the Institute of Business Analysis and also volunteers with INETA on the Speakers Committee and Technology Team.
Jay is also a Microsoft ASP .NET MVP and often presents to the community on various topics including Agile Software Development, Object Oriented Principles, and Application Architecture. His love for the community drove him to create User Group Radio (http://usergroupradio.com), a Community focused podcast with the goal of sharing knowledge between User Group and Technical Community leaders. You can read more about Jay on his blog http://www.jaysmith.us or follow his tweets at http://twitter.com/jaysmith. |
July 13, 2009
| Speaker: | Keith Elder |
| Topic: | Distributing Cache One Byte at a Time With Velocity |
| Summary: | Have you ever used the built-in caching capabilities within Asp.Net? If you have you know that as long as you have one server to cache information it works really well. What happens though when you add an additional server? Or even better let's say you add an additional 10 servers! Now what? What happens is you've got data replicated all over the place and it gets out of sync. Not to mention it becomes really hard to manage as data gets changed. Enter "Velocity", Microsoft's new distributed caching product. In this session we'll do a thorough look at all of the pieces of Velocity from installation/deployment, configuration, the API and some of its features like regions and tags. |
| Speaker Bio: |
Keith Elder is the co-host of the popular online technology podcast Deep Fried Bytes. He is also a Team Leader / Sr. Software Engineer for Quicken Loans, the nation's largest online mortgage lender based in Livonia, MI and is the founder of the Hattiesburg, MS .Net User Group called Hub City NUG. Keith is an experienced technologist, systems administrator, software engineer, speaker, trainer and all around geek. As an experienced educator, trainer and speaker he has logged thousands of hours in front of the classroom teaching students of varying ages from the 6th grade to the college level. He has trained countless developers from various business sectors ranging from top auto manufactures, fortune 500 companies and Universities. As a Microsoft MVP and INETA speaker he speaks throughout the United States at major technical conferences, Code Camps, and .Net User Groups. Keith's ability to explain complex topics with a friendly common sense southern attitude make him a highly regarded speaker at technical conferences. You can read more about Keith's interests, hobbies, rants and raves on his blog at http://keithelder.net/blog/. |
June 8, 2009
| Speaker: | Chris Patterson |
| Topic: | Event Driven Architecture |
| Summary: |
Business applications no longer exist as isolated systems. In order to provide integrated solutions that add business value, applications must be connected. Modern approaches for enterprise application integration (EAI) such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) separate applications into services that can be accessed via a standard interface such as a web service. This collection of services provides a platform on which new applications can be created that leverage the existing functionality.
However, as application complexity increases, the coupling of services becomes an impediment in adapting applications to meet the ever-changing goals of the business. Event Driven Architecture (EDA) is a method of designing and implementing systems where events are exchanged between highly decoupled components and services. EDA does not replace SOA, instead it compliments the request/response nature of SOA with a highly scalable event model for building and coordinating asynchronous transactions. In this presentation, I will explain event driven architecture, describe the different types of events, demonstrate how events can be related and orchestrated, and provide a basic understanding of how this method can drive the architecture of enterprise systems. In addition to understanding the concepts of event driven architecture, we will explore a working sample built using an open-source .NET messaging framework called MassTransit. |
| Speaker Bio: | Chris Patterson is a Senior Architect at RelayHealth. For the past twenty years, Chris has been building applications using the Microsoft platform in various industries, including healthcare, airline services, and television. Chris is currently focused on designing and building enterprise integration platforms using messaging and web services. While preferring C#, Chris is also fluent in C/C++ and JavaScript and has worked with classic ASP, ASP.NET, and windows services. With over twelve years of experience in healthcare, Chris has an in-depth understanding of transactional systems, data security, and enterprise application integration. Chris lives in Broken Arrow, OK with his wife and two daughters. |
| Resources: |
Chris's Blog MassTransit |
May 11, 2009
| Speaker: | Tim Franklin |
| Topic: | Utilizing Advanced WinForms Controls & the Visual Studio Designer |
| Summary: | Learn about some of the lesser-known but useful Windows Forms controls to improve the user experience of your applications as well as your UI development. See a few handy tips for using Visual Studios designer, too. This talk is primarily geared towards developers who either haven't or can't yet take the plunge into WPF and/or Silverlight, but some of the basic controls and principles apply across the board. |
| Speaker Bio: | Tim Franklin is a software developer and designer with Data-Tronics Corp of Fort Smith, AR. Prior to joining DTC, Tim worked as the primary UI developer of Intuitive Medical Software, a Windows Forms-based, touch screen-oriented medical software company. Before that, Tim worked as the lead graphic designer and developer for a web design firm in Springfield, MO and also freelanced web development for over 50 businesses. He graduated college with a bachelor's degree in Computer Information Systems from Missouri State University in 2005, minoring in Web Application Development. Tim is now the head of DTC's .NET UI committee and focuses a lot of his external research on user experience design. He is married with two young kids and loves spending time with his family. You can contact Tim through his blog at http://www.pureux.com, via email at pureux@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter as @pureux. |
| Resources: | Tim Franklin's Blog Entry |
April 6, 2009
| Speaker: | Chris Koenig |
| Topic: | Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services |
| Summary: | Learn about the Live Framework, our latest offering for developers programming against our Live Services from any device, platform, runtime, or programming language. See new and future services (such as Mesh Services), protocols, APIs, and tools which enable your web, service, or client applications to access, store, and synchronize user data with Live Services, obtain audience analytics data, and more. |
| Speaker Bio: | Chris Koenig is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris worked as a Senior Architect on the Architecture Strategy Team for The Capital Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect, Developer and Development Team Lead for the global solution provider Avanade. As a consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. Chris is a devoted husband and father of four awesome children who keep him very busy. In his spare time, Chris serves as Scoutmaster for his oldest son's Troop, and Committee Chair for his youngest sons' Pack. Chris also enjoys travelling, cooking, camping and playing guitar. You can contact Chris through his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/chkoenig, via email at chris.koenig@microsoft.com, or via Windows Live Messenger at chris@koenigweb.com. |
March 9, 2009
| Speaker: | John Teague |
| Topic: | jQuery: The Deep End |
| Summary: | jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript. |
| Speaker Bio: |
John has been developing .Net applications since version 1.0. While most of his work has been developing web applications, he tries not focus his attention on specific frameworks or applications stacks. Instead, he focuses on building applications using solid object oriented design principles and patterns with a behavior driven approach.
John has worked for Fortune 500 companies and small 3 person startups, in a variety of industries including e-commerce/retail, medical and financial. He has worked on building scalable high performance e-commerce websites and international B2B web applications. He is very active in the .Net and Agile community in Austin, TX. He organized the 2008 Austin Code Camp Conference and presented several sessions as well. John has also presented private and public training courses on Ajax, Object Oriented Design Principles, and Test Driven Development. John's blog can be found at http://johnteague.lostechies.com. |
January 20, 2009
| Speaker: | Zain Naboulsi |
| Topic: | New Features in Silverlight 2.0 |
| Summary: | Silverlight provides a powerful platform for building the next generation of rich interactive applications on the Internet. In this session, we’ll take a look at the programming model and tools that developers and designers can leverage to build these true next generation experiences for consumers and business, and demonstrate how to build a rich interactive application (RIA) using Silverlight and Microsoft .NET. We’ll explore how to use Microsoft Visual Studio to create applications, and how to create UI using XAML markup and code, controls, and File I/O. We’ll also discuss networking, how to retrieve data from a Web service, and various other aspects of building Silverlight applications. |
| Speaker Bio: | Technology is useless if it doesn't serve a clear purpose. That's Zain's philosophy. In fact, showing people how technology can make their lives better delivers his greatest on-the-job thrills. For over 14 years Zain has been teaching and consulting on the latest Microsoft technologies. He's been a Microsoft Certified Trainer since 1995 and holds all major Microsoft certifications, plus credentials from Cisco, Checkpoint and CompTIA. Zain launched his development career with Visual Basic 3.0 and honed his implementation skills with Windows NT 3.51 and OS/2. He is the creator of Virtual World Evangelism (VWE) which is an effort to build communities in virtual places like Second Life and OpenSim. He is not only a proponent of the community aspect of virtual worlds but also is a supporter of the myriad business applications that these new mediums offer. Zain's efforts have been featured by eWeek, Redmond Developer News, and many others. He is a frequent speaker at events in Second Life and other virtual worlds. Zain is polishing his gaming chops and hoping that someone will hire him as a professional video game player. You can also find him sneaking off to eat Dairy Queen Blizzards whenever he's on the road. Just don't tell his wife. Zain's blog can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/zainnab. |
| Resources: | LiveMeeting Recording |
January 12, 2009
| Speakers: | Kerry Jenkins, Michael Johnson, David Mohundro, Jeremy Sloan |
| Topic: | SQL Server 2008 Launch |
| Summary: | This month's meeting will be a little different than normal. The Fort Smith .NET User Group will be hosting a SQL Server 2008 launch event. Four speakers from the group will each present for 15-20 minutes on a specific developer-related aspect of SQL Server 2008. Topics will include SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5, the Filestream datatype, SQL CLR, and HTTP Programming and SQL Server. |
| Resources: | Michael Johnson's Blog Entry on Filestream support in SQL Server 2008
David Mohundro's Blog Entry on SQL CLR in SQL Server 2008 ADO.NET Data Services Overview Using ADO.NET Data Services |
December 8, 2008
| Speaker: | Kate Gregory |
| Topic: | The Windows Vista Bridge: How Managed Code Developers Can Easily Access Exciting New Vista Features |
| Summary: | Accessing new Windows Vista features is a challenge from managed (.NET) code. The level of interoperability required is out of reach for many developers. The Vista Bridge is a sample library you can use in your own projects today that provides access to new user interface features as well as “behind the scenes” power features. Discover a shortcut to Windows Vista for Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C# programmers and how you can get involved. |
| Speaker Bio: | Kate Gregory is the Microsoft Regional Director for Toronto and a founding partner of Gregory Consulting. Based in Peterborough, Ontario, Gregory Consulting has been providing consulting and development services throughout North America since 1986, specializing in software development with leading-edge technologies, integration projects, and technology transfer. They also provide training, mentoring, and technical writing services. Kate is the author of over a dozen books including Microsoft Visual C++ .NET 2003 Kick Start. She teaches .NET, XML, UML, and C++ and is in demand as an expert speaker, with numerous cross-Canada tours for Microsoft Canada, and sessions at DevDays, TechEd (USA, Europe, Africa) and VSLive Toronto, among others. Kate is a C++ MVP, a founding sponsor of the Toronto .NET Users Group, the founder of the East of Toronto .NET Users group, a member of the INETA speakers bureau, and a member of adjunct faculty at Trent University in Peterborough. |
November 3, 2008
| Speaker: | Tim Rayburn |
| Topic: | Parallel Programming in .NET |
| Summary: | We stand at the edge of a new paradigm in computing, brought about by the evolution of multi-core CPUs. Programmers have long left multi-threaded programming to the few diehards, while enterprise developers were able to live happily within a single thread. Those times are changing, and the Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework are here to help. Come learn how Microsoft is innovating in this space, and how you can use this framework to bring your skills forward, after learning just a few simple rules. |
| Speaker Bio: | Tim Rayburn is a Principal Consultant with Sogeti USA, and a Microsoft MVP for Connected Systems Development. He has worked with Microsoft technologies for over 13 years, and is the President and Founder of the Dallas Connected Systems User Group, the organizer of the Dallas TechFest, and blogger at TimRayburn.net. When he’s not pursuing the ever moving technology curve, he is an avid gamer, from consoles to table-top RPGs and is the host of a podcast called Radio Free Hommlet. He welcomes questions about any of the above to tim@timrayburn.net. |
October 6, 2008
| Speaker: | Scott Cate |
| Topic: | ASP.NET AJAX Browser History in .NET 3.5 SP1 |
| Summary: | An inherent problem with AJAX-style applications is browser navigation. The new extensions for ASP.NET AJAX in .NET 3.5 SP1 provide support for navigating within an AJAX application by using the Forward and Back buttons in the browser to provide a more logical and natural navigation model in your Web application. |
| Speaker Bio: | Scott Cate is the President of myKB.com, Inc. in Scottsdale, Arizona. myKB.com, Inc. is a technology company specializing is commercial ASP.NET applications. His product line includes myKB.com (Knowledge Base Software), kbAlertz.com (Microsoft Knowledge Base Notifications), and EasySearchASP.net(Pluggable Search Engine for ASP.NET sites). Scott is an ASP.NET MVP as well as a Founding Member of ASPInsiders.com, a group devoted to giving early feedback to the Microsoft ASP.NET Team. Scott also runs AZGroups.com ( Arizona .NET User Groups ) one of the largest and most active user groups. After all this community work, and product development, Scott has also found time to publish a fiction novel titled “Surveillance” (surveillance-the-novel.com) |
| Resources: | Code Samples |
September 8, 2008
| Speaker: | David Mohundro |
| Topic: | An Introduction to Windows PowerShell |
| Summary: | Windows PowerShell is a command-line shell with associated scripting language that brings the power of the .NET Framework to the command line. It provides features that can benefit both system administrators and developers. We'll introduce PowerShell and go through the basics with the goal of becoming more efficient and learning to automate repetitive tasks. |
| Speaker Bio: | David Mohundro is a software developer at Data-Tronics, Corp. in Fort Smith, AR. He has over 5 years of experience developing software using technologies ranging from classic ASP and JavaScript to Windows Forms and WPF. David is enthusiastic about building decoupled and maintainable applications using practices such as Test Driven Development and he strives to be a lifelong learner. You can contact David through his blog at http://www.mohundro.com/blog/. |
| Resources: |
PowerPoint Presentation
David Mohundro's Blog Entry - Includes links to relevant topics and tools |
August 4, 2008
| Speaker: | Steve Walker |
| Topic: | SharePoint Development: It's all about the Features |
| Summary: | Microsoft SharePoint 2007 is an incredible development platform for building pretty much any type of web application that you currently build today. We will cover how to extend SharePoint through the use of features and solution deployment packages. We will cover some best practices that I have learned while developing on this powerful and robust development platform. Bring your SharePoint development questions as we will have an open QA after the formal presentation. |
| Speaker Bio: | Steve Walker is a Senior Consultant for Microsoft Consulting Services in the South Central Region. Steve has been developing enterprise applications for well over a decade and currently specializes in development on the WSS3.0 and MOSS 2007 platforms but has extensive experience in security, infrastructure, Service Oriented Architecture and general .NET Development for the desktop and the web. |
July 7, 2008
| Speaker: | Jeremy Sloan |
| Topic: | Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) |
| Summary: | Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft's unified programming model for building service-oriented application. It enables developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments. |
| Speaker Bio: | Jeremy Sloan is a systems programmer for Data-Tronics Corp. in Fort Smith, AR. Jeremy has been with Data-Tronics for over 12 years where he has used a variety of development tools including C++ and the .NET Framework. When not solving everyone else’s problems, Jeremy has gained extensive experience building enterprise-level backend functionality that is leveraged by the rest of the company's software developers. |
June 2, 2008
| Speaker: | Michael Paladino |
| Topic: | Easy Database Access with Subsonic |
| Summary: | Learn how to use the open-source toolset SubSonic to quickly and easily create a data access layer for your .NET application or website. SubSonic requires minimal configuration, provides a number of different methods for retrieving and saving data, and includes methods to customize the generated classes. |
| Speaker Bio: | Michael Paladino is a software developer for EagleOne in Fort Smith, AR. He has over 6 years of experience developing web and desktop applications based on mostly Microsoft technologies. He started his career using classic ASP and moved into Windows Forms and ASP.NET within the last 4 years. He has also been increasingly involved with creating and maintaining SQL Server databases and has experience creating websites using DotNetNuke and Umbraco. Michael is passionate about building the .NET community in the area and is one of the co-founders of the Fort Smith .NET User Group. You can contact Michael through his blog at http://www.mpaladino.com or via email at paladinomichael@gmail.com. |
| Resources: |
SubSonic PowerPoint Presentation
SubSonic Demo App |
| Screencast: |
WMV
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Zune
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iPod
(Sorry about the audio quality and abrupt ending.) |
May 5, 2008
| Speaker: | Kerry Jenkins |
| Topic: | Programming Windows Mobile Applications |
| Summary: | As mobile devices gain power and high speed mobile data access becomes available, the opportunities for mobile applications are increasing. Come learn how to create practical applications for Windows Mobile devices that provide return on investment to your employer. Web based and smart device based application programming using Microsoft Windows Mobile will be discussed. |
| Speaker Bio: | Kerry Jenkins is a computer programmer for Data-Tronics Corp. in Fort Smith, AR. Kerry has worked for Data-Tronics for over 17 years using a wide variety of tools to meet the business requirements of ABF Freight System, Inc. With a passion for applying the right technology to business problems, Kerry has spent the past few years working to understand and apply the .NET Framework in practical ways. |
March 31, 2008
| Speaker: | Chris Koenig |
| Topic: | Silverlight - Next Generation Web Applications |
| Summary: | Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. |
| Speaker Bio: | Chris Koenig is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris worked as a Senior Architect on the Architecture Strategy Team for The Capital Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect, Developer and Development Team Lead for the global solution provider Avanade. As a consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. Chris is a devoted husband and father of four awesome children who keep him very busy. In his spare time, Chris serves as Scoutmaster for his oldest son's Troop, and Committee Chair for his youngest sons' Pack. Chris also enjoys travelling, cooking, camping and playing guitar. You can contact Chris through his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/chkoenig, via email at chris.koenig@microsoft.com, or via Windows Live Messenger at chris@koenigweb.com. |
| Resources: | Microsoft's Silverlight homepage |
March 3, 2008
| Speaker: | Raymond Lewallen |
| Topic: | Behavior-Driven Development |
| Summary: | I am a firm believer that TDD is an outdated standalone practice. After years and years of practicing and learning TDD, there is a revolution going on towards BDD, Behavior Driven Design. In this session, we will look at how BDD improves on the concepts of TDD, helps write better tests and makes you think more thoroughly through the problem you are attempting to solve. We will be replacing what you know about fixtures and tests with concepts such as contexts and specifications, concerns and observations and how to organize your specifications and use specunit to introduce better language into your tests and build specification reports. We do all of this in C# and Visual Studio 2008. |
| Speaker Bio: | Working primarily in the public sector during his career, Raymond has designed and built several high profile enterprise level applications for all levels of the government. Raymond now works as a solutions architect for EMC. Raymond is an agile coach, Microsoft MVP C# and also president of the Oklahoma City Developers Group and Oklahoma Agile Developers Group. Raymond spends a lot of his time learning and teaching such things as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Design Patterns and Extreme Programming practices and principles, to name a few. Raymond is also a lead advocate of the Alt.Net movement. Raymond is primarily a framework guy, so don't ask him anything about UI :) |
| Resources: | David Mohundro's blog entry about the meeting - Includes links to relevant topics and tools |