Community Blogs

We are pleased to announce that the Alt.Net UK Conference will be returning in September, and that there will be room for more attendees this time! The plan is host the event at Conway Hall in London and our thinking is to follow the same sort of schedule as we did in February: - Evening planning session on Friday 12th September, following by a trip to a bar to socialise. - The Open Spaces sessions all day on Saturday 13th September This time we are thinking of starting off Saturday with a Park Bench to get the juices flowing. We are very open to listening to feedback from the community if you think that there are ways that we can improve on the conference experience. We would especially like to have more testers, technical authors and usability...

Danny over at the Alt.Net yahoo group asked about alt.net events in London. I thought I would publicize more widely for folks that do not know what is on offer. I run the London .NET user group. We have covered alt.net topics for the last 5 or so years, and have always had strong alt.net community involvement. For example we ran the XP game for everyone back in 2005. You can find our, much in need of work when I get some time, site here. I am also involved in running the altnetconf in London with Ben and Alan with lots of help from Michelle at Conchango . We held an open spaces conference last January and are in the planning stages for a new one in September. We do have a google group that you can find here . I don't spend as much time there...

What better way to celebrate Canada Day than to announce that registration is now open for the ALT.NET Canada Open Spaces ? The event is happening in Calgary, Alberta on August 15 to 17, 2008 at the University of Calgary 's MacEwan Conference Centre . ALT.NET is not about being alternative, but about considering alternatives and choosing the best approach for your project - be that a product from Redmond, open source software, or a commercial third-party library. The conference brings together bright minds in our industry to discuss more effective ways to develop software and solve real business problems. We're honoured to have Steven "Doc" List facilitating the Open Space. (Doc facilitated both the Austin and Seattle ALT.NET...

Toronto SharePoint User Group 2 Bloor West, Toronto Wednesday, June 25 6:00pm Registration and Social 6:30pm Meeting 7:00pm Feature Presentation (description below) 8:30pm Closing This is our last meeting of the 2007-2008 season. After June 25 , TSPUG is on summer break until September 17 . Future-Ready SharePoint Architecture: From Taxonomy to Deployment by Eli Robillard ( Infusion Development ), Ruven Gotz (Ideaca), and Craig Lussier (Torys LLP). In last month's episode (by Mindsharp , with several courses in Toronto the week of July 14 to 18 ), we learned the benefits of designing an effective taxonomy. This month we'll continue with the how-to's of designing taxonomies, and then turn our business requirements and corporate taxonomy...

WUX315 - PHP on Windows: Not an Oxymoron! Session Day/Time: 6/6/2008 10:15AM-11:30AM Room: S230 A Is it a well kept secret? From Microsoft Internet Information Services, to AJAX, to Microsoft .NET, Windows is a viable platform for your existing PHP based applications. In this session, see how to configure PHP on Windows for performance and reliability and how you can take PHP applications to the next level by leveraging .NET and Windows. WUX314 - AJAX Programming with the Microsoft AJAX Technologies Session Day/Time: 6/5/2008 4:30PM-5:45PM Room: S320 C Microsoft AJAX Developer technologies are a collection of offerings that make AJAX programming slick and productive, but have you wrapped your head around all the pieces? This session provides...

This morning I did a Silverlight 2 talk at Microsoft Montreal, during a half-day briefing called Building Compelling Websites on the Microsoft Platform . That was a 1 hour talk to present Silverlight 2, DeepZoom, Expression Blend and create from scratch a Silverlight 2 application which consume LINQ To SQL data exposed by a WCF service with VS2008. I would like to thank Paul Laberge for offering me the opportunity to do my very first presentation in english... Here are the links to the online demos I showed: DeepZoom: http://memorabilia.hardrock.com Performances comparison with DHTML/Flex/SL1.0/SL2: http://www.bubblemark.com Free charts controls: http://www.visifire.com Medical sample (amazing) application: http://www.mscui.net/PatientJourneyDemonstrator...

Another DevTeach has come and gone. I had an awesome time. I enjoyed hanging out with old friends and meeting some new ones. I saw a lot of great sessions, but the best part, as always, is the hallway and bar conversations. (No, I still haven't quite figured out Metastones , even after playing for hours.) I wanted to especially thank everyone involved in the agile track - both presenters and attendees. I have received a lot of positive feedback on the track. Given that I organized the track, I am immensely pleased with its success. You can download my slides and demos from here or the DevTeach site. Achieving Persistence Ignorance with NHibernate (2.6 MB) Taming Software Dependencies with DI and IoC (20.9 MB) I have started keeping my latest...

Doug Seven of Microsoft is hosting a party at Howl at the Moon during TechEd on June 3rd. He has some details on his blog and the party will include (and require for admission) a rubber duck competition. You'll need to pick up your duck for admission at the Teched Technical Learning Center at the Developer Tools & Languages information desk. One duck will admit two people so bring a friend! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Read More...

In just 10 days (May 10th, 2008), TECHbash 2008 will kick off in northeastern Pennsylvania. The show has been around since 2005 and will include several hundred developers, IT professionals, and industry experts from PA and surrounding states. Joe Stagner from Microsoft will be giving the keynote and my company, Lake Quincy Media , is one of the sponsors of the show. Speakers will include MVPs Miguel Castro, Sam Gentile, and many more. Jason Gaylord (who runs the .NET Valley User Group ) is one of the primary organizers of the event and has done a very good job. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Read More...

DevTeach is happening May 12-16, 2008, this time in Toronto, Canada. DevTeach is a fantastic conference and that's not because I'm speaking there or organizing the Agile Track - though those are good reasons too. Just take a look at the line-up of internationally known speakers . Attendance is purposely capped in the hundreds to encourage speakers and attendees to meet, chat, dine, drink, and otherwise talk tech in a relaxed atmosphere. For those interested in agile development, the Agile Track has been expanded to 17 sessions over the full three days. There is also Party with Palermo , a keynote by Scott Hanselman (Microsoft), and .NET Rocks Panel Discussion with Scott Bellware, Ted Neward, and Oren Eini. If you've been itching...