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On Thursday October 16 the Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Donald Belcham from Edmonton.
Donald Belcham is an independent contractor in Edmonton. He has worked with .NET for the last 5 years and currently works with both web and smart client applications. Donald is an avid practitioner of agile development methodologies, pragmatic coding practices and delivering quality and value to the business. A Microsoft MVP in C#, Donald is active in the community as the President of the Edmonton .NET User Group, an organizer of the Edmonton Code Camp and a speaker at User Groups and Code Camps across Canada and in the United States. His thoughts on software development, .NET and C# can be found at http://www.igloocoder.com
Title: Introduction to ORM Fundamentals
Description:
What is ORM (Object Relational Mapping) and what does it have to do with your applications? Come to this session to find out. We'll explain what ORM is meant to do, and go over the available tools like Entity Framework and NHibernate. If you've ever wondered what all the buzz is about with ORM, this is the session for you.
Topics:
- What is an ORM...really...what is it?
- Persistence Ignorance
- Persistence By Reachability
- Unit of Work
- Lazy Loading
- Re-usabilty
- Where do ORMs start to cause pain
Intended Audience Skill Level: All
Date/Time: Thursday, October 16, 2008 from 6:30-9:30pm (talk starts at 7)
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS124 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Oct 16th Event"
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The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Richard Campbell on Tuesday September 30.
Richard Campbell is one of the co-founders of Strangeloop Networks and today serves as product evangelist, introducing the company’s unique story to advisors, investors, patent attorneys, beta-customer candidates, potential employees, etc. Richard has more than 30 years of high-tech experience and is both a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). He has consulted with a number of leading North American organizations; Barnes&Noble.com, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson Health Care Services, Reuters, Subaru/Isuzu and the U.S. Air Force. Richard is co-host of the “.NET Rocks!, the Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers” podcast, host of “RunAs Radio, the Internet Audio Talks for IT Professionals” podcast, has been co-authoring of the “Advisor Answers” column on SQL Server for more than ten years.
Title: Performance Isn’t Optional – Making Web Services Work
Description:
Often the motivation for bringing web services into the enterprise is not performance – it’s about interoperability. But performance is NOT optional, without performance, interoperability becomes an exercise in frustration. This session digs into the strategies that an architect can employ in the design web services so that performance is a feature of web services, rather than an obstacle.
Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate+
Date/Time: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 from 6:30-9:30pm (talk starts at 7)
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room is ECS108 (this is at the other end of the lobby from where we usually are) see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Sept 30th Event"
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The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Greg Young on Wednesday May 21.
Greg is co-founder and CTO of IMIS, a stock market analytics firm in Vancouver BC. With over 10 years of varied experience in computer science from embedded operating systems to business systems and everything in between, he brings a pragmatic and often times unusual viewpoint to discussions.
In his spare time you can often find Greg on experts-exchange.com where he runs the .NET section of the site, writing articles for InfoQ.com, speaking at local .NET groups throughout the south eastern US and now the pacific northwest, or floating upside down through rapids in his kayak.
Title: Re-thinking the Relational Database Management System
Description:
This talk will focus on the past, present, and future of Relational Database Systems and data storage/retrieval.
Databases were created in a time that had very different parameters to what we have today, so should we continue to use them like we always have? A lot of technical resources have changed since the first databases. Things like:
- The length and distribution of a running transaction
- Ratio of resources like disk/memory/cpu to network bandwidth
- Personnel changes
- Total cost of ownership
Its time we re-think the RDBMS as the centerpiece of our applications. Tools like OR mappers, while helping domains become the behavioral centers of our applications, still force us to deal with an impedance mismatch that gives little benefit. This session looks at our current architectures and identifies new approaches for us to deal with these issues in a more scalable, reliable, and behaviorally centric manner.
What happens when we remove the OLTP RDBMS? We can use architectures including SimpleDB, prevalence layers, or move to an additive only distributed architecture (can be scaled massively to millions of nodes in a consistent fashion). How can we get ourselves out of the everything-is-always-consistent model we have become dependent upon because it is provided by databases? Do we want to?
Topics include:
- How the OLTP RDBMS is currently failing us.
- Command and Query Separation.
- Importance of the life cycles of objects.
- Introduction of SLAs to the ubiquitous language.
- Introduction of business value.
Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate / Advanced
Date/Time: Wednesday May 21, 2008 from 6:30-9:30pm (talk starts at 7)
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS125 see map NOTE: This is the big room across the lobby from the regular room
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "May 21st Event"
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Mark Miller is a C# MVP with strong expertise in decoupled design, plug-in architectures, and great UI. Mark is Chief Architect of the IDE Tools division at Developer Express, and is the visionary force behind productivity tools like CodeRush and Refactor!, as well as the DXCore extensibility layer for Visual Studio. Mark is a member of INETA, a popular speaker at conferences around the world and has been writing software for over two decades.
Title: "The Science of Great UI" and "High Speed Development in Visual Studio with CodeRush and Refactor Pro"
Description: (Mark has decided on two short sessions, rather than one long session)
The Science of Great UI - Explore the how and why of great UI. If you believe you’re not an artist, that UI is merely subjective, or that a great UI is not worth the effort, then this session is for you. We’ll learn how to measure UI quality, covering user models, entry points, orienteering and discoverability, with tips and code samples for the WPF and .NET developer sprinkled throughout. Regardless of whether you’re building WPF applications or the traditional WinForms or Web ones, you’ll learn how to reduce visual noise, lower barriers to entry, enhance clarity and in general make your applications a pleasure to use. It’s all about making your customers happy, and this session will show you how.
High Speed Development in Visual Studio with CodeRush and Refactor Pro - Get an introduction to powerful developer tools for Visual Studio. We’ll start with CodeRush templates – they’re a lot like code snippets on steroids, and show how easy it is to exploit them for significant productivity gains. Then we’ll look at other features designed to make code creation easier, faster, and more efficient, and finally wrap up the session with a focus on refactoring while you code.
NOTE: Mark is a very "high energy" individual. The content of this talk will be aimed at an intermediate- to advanced-level developer, but regardless of your skill level be prepared to drink from the firehose!
Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate / Advanced
Date/Time: Tuesday April 1, 2008 from 6:30-9:30pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS128 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "April 1st Event"
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Join us Monday December 10th for a Pub Night at Swans. The night will be an informal networking opportunity with no pre-set schedule or presentation. Just come and hang out, have some good food, good beer, and chat with other local devs.
Date: Monday, December 10th 2007
Time: 7-9:30pm
Cost: $5 per person to cover the cost of the room, includes food and a drink or two (see below)
Place: Swans Hotel, Collard Room (the small private room between the pub and the restaurant)
Food and Drink: A bunch of appy’s and drinks (beer and pop) will be included, plus cash bar at Swans
Due to room capacity, we can only take a maximum of 50 people for this meeting, so please register early.
Bring your questions for the Developers Association or any .NET development-related questions, there will be a good number of .NET experts in the room!
How to register: Please send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the Subject “December Pub Night”.
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UPDATE: Don's slides and content are here: www.vicdotnet.org//Content/DonKiely-ASP.NETDebugging.zip
Don Kiely - Advanced .NET Debugging
Don Kiely, MVP, MCSD, MSDE, is a senior technology consultant specializing in developing desktop and Web applications that integrate databases, Microsoft Office, and related technologies, using tools including SQL Server, ASP.NET and XML. Don trains developers and speaks regularly at industry conferences, including TechEd, VSLive!, DevConnections, and others. He earned a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the University of Colorado, but fortunately learned the error of his establishment ways. In his spare time he roams the Alaska wilderness by foot, dog sled, skis, and kayak, with his dogs Mardy and Izzi.
Title: "Power ASP.NET Debugging"
Description: The debugging features in Visual Studio are a marvel of the modern software world, with rich support for data visualization, customizing objects to improve debugging, and many other features. Far too often, however, developers fall back on the familiar Step Into and Watch window to solve problems, tediously stepping through line by line by line by…. And even if you use other debugging features, often the problem is that these features produce far too much information, making the debugging experience more of a data mining excursion than a logical approach to problem solving. During this session we'll explore many of the new and improved debugging features in Visual Studio 2005, including standard and custom features, how to customize an object to help with debugging, some of the more obscure debugging windows and framework debugging classes, and how to make ASP.NET debugging far more productive.
NOTE: Some of the tools and concepts in this talk are available in WinForms applications, but the focus is primarily on ASP.NET technologies.
Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate / Advanced
Topics:
- What’s new, cool, and underused in Visual Studio 2005?
- Customizing debugging for specific objects
- Write your own debugging visualizers
- Setup and debug client-side and resource file scripts
- Advanced tracing with TraceSource
- Using assertions in ASP.NET
Date/Time: Tuesday November 13th, 2007 from 6:30-9:30pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS128 see map
Note: We have moved to a new room! We've been having problems getting the key for our evening meetings, so to keep things simple we are moving to the main floor of the same building.
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Nov 13th Event"
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This is a reminder that in two weeks the Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Rod Paddock!
Important Note: The meeting date in the last newsletter is wrong! The correct date is Wednesday October 10th.
Rod Paddock is president and founder of Dash Point Software, Inc. DPSI is an award winning software company based in Seattle, WA. Dash Point Software specializes in application architecture, development and software training. Clients include Six Flags, First Premier Bank, Microsoft, The US Coast Guard and US Navy. Rod is also editor in chief for Code Magazine (http://www.code-magazine.com/) and has written numerous articles and books on software development.
Rod can be contacted via his web site http://www.dashpoint.com/ or his blog http://blog.dashpoint.com/
Title: Ajaxing your Application
Description: Last Year Microsoft released a set of ASP.NET Ajax extensions. These extensions enable you to add Web 2.0 Style features to your ASP.NET Applications with little or no effort. In this session you will learn how to create new ASP.NET Ajax applications, how to incorporate Ajax into existing ASP.NET applications, what happens when you incorporate Ajax features into your web forms and overall how you can make your web forms smoother and more interactive. You will also learn how to incorporate the controls provided by the ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit. Date/Time: Wednesday October 10th, 2007 from 6:30-9:30pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to mailto:event@vicdotnet.org?subject=Oct10thEvent with the subject heading of "Oct 10th Event"
See you there!
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The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes back speaker John Bristowe from Microsoft.
About John: John Bristowe is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Canada based in Calgary, Alberta. John is an experienced speaker and frequently presents Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) events across Canada. Prior to joining Microsoft, John was a member of the Microsoft Regional Director (RD) and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) programs.
Title: "The Exciting Adventures of the Microsoft Application Platform Developer"
Description: At the meeting John will demonstrate how the .Net Platform provides a foundation for building data-driven applications and Web sites. Specifically, this session will examine some of the tools and technologies available for developers including Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals and examine some of the exciting new features of ADO.NET.
Date/Time: Tuesday May 1st, 2007. Doors open @ 6:30pm Talk from 7:00pm - 9:30pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map
Registration: Please register for the event at: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032330937&Culture=en-CA
See you there!
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Don Kiely had to cancel but we're going to have the meeting with two topics from local speakers:
1) Jason Kemp on Test-Driven Development
Test-Driven Development and unit testing are becoming an increasingly popular discipline in the software industry. There are all sorts of advantages to unit testing that will save you time in the long run, so you can do a job in 16 hours but bill for 40. Who can argue with that? We'll cover what unit testing is, how to do it for a simple class, the .NET unit testing tools (NUnit, TestDriven.NET, NCover, ReSharper) and some tips and tricks for testing maintaining your test suite.
2) Brian McKinnell on Application Virtualization
You’ve probably heard of, or are using, virtual machines for some of your development. Application virtualization is the same idea, except it’s only the application, not the entire O/S. In this talk you’ll hear about Microsoft SoftGrid, an application virtualization technology that is all about:
- how to get your rich client .NET applications (or any other app), deployed quickly
- not having to worry about application compatibility problems like conflicting DLLs
- running multiple versions of the same application on the same PC.
- running multiple versions of the same application on the same PC.
We hope to see you there!
If you previously registered for Tuesday’s event and are still interested in attending, could you please re-register for the event.
Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate
Date/Time: Tuesday April 3, 2007 from 6:30-9:30pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Apr 3rd Event"
See you there!
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The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Don Kiely from Alaska!
Don Kiely, MVP, MCSD, MSDE, is a senior technology consultant specializing in developing desktop and Web applications that integrate databases, Microsoft Office, and related technologies, using tools including SQL Server, ASP.NET and XML. Don trains developers and speaks regularly at industry conferences, including TechEd, VSLive!, DevConnections, and others. He earned a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the University of Colorado, but fortunately learned the error of his establishment ways. In his spare time he roams the Alaska wilderness by foot, dog sled, skis, and kayak, with his dogs Mardy and Izzi.
Title: "Power ASP.NET Debugging"
Description: The debugging features in Visual Studio are a marvel of the modern software world, with rich support for data visualization, customizing objects to improve debugging, and many other features. Far too often, however, developers fall back on the familiar Step Into and Watch window to solve problems, tediously stepping through line by line by line by…. And even if you use other debugging features, often the problem is that these features produce far too much information, making the debugging experience more or a data mining excursion than a logical approach to problem solving. During this session we'll explore many of the new and improved debugging features in Visual Studio 2005, including standard and custom features, how to customize an object to help with debugging, some of the more obscure debugging windows and framework debugging classes, and how to make ASP.NET debugging far more productive.
NOTE: Some of the tools and concepts in this talk are available in WinForms applications, but the focus is primarily on ASP.NET technologies.
Intended Audience Skill Level: Intermediate / Advanced
Topics:
- What’s new, cool, and underused in Visual Studio 2005?
- Customizing debugging for specific objects
- Write your own debugging visualizers
- Setup and debug client-side and resource file scripts
- Advanced tracing with TraceSource
- Using assertions in ASP.NET
Date/Time: Tuesday April 3, 2007 from 6:30-9:30pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Apr 3rd Event"
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The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Phil Weber from Portland Oregon!
With nearly 20 years of software development experience, Phil Weber's client list includes Intel, Kaiser Permanente and Wells Fargo Bank. He has worked with VB since 1993 and .NET since 2001. In addition to serving on the INETA Speaker Bureau, Phil is a Contributing Editor to Visual Studio Magazine and has spoken at numerous conferences in the U.S. and abroad. He currently works as a technical instructor for Corillian Corporation, an e-finance enabler.
NOTE: Everyone who attends will get a free copy of Code Magazine (Jan/Feb 2007) and a DevExpress DVD with a trial license for every one of their products.
Title: "Great User Interfaces with .NET"
Description: Even the most beautifully coded application will flop if people hate to use it. And they will, if its user interface is not designed with their goals in mind. What makes a great UI? How can you apply the principles that work so well for the guts of an application to its front end? We'll examine specific techniques (with code!) that you can use immediately to reduce complexity for your users and improve your Winforms or ASP.NET presentation layer's efficiency and maintainability.
Intended Audience Skill Level: All levels
Topics:
- What Makes a UI Great?
- Know Your User: Using Personas to Create a Great UI
- Message Box Alternatives
- Tips for Managing Complexity
- Remembering the User’s Preferences
- Don’t Be a Data Nazi
- Creating a Great Web UI
- Recommended Reading
Date/Time: Tuesday March 6, 2007 from 6:30-9:30pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Mar 6th Event"
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The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Microsoft MVP Rob Windsor!
Rob Windsor lives in Toronto, Canada and is a senior consultant with ObjectSharp Consulting and an instructor with Learning Tree International.
UPDATE: We will be raffling off one 1-year MSDN Universal Subscription at the end of the meeting! Come to the meeting with non-perishable food items or cash, and we will give you 1 draw ticket for every item or $1 you donate! All of the food and money will go to the local food bank in time for Christmas.
The MSDN Subscription contains development and test versions of almost all Microsoft software, plus extra help and support options. It’s worth approximately $1400US. More details here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718661.aspx
Come on out, enjoy some free food, a great presentation, help out the community, and potentially win a great prize!
Title: "Asynchronous Programming with .NET"
Description: It wasn't very long ago that only hard-core system developers worried about multithreading. Today, with multiprocessor machines becoming commonplace, nonconcurrent applications are at a disadvantage, unable to benefit from the computing power available to them. The .NET Framework 1.0 and 1.1 offered useful and powerful tools to help you build multithreaded functionality into your programs, but it's even better with the .NET Framework 2.0. From new synchronization primitives to the BackgroundWorker component to ThreadPool enhancements, this session will take you on a tour of what's new with threading in the .NET Framework 2.0 and show you how to change your current applications to help them make better use of multiple processors.
Date/Time: Tuesday December 5, 2006 from 6:30-10pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Dec 5th Event"
Slides are now posted: http://vicdotnet.org/files/folders/slides/entry33.aspx
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The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Mike Culver, Developer Evangelist from Amazon.com!
Mike Culver joined Amazon Web Services after almost eight years in evangelism at Microsoft, where he saw .NET move from a provocative idea to the preeminent development platform for serious development. During that time, Mike managed a team of evangelists in Microsoft’s Developer Division (and later in Developer and Platform Evangelism) that were responsible for a number of high-profile implementations of .NET, ranging from innovative Compact Framework applications for devices to complex mission-critical applications such as the City of London’s Traffic Congestion Project. As an Amazon Evangelist, Mike works in the Developer Relations Group of Amazon Web Services. In that capacity he once again helps developers take advantage of cutting-edge technologies that are going to change the way we think about computer applications.
Title: "Developing Applications Against Amazon.com's S3 Web Services"
Description: What’s possible in a post Web 2.0 world? Innovation continues at a mind-bending pace, and this presentation will showcase some thought-provoking new directions that Web Services are headed in. The presentation will provide an overview of Amazon's S3 Web Services, and feature a code demonstration showing how .NET developers are able to easily build managed clients for these services.
Amazon spent ten years and over $1 billion developing a world-class technology and content platform that powers Amazon web sites for millions of customers every day. Using AWS, developers can build software applications leveraging the same robust, scalable, and reliable technology that powers Amazon’s retail business. AWS has now launched eleven services with open API’s for developers to build applications, with the result that over 160,000 developers have registered on Amazon’s developer site to create applications based on these services (if you think “shopping”, you’re in for a shock).
This session will focus on two things: (a) an overview of what Amazon has built to allow developers to innovate, and (b) show how you can build a Windows Explorer-style interface for Amazon's S3 storage service, using Visual Studio 2005.
Date/Time: Tuesday November 7, 2006 from 6:30-10pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Nov 7th Event"
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The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes John Bristowe, Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Canada, for a presentation on Windows Live Services.
Title: "Windows Live Services"
Description: Windows Live Services is a platform for creating and delivering rich user applications on the web and mobile devices. Combining technologies like RSS, AJAX/ATLAS, and ASP.NET, developers can create their own web applications or services quickly using information pulled from around the web. Examples include Live Local and Map Point services mashup sites like Zillow (http://www.zillow.com/), shopping sites (http://shopping.live.com/), and Desktop Gadgets (http://MicrosoftGadgets.com/).
Join us at this presentation to learn about these .NET technologies and find out how to write code to put your own applications together. This will be a "code intensive" presentation, NOT marketing slides!
Date/Time: Thursday September 21, 2006 from 6:30-10pm
Location: University of Victoria, New Engineering and Computer Science Building, Room ECS660 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. We are going to try using the Microsoft Event Registration System to do registrations for this event to see how well it works. Please let us know if you have any feedback on the system.
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Below are all of the monthly meeting announcements from June 2004 to June 2006 from the old site (for reference purposes)... Please note that presentation slide downloads may not be available, but you can check the file download area to see if they have been moved to this new site.
Final Spring 2006 Monthly Meeting |  |
| Final Spring 2006 Monthly Meeting
The Victoria .NET Developers Association and its sponsors are excited to welcome Jean-Luc David from Ottawa Ontario! Jean-Luc David is a senior consultant at ObjectSharp Consulting and the CEO of Stormpixel Solutions based in Toronto, Canada. He has been an ongoing active participant in user groups, online chats and developer events. Most of his time is spent writing, creating courseware, speaking and deploying Team System and WinFX to companies in Canada and abroad. Jean-Luc's latest book includes "Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System" published by WROX Press (he also wrote a book called Professional WinFX Beta which was released at the 2005 PDC and contributed to Professional Javascript 2nd Edition). He is currently in the process of writing a new book called "Professional Team Foundation Server" and will be delivering two Team System MSDN webcasts as part of TechEd 2006. You can read his blog at: http://teamsystemrocks.com/blogs/jldavid/
Title: "Using Microsoft ATLAS in your web applications"
Description: Atlas is a framework of extensions that allows Web developers to build real-time interactivity and personalization in ASP.NET based applications. It uses AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) techniques to dynamically integrate client and server side code without "round tripping" (avoiding a complete page reload). In this session, you will learn how to incorporate and extend Atlas functionality in your own Web applications. Date/Time: Monday June 26th, 2006 from 7-10pm
Location: University of Victoria, Cornett Building, Room A125 see map Topics Covered:
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "June 26th Event"
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| | June 2006 Monthly Meeting | |
| June 2006 Monthly Meeting
The Victoria .NET Developers Association and its sponsors are excited to welcome back Ted Neward from Redmond, Washington! Ted Neward is an independent consultant specializing in high-scale enterprise systems, working with clients ranging in size from Fortune 500 corporations to small 10-person shops. He is an authority in Java and .NET technologies, particularly in the areas of Java/.NET integration (both in-process and via integration tools like Web services), back-end enterprise software systems, and virtual machine/execution engine plumbing.
Please see http://www.tedneward.com/ for more info on Ted. Title: "Real World Web Services, SOAP, and WCF (Indigo)"
Description: A lot has been said about service-orientation and SOA, but precious little of it describes the actual, concrete practice of building services that interoperate via the use of XML. In this talk, Ted Neward, author of the forthcoming “Pragmatic XML Services”, will present a down-to-earth concrete discussion of building services, the reasons for doing so and the tools by which building services can be made easier, all with an eye towards actual working interoperability with .NET, Java and Ruby clients and servers. Date/Time: Tuesday June 6th, 2006 from 7-10pm
Location: University of Victoria, Cornett Building, Room A120 see map Topics Covered: - Web Services with Visual Studio
- SOAP
- Windows Communication Foundation (Indigo)
- WinFX
- Talking to other platforms like Java, Ruby, etc.
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "June 6th Event"
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| | May 2006 Monthly Meeting | |
| May 2006 Monthly Meeting & MSDN Spring User Group Tour 
The Victoria .NET User Group welcomes John Bristowe. John is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Canada. In the past four years, John has co-founded the Melbourne NET User Group, been active in the Chicago .NET User Group, and worked with the International .NET Association (INETA) as a member of its technical committee. John's focus is service-orientation and its associated plumbing and protocols. John's passion is assisting members of the .NET community at large. We will be having pizza and drinks at this meeting, and some great give-aways. Title: "New Features in .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 - Part II"
Description: Now that Visual Studio 2005 has been out for a while, come find out more of the great enhancements and improvements over the previous version. Note that this meeting has two parts, and introductory session and an advanced session.
Date/Time: Tuesday May 2, 2005 from 7-10pm.
Location: University of Victoria, Cornett Building, Room A120 see map
Topics Covered in Session 1 (7:00pm - 8:15pm): If you are new to the .NET and/or Visual Studio 2005 platform, this is the session for you! In this session, John outlines some of the starting points with Visual Studio 2005, and gives us an introductory look at how .NET works from the perspective of a developer who is new to .NET. - Windows Form Designer – Simplifying your development process
- ASP.NET Pages and Controls - Starting out with ASP.NET
- ADO.NET - data access made easy
- SQL Server 2005 – easily integrate and leverage the enterprise strength of SQL Server
Topics Covered in Session 2 (8:30pm - 10:00pm): John has spent the last year with all kinds of Visual Studio Users learning the ins and outs of the new platform. This session will cover all of the advanced tips, hints, and topics he has learned. Feel free to jump in during the session with your own questions and concerns with the new Visual Studio.
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "May 2nd Event"
Presentation Slides: Available after the meeting |
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| | April 2006 Monthly Meeting | |
| April 2006 Monthly Meeting
The Victoria .NET Developers Association and its sponsors are excited to welcome Ted Neward from Redmond, Washington! Ted Neward is an independent consultant specializing in high-scale enterprise systems, working with clients ranging in size from Fortune 500 corporations to small 10-person shops. He is an authority in Java and .NET technologies, particularly in the areas of Java/.NET integration (both in-process and via integration tools like Web services), back-end enterprise software systems, and virtual machine/execution engine plumbing.
Please see http://www.tedneward.com/ for more info on Ted. Title: "Focus on Web Services, SOAP, and WCF (Indigo)"
Description: Ted has agreed to take requests from everyone on what topics you want him to present.
What part of web services do you want to know more about, or having trouble with?
Add your request here: http://blogs.tedneward.com/CommentView,guid,7fb090b9-0591-4d16-99ab-fe013463c75a.aspx Date/Time: Tuesday April 4th, 2006 from 7-10pm
Location: University of Victoria, Cornett Building, Room A120 see map Topics Covered: - To be announced based on input from all of us.
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "April 4th Event"
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| | March 2006 Pub Night | |
| Join us March 14th for a Pub Night at Swans, and learn about the InnerWorkings contest to win an XBOX 360! See more about the contest here: http://www.vicdotnet.org/LinkClick.aspx?link=VictoriaXBOX360ContestOverview.doc&tabid=43&mid=359 Date: Tuesday, March 14th 2006
Time: 7-10pm
Place: Swans Hotel, Collard Room (the small private room between the pub and the restaurant) Food and Drink: Appy’s and drinks (beer and pop) will be included, plus cash bar at Swans Due to room capacity, we can only take a maximum of 50 people for this meeting, so please register early! Bring your questions for the group or any .NET development-related questions, there will be a good number of .NET experts in the room! How to register: Please send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the Subject “March Pub Night”. To cancel your registration: Please send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the Subject “Cancel March pub Night”. |
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| | March 2006 Monthly Meeting | |
| March 2006 Monthly Meeting
The Victoria .NET Developers Association (in association with INETA) and its sponsors are excited to welcome Scott Hanselman from Portland Oregon!
Scott Hanselman is Chief Architect at the Corillian Corporation, an eFinance enabler. He has over a decade of experience developing software in C, C++, VB, COM, and currently VB.NET and C#. Scott is proud to have been appointed the MSDN Regional Director for Portland, OR for the last three years, developing content for, and speaking at Developer Days and the Visual Studio.NET Launch in both Portland and Seattle. Scott was in the top 5% of audience-rated speakers at TechEd 2005 in Orlando. Scott also spoke at the Windows Server 2003 and VS.NET 2003 Launches in 4 cities. He's spoken internationally on Microsoft technologies, and has co-authored two books from Wrox Press. Scott is also currently the host of his own geeky podcast, Hanselminutes. Check it out!
Please see www.computerzen.com or www.hanselminutes.com for more info on Scott! Title: "Software Architecture Best Practices: Anatomy of a Successful ASP.NET Application"
Description: Scott Hanselman heads the DasBlog Open Source project along with Omar Shahine, following in the footsteps of Clemens Vasters and his dramatic modification of the BlogX engine. DasBlog is now on version 1.8 and is aguable the most successful ASP.NET blogging engine for the single user. DasBlog is now the work of many folks over many years and while it has some very hairy sections of code, it's full of design techniques and reusable components that you can use in your work today.
Date/Time: Tuesday March 7th, 2006 from 7-9pm
Location: University of Victoria, Cornett Building, Room A120 see map Topics Covered: - Httpmodules
- Httphandlers
- Background threads
- Internationalization
- Caching
- Skinning
- Creating a macro language
- Web Services that are more than just SOAP
- More architectural concepts that work in any ASP.NET application
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Mar 7th Event"
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| | Feb Monthly Meeting | |
| February 2006 Monthly Meeting 
The Victoria .NET Developers Association is excited to welcome local developer Jonathan Zack, MCSD! Since joining Momentis in 2000, Jonathan has been a driving force in the core software development, whereby he is involved in the technology direction, including designing and implementing n-Tier architecture based on Microsoft Windows DNA and Microsoft .NET, and defining the company's .NET templates, and best practices. As Lead Architect for the Next Generation Software group, he is responsible for the design, development, release management, and deployment of all the modules built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, and business-to-business e-commerce applications (Sales Force Connect, Vendor Connect, Customer Connect). In 2003, Jonathan became one of the first Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) for Microsoft .NET in the world. Prior to joining Momentis, Jonathan worked as an independent consultant where he held software developer positions at top companies like SHL Systemhouse (now EDS), Seagram Company Limited, and STS Systems (now NSB Group). Jonathan graduated with great distinction from McGill University, where he received his bachelor degree in commerce with a concentration in management information systems. Title: "Visual Studio 2005 Community Launch"
Description: Learn about Smart Clients and the new features of WinForms and the C# language in Visual Studio .NET 2005. Using training provided by Microsoft and INETA, and supplemented with his own learning, Jonathan will be demonstrating some of the great new productivity features in the .NET Framework 2.0.
Date/Time: Wednesday February 8th, 2006 from 7-9pm
Location: University of Victoria, Cornett Building, Room A125 see map Topics Covered: - Understanding Smart Clients
- Why smart clients?
- What is a smart client?
- How do you decide between
browser-based and smart client UI? - Changes in n-tier architecture for smart clients
- C# 2.0 Enhancements
- Generics
- Nullable types
- Partial types
- Improvements in Windows Forms 2.0
- ToolStrip Controls
- Creating Customized, Professional Applications
- DataGridView
- Customization and Binding to business objects
- BackgroundWorker
- Making an application more responsive
- TableLayoutPanel
- Simplifying dynamic layout
- Configuration APIs
- Storing Application and User State
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Feb 8th Event" Presentation Slides and Samples: Coming soon! |
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| | January 2006 Monthly Meeting | |
| In lieu of a presentation and due to popular demand, January’s monthly meeting will be a networking pub night at Swans Hotel! Date: Tuesday, January 17th 2005
Time: 7-9pm
Place: Swans Hotel, Collard Room (the small private room between the pub and the restaurant) Food and Drink: Appy’s and drinks (beer and pop) will be included with the fee, plus cash bar at Swans Book Exchange: Bring any unwanted computer books to exchange with others, and leftover books at the end of the night will be donated to the Times Colonist Book Drive! Cost, collected at the door: - $10 each, with the exception of:
- Individual Sponsors get in free
- Employees of Corporate Sponsors are $5, bring a business card!
Sign up for an individual sponsorship at the meeting ($20) and you also get in free. Remember, sponsorships pay for great speakers and help us throw great events like these! Due to room capacity, we can only take a maximum of 50 people for this meeting, so please register early! There is no agenda for this meeting. Bring your questions for the group or any .NET development-related questions, there will be a good number of .NET experts in the room! How to register: Please send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the Subject “Jan Pub Night”. To cancel your registration: Please send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the Subject “Cancel Jan pub Night”. |
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| | December 2005 Monthly Meeting | |
| December 2005 Monthly Meeting 
The Victoria .NET Developers Association and its sponsors are excited to welcome Bill Vaughn from Redmond, WA! Bill is an industry-recognized author, mentor and subject-matter expert on Visual Studio, SQL Server and data access interfaces. He’s been in the computer industry for over thirty years—working with mainframe, minicomputer and personal computer systems as a developer, manager, trainer, marketer, support specialist, writer and publisher. In 2000 after 14 years at Microsoft, Bill stepped away to work on his books, mentoring and independent training seminars. He primarily specializes on data access and especially Visual Basic and SQL Server and more recently SQL Server Reporting Services. He’s written six editions of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server” (working on the 7th edition) and two editions of “ADO.NET and ADO Examples and Best Practices for Visual Basic (and C#) Programmers”. He and Peter Blackburn also wrote the best-selling and critically acclaimed “Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services”.
Please see www.betav.com or www.betav.com\blog\billva for more info on Bill! Title: "Business Intelligence: Creating SQL Reporting Services Reports with Visual Studio 2005"
Description: Based on Bill’s latest book, this session walks you through a series of live code examples that illustrate how to leverage the new Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005 RDL-based reporting features. We’ll see how to create a new report from scratch and how to import a report created with SQL Server Reporting Services. We’ll setup a report-specific data source, capture user parameters to focus the report data, capture multiple-select parameters, pass parameters to the queries and execute stored procedures to return data for the report. We’ll build table, matrix and chart reports and applications used to launch the reports. We’ll show how to deploy the reports and implement (fake) some of the features you’ll only find on Reporting Services. We’ll also look at the new SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services features that can leverage this same technology as implemented in SQL Server Express and other editions. When you’re done you’ll have a better understanding of the differences between the Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services implementations.
Date/Time: Tuesday December 13th, 2005 from 7-9pm
Location: University of Victoria, Cornett Building, Room A121 see map Topics Covered: - How to setup a report project.
- How to convert from another reporting tool (like Crystal Reports)
- How to build a suitable report-specific Data Source.
- How to use the ReportViewer control.
- How to layout a report using the Table, Matrix, Graph and Image controls
- How to address the data source columns and map them to report elements.
- How to capture and insert parameters into the data source queries.
- How to deploy the report.
- What is the difference between the Visual Studio 2005 and Reporting Services implementations provided by SQL Server 2005?
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Dec 13th Event" Presentation Slides and Samples: Coming soon! |
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| | November 2005 Monthly Meeting | |
| Topic:
This meeting will be a little bit different than usual. We want to invite anyone from the community who is interested to come out and participate in a community .NET meet and greet.. There will be no formal presentation or out-of-town speaker, but there WILL BE pizza, drinks, and some excellent SWAG! If you are using .NET and you either have questions you want answered, or feel that you can help answer questions, come out and participate in our informal chat! We will also have some local experts on board to discuss whatever .NET topics come up, including but not limited to:
- What’s with the new VS and SQL 2005 products
- Licensing those products
- 3rd party controls
- 3rd party source control and build tools
- General .NET development best practices
- Security We can also go over any local Developers Association stuff:
- The upcoming Victoria and West Coast .NET Code camp
- More info on sponsoring the Vic .NET Dev Association
- The study group
- The Canada-wide inter-group competition
- Finding a job or looking to fill a job So if you are interested in any of the above, or have something you want to talk about, come out for a casual meet and greet! When: Tuesday November 8th, 7-9pm
Where: UVIC Cornet Building room A120. Please send us a quick RSVP to event@vicdotnet.org with the Subject "Nov 8th Meet and Greet" if you are coming, and in your email please let us know what topics you are interested in chatting about so we can come prepared! |
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| | October 2005 Monthly Meeting | |
| October 2005 Monthly Meeting The Victoria .NET Developers Association welcomes Joel Semeniuk. Joel is the co-founder of Imaginets Corp in Winnipeg, a Microsoft Regional Director, and has been recognized by Microsoft as one of the worlds' leading trainers and mentors for Visual Studio 2005 and Team System. Title: "In-Depth look at Visual Studio Team System"
Description: We asked a few months ago for your ideas on what portions of Visual Studio Team System he speak on so now, 'You asked for it, now you'll get it'. Joel Semeniuk will come out and present a Just In Time presentation on Microsoft Visual Studio Team System addressing the concerns and topic suggestions that you have posted to his blog. During this session Joel will drill down into areas such as software testing strategies, integrating existing software development process methodologies into Team System, strategies around adoption and configuration, scaling Team System, and much more. Joel will also make time at the end of his talk to answer questions or to simply open up a discussion on Team System.
Date/Time: Tuesday October 4, 2005 from 7-9pm
Location: University of Victoria, Cornett Building, Room A120 see map
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "Oct 4th Event"
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| | June 2005 Monthly Meeting & MSDN Spring User Group Tour | |
| June 2005 Monthly Meeting & MSDN Spring User Group Tour
The Victoria .NET User Group welcomes John Bristowe. John is a Systems Analyst with Quadrus Development Inc., a Calgary-based, Microsoft Gold Partner IT consulting firm with expertise in delivering .NET business solutions. In the past four years, John has co-founded the Melbourne NET User Group, been active in the Chicago .NET User Group, and worked with the International .NET Association (INETA) as a member of its technical committee. John is passionate about service-orientation and its associated plumbing and protocols. A Microsoft Regional Director, a MVP for ASP/ASP.NET, and a Microsoft Certified Trainer, John devotes his spare time assisting members of the .NET community at large. We will be having pizza and drinks at this meeting, and a ton of great give-aways. This will be our final user group meeting of the season, we will be returning in September with more great speakers! Title: "New Features in .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005"
Description: Microsoft continues to raise the bar for developer productivity with its latest release of Visual Studio 2005 and the Visual Studio Team System. We will explore some of the powerful enhancements to Visual Studio and introduce the Visual Studio Team System.
Date/Time: Tuesday June 14, 2005 from 7-9pm.
Location: University of Victoria, Cornett Building, Room A120 see map Topics Covered: - Windows Form Designer – simplifying your development process
- New controls - allowing you to deliver professional applications more quickly
- Click Once - simplifying application deployment
- ADO.NET - data access made easy
- SQL Server 2005 – easily integrate and leverage the enterprise strength of SQL Server
Registration: Please register for the event. You can also send an email to event@vicdotnet.org with the subject heading of "June 14th Event" Presentation Slides: John's presentation slides from the meeting can be downloaded here (7MB). Also, watch John's blog over the next couple weeks for all of the code samples from the meeting: http://www.bristowe.com/blog/ |
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| | May 2005 Monthly Meeting | |
| May 2005 Monthly Meeting The Victoria .NET User Group welcomes Richard Campbell. Richard is a Microsoft Regional Director and regular speaker at TechEd and other Microsoft technology events. Title: "Advanced SQL Querying Tips and Techniques"
Description: Take your querying to the next level! This session gets away from the fundamentals of SQL queries and into the hard stuff. Compare and contrast querying techniques between SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. This session has a series of real world examples to show how creative SQL queries can generate solutions in record time.
Date/Time: Thursday&nb |
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