MikeFitz with overflow bit set…

An MVC 3 double-header!
Two excellent and entertaining speakers this month.  A walkthrough of MVC 3 and then a look at how it can be applied to mobile devices.

Leon Bambrick and Joseph Cooney
Asp.net MVC 3 — “Third time’s a charm”

First up, Leon will run from the basics of MVC3 into some advanced scaffolding scenarios, with hard-won lessons from real world usage.  A transcendent experience is expected, though not guaranteed.  There’ll be free hugs for silverlight devs, as Leon welcomes them to his html and javascript world.

Update 21-Jun-11: Excellent turnout.  Photo courtesy @soulsolutions.

Then, using the MVC fundamentals described earlier by Leon, Joseph will show us how to create an ASP.NET MVC application targeting a variety of mobile devices, using MVC Razor, C#, jQuery Mobile and modern CSS.

If time allows, we might see an MVC media-centre add-in to allow you to control your Windows Media Centre application.

About the speakers
Leon Bambrick is a software development consultant, and miscreant based in Brisbane.
Joseph Cooney is also a software development consultant and Microsoft MVP based in Brisbane.
Leon and Joseph are both currently working for Microsoft Australia.

Date: Tuesday 21 June 2011
Time: 17:30 for 18:00, finishing approx 19:30
Location: Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 28, 400 George St, Brisbane.  Note our new meeting location; watch the QMSDNUG website for details of new entry/security requirements.

RSVP
All welcome. Bring your colleagues.
If you haven’t already done so, an immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

These details are also on QMSDNUG’s website at www.qmsdnug.org.

At this month’s QMSDNUG meeting,
Joel’s Back!
Regulars will recall Joel Pobar’s excellent presentations on F#, particularly using it to relate disparate datasets.  His low key, casual style belies the cutting-edge nature of the work he does.  Now that he has had opportunities to put it all into commercial practice, Joel is ready to share his experience.

Joel Pobar:
some high performance, high throughput .NET stuff he’s been working on with an “unnamed Investment Bank”

“From a clock cycle, to the loading and running of a managed .NET assembly over multiple CPU cores: come and have a bit of fun exploring the binary world of CPU caches, bus bandwidth, and instruction sets, abstracting right through to code execution, JIT compilation and managed execution.  We’ll cobble all this together and walk through some high performance, high throughput scenarios borrowed from the finance domain.”

About Joel Pobar
Joel describes himself as a .NET nerd and F# evangelical.  Learn more at his blog, callvirt.net/blog/.

Date: Tuesday 17 May 2011
Time: 17:30 for 18:00, finishing approx 19:30
Location: Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 28, 400 George St, Brisbane.  Note our new meeting location; watch the QMSDNUG website for details of new entry/security requirements.

RSVP
All welcome. Bring your colleagues.
If you haven’t already done so, an immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

These details are also on QMSDNUG’s website at www.qmsdnug.org.

We’re going out with a BANG!  A double-bunger for April, our last meeting at Waterfront Place^*.

Damian Maclennan, Readify
Turbo charging Coded UI Tests in Visual Studio 2010

Patterns for creating flexible and maintainable UI tests
With Visual Studio 2010 came a suite of testing tools including CodedUI Tests, a UI automation and testing framework.  These tools, while powerful, have a number of pitfalls which can trip up teams on agile projects.

In this session Damian will demonstrate some patterns for creating flexible and maintainable UI tests using Visual Studio Coded UI for testing without tears.

About Damian Maclennan
Damian Maclennan is a technologist and a strong advocate of agile project management and engineering practices such as TDD, CI and automated deployment.  As a Principal Consultant with Readify he regularly works with teams looking to improve their skills and processes and provides consulting, training and mentoring on the .NET platform.

Andrew Coates, Microsoft
LightSwitch

LightSwitch is a new product in the Visual Studio family aimed at developers who want to easily create business applications for the desktop or the cloud.  LightSwitch simplifies the development process by letting you concentrate on the business logic, while LightSwitch handles the common tasks for you.

In this demo-heavy session, you will see, end-to-end, how to build and deploy a data-centric business application using LightSwitch.  We’ll also go beyond the basics of creating simple screens over data and demonstrate how to create screens with more advanced capabilities.

About Andrew Coates
Andrew is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft in Australia.  Before joining Microsoft, Andrew was an independent consultant specialising in database applications using Microsoft technologies including SQL Server, Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office.
Andrew’s wide range of experience includes telecommunications, SMB inventory, dispatch and accounting systems, using both web and rich client front ends.  He has developed and delivered class room training and has mentored a number of developers in Visual FoxPro and SQL Server technologies.
Andrew has spoken at international conferences on Geographical Information Systems, health statistics and database maintenance and is a regular presenter at TechEd both locally and internationally.  An MCPD, MCTS and MCSD, Andrew also holds a Masters degree in Civil Engineering.  Andrew blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com/acoat

Date: Thursday 14 Apr 2011
Time: 17:30 for 18:00 (with 2 excellent speakers, we might be finishing a little later than usual.)
Location: Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane

RSVP
All welcome. Bring your colleagues.
If you haven’t already done so, an immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

These details are also on QMSDNUG’s website at www.qmsdnug.org.

———————
^* Yes, after meeting monthly at Microsoft’s office in Waterfront Place for over 12 years, we are moving.  Actually, Microsoft are moving and have kindly agreed to allow user groups to continue meeting on their premises.  Our May meeting will be in their new office at 400 George St.

At this month’s QMSDNUG meeting we are pleased to hear from MVPs John O’Brien and Bronwen Zande, excellent speakers and always innovative with combining leading-edge technologies.

Bronwen Zande and John O’Brien, Soul Solutions:
Using .Net tools to visualise natural disasters

Australia is a country of extreme climates and is no stranger to devastating natural disasters. Join John and Bronwen as they show you ways you can utilise your current .net skills to prepare, monitor and analyse available information using historical flood maps, social media feeds, flickr photos and nearmap imagery.

Date: Tuesday 15 Mar 2011
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Location: Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane

RSVP
All welcome. Bring your colleagues.
If you haven’t already done so, an immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

These details are also on QMSDNUG’s website at www.qmsdnug.org.

Welcome back to the first QMSDNUG meeting for 2011.

Sly Gryphon, Readify:
Web sign in with Windows Identity Foundation

This month’s presentation will introduce you to using Windows Identity Foundation to make your existing ASP.NET web applications claims-aware.  The WIF library from Microsoft makes it easy to provide federated access to your application, and talk will include a demonstration of implementing web single sign on (SSO) as a relying party

The evening will also include a brief overview of related security technologies from Microsoft, including Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) and CardSpace.

About Sly Gryphon
Sly is a Senior Consultant at Readify, and has been working with .NET since being trained on the beta in December 2001.  He has over 15 years experience with the web, and has worked on some of Australia’s largest web sites.

Sly has recently moved from NSW to Queensland, and this will be his first presentation at QMSDNUG.  You can find Sly’s blog at http://sgryphon.wordpress.com/.

Date: Tuesday 15 Feb 2011
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Location: Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane

RSVP
All welcome. Bring your colleagues.
If you haven’t already done so, an immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

These details are also on QMSDNUG’s website at www.qmsdnug.org.

This month, partly due to room booking clashes but also because developers can never know too much about SQL Server, a joint meeting with QSSUG, the Qld SQL Server User Group.

Peter Ward, WARDY IT Solutions: A Quick Look at SQL Server Denali

This month we will take a look at the next release of Microsoft SQL Server, code-named “Denali”.  With the release of CTP1 it is now possible to share a number of these new and exciting features and demonstrate how these features will assist organisations to manage mission-critical solutions through a highly scalable and available platform.

In this presentation you will get an overview of some of the key new features in this release including SQL Server AlwaysOn and the new Column-based query accelerator as well as a number of other enhancements.

About Peter Ward
Peter is the Chief Technical Architect for WARDY IT Solutions, a consulting and training company specialising in Microsoft SQL Server solutions.  Peter is an active member in the Australian SQL Server community and President of the Queensland SQL Server User Group.  He is a highly regarded speaker at SQL Server events and a sought after SQL Server consultant and trainer, providing solutions for some of the largest SQL Server sites in Australia.  Peter has been awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his technical excellence and commitment to the SQL Server Community.

Peter is an active member in the Australian SQL Server community and President of the Queensland SQL Server User Group.  In the last year Peter was a speaker for Tech-Ed North America, New Zealand and Australia.  He was also a Spotlight speaker for the SQL Pass Community Summit, the largest SQL Server event in the world.

Date: Thursday 16 Dec 2010
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Location: Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane

RSVP
All welcome. Bring your colleagues.
If you haven’t already done so, an immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

These details are also on QMSDNUG’s website at www.qmsdnug.org.

An always-entertaining speaker and a meaty topic for this month’s meeting on Tuesday Sept 21.

Joseph Cooney: Hidden Gems of the Windows Operating System for Developers

Come along to this session and learn about two interesting technologies for Windows developers that are hardly known outside of Redmond.  They’ve both been around since Windows 2000, are fundamental parts of technologies that you use every day and both are fast!  Can you guess what the two mystery technologies are?

Find out this month at QMSDNUG.

About The Presenter: Joseph Cooney
To find out more about about Joseph’s skills, interests (and sense of humour) check out his blog at JCooney.NET.

Date: Tuesday 21 Sept 2010
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Location: Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane

RSVP
All welcome. Bring your colleagues.
If you haven’t already done so, an immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

These details are also on QMSDNUG’s website at www.qmsdnug.org.

A double-header for QMSDNUG’s April meeting with two speakers who are definitely worth going out of our way for.

Paul Stovell: Aspect Oriented Programming

AOP allows you to separate the concerns of your code and to change the behaviour of existing objects.  In this session we will look at three ways of utilizing AOP techniques from .NET: using PostSharp, Castle Windsor Interceptors, and the Microsoft patterns & practices Policy Injection Application Block.  We will dive into the .NET runtime technologies that enable AOP, and look at some useful scenarios in which it can be used.

Solon Edmunds: Experiences with Agile

Agile encompasses a lot of things these days, a lot of it marketing .. some of which resembles miracle cures.

But in the real world, it takes time to learn new skills - they don’t just fall out of the sky and land in your lap like some people wish they would!  And both organisations and software development are complex, so evolving them is a process, and it’s useful to understand this and plan accordingly.

Solon will be happy to share some of his philosophies, anecdotes, and recommendations he has developed over a decade of implementing and customising agile processes in development houses.

Date: Tuesday 20 April 2010
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Location: Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane

RSVP
All welcome. Bring your colleagues.
If you haven’t already done so, an immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

These details are also on QMSDNUG’s website at www.qmsdnug.org.

Our main speaker for QMSDNUG’s February meeting is Robert Crago who will take us through the 3D features of WPF.  But first…

Joel Pobar : Visualisations of myschool.edu.au data

Joel Pobar will briefly show us how he used F# to relate disparate datasets and create his amazing visualisations of myschool.edu.au data.

Robert Crago, Revelation Computing :
An Introduction to WPF 3D

Robert Crago is a long-standing QMSDNUG member and freelance developer here in Brisbane.  Robert has been working with WPF since mid 2008.  WPF is finding steadily-increasing use in development projects where the UI is important and supports a complete 3D engine “out of the box”.  To his knowledge the 3D aspects of WPF have not yet been explored at an MSDN meeting here in Brisbane.

This talk will cover both the concepts and code you need to get started with 3D in WPF.

1. What you can do in 3D
2. 3D basics using Expression Blend
3. A simple 3D example without writing code
4. Making a scene
5. Using 3D in Line of Business apps
6. Applying 3D to a real world example

RSVP:
All welcome.  Bring your colleagues.
An early rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.

… then more developers might avoid basic mistakes and identify performance problems BEFORE deployment.

At QMSDNUG’s November meeting, Peter Ward will show us how to ensure, when it comes to SQL Server, noone can say “ur doin’ it wrong.”

Peter writes:
Bon Jovi had a hit song in the 90’s with a chorus that went something along the lines of ‘The server is running slow, and you’re to blame.  You give SQL Server a bad name’.  If you look at most Information Technology courses today this parody often rings true.  There are all sorts of exciting (and ‘sexier’) subjects such as Object Oriented Programming and Programming Abstraction but somehow the subject ‘SQL Server 101′ has been overlooked.

As a result there are set of common mistakes that are made time and time again by developers that cause an application to negatively affect the performance of SQL Server.  Peter Ward from WARDY IT Solutions (www.wardyit.com) will walk through some of the common Gotcha’s when developing an application that accesses SQL Server and how to identify possible performance issues prior to deployment.

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