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Where are the Boston .NET User Group meetings?

Meetings held at the Microsoft New England Headquarters in Waltham, MA unless indicated otherwise (Directions).

Certification Study Group
Meets Every Monday, 18:30-21:00
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Work towards a Microsoft Certificaton Exam with Your Peers.

The Boston.NET User Group coordinates a Certification Study Group which is a volunteer peer study group devoted to earning Microsoft certification.

There is no fee to participate. The only requirement is that members come prepared to actively participate in a discussion of reading the week's material. We rotate presentations of the topic subject matter and review likely exam questions.

If you're serious about learning new technologies, advancing your career, and networking with other motivated peers we encourage you to attend our next meeting.

For more information visit our web site  or email Abe Rosner at certification_AT_bostondotnet.com.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday December 10, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Annual Holiday Gathering & Tech Swap 6:00-8:00 p.m.

On our December meeting date we will again host our popular annual Pot-Luck Holiday Gathering. No techncial sessions, just an opportunity to get together with fellow developers and enjoy some food and beverages. Each person is requested to bring a beverage, appetizer, main dish, or dessert item to share with the group.

A new addition this year will be a "Tech Swap". Everyone is encouraged to bring any old tech "stuff" lying around their closet, office, etc. We'll have a room where all the items can be dislayed and "acquired" by fellow members. Books, computers, video cards, boxes of 5 1/4 floppies, and anything else. SORRY, NO CRT MONITORS! All items now finding a new owner by the end of the evening will be discarded. Please, tech related items only :-)

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday January 14, 2009
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Parallel Programming in .NET
Richard Hale Shaw

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Presentation details shortly.

RichardRichard is the CEO of the Richard Hale Shaw Group, where he is a consultant, architect and lecturer who focuses on Managed Code development of distributed systems with the C# Language and the .NET Framework.

Richard is a Microsoft MVP for Visual C#, and since 2002, has been a member of the C# Customer Council: a group of hand-picked experts who consult to the C# Team at Microsoft regarding new features and new directions in the C# Programming Language.

In the Boston area, he's also known as a budding jazz bassist with a deep love of the work of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. You can reach him at: www.RichardHaleShawGroup.com.
Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday February 11, 2009
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

On a Clear Day You Can See Cloud Computing: A First Look at Windows Azure
Michael Stiefel

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Michael Stiefel will give us a first hand look at Microsoft Azure, the new "cloud computing" service platform introduced at the Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles. The Azure Services Platform is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. The Azure Services Platform provides a range of functionality to build applications that span from consumer web to enterprise scenarios and includes a cloud operating system and a set of developer services.

Michael Stiefel, principal of Reliable Software, Inc. is a consultant on software architecture and development, and the alignment of information technology with business goals. He is currently a member of the OASIS Technical Committee developing a core SOA Reference Model and related Reference Architectures. In July 2006 Stiefel was named a Microsoft Visual Developer - Solutions Architect MVP.

Stiefel was a Principal Software Engineer for Prime Computer, developing a mechanical CAD/CAM database system. He also worked for Microsoft assisting their Fortune 500 clients in developing client/server solutions. He is a Visiting Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Science, Technology and Society Program where his research and teaching focus is the teaching of engineering to high school and undergraduate students. As Adjunct faculty, Stiefel has taught graduate and undergraduate software engineering courses at Northeastern University and Framingham State University. Michael Stiefel's education is from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a Interdisciplinary Ph.D degree in Nuclear Engineering, Political Science, and History of Technology; M.S. in Nuclear Engineering; and B.S. in Electrical Engineering. He is an active member of Independent Computer Consultants Association and the IEEE Consultants Network.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday March 11, 2009
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Interfacing .NET and Java
Stuart Jones

6:00-8:00 p.m.

While the sabers continue to rattle over the superiority of either .Net or Java over its competing platform, the fact of the matter is that terrific software systems have been written in both platforms and sometimes we need them to just get along and work with one another. Perhaps you have built a best-of-breed turnkey platform in .Net but now have a major prospective client who is running in a Java environment. Or maybe you have legacy or acquired software written in Java but need to leverage it with a team of .Net developers. How will you get these two systems to communicate with one another and get the job done in a cogent, efficient and performant manner?

This talk will look at the various ways that .Net and Java systems can work together to provide solid business solutions. We'll look at the strengths and weaknesses of each platform as well as some of the problems that you will face when trying to interface one platform with the other. The speaker has experience in designing software in both .Net and Java and has faced some of the problems when these two strange bedfellows must live under the same roof.

With over twenty-five years of software development experience, Stuart Jones offers in-depth technical expertise combined with a strong sense of meeting business objectives. As both an entrepreneur and consultant, Dr. Jones has helped countless firms across a wide array of industries achieve their business goals through sound engineering practices and creative software solutions. His software development firm, Berwick Heights Software Inc (www.berwickheights.com

Prior to founding Berwick Heights Software, Dr. Jones was a key member in building Boston Technology into the world’s leading provider of voicemail systems. Boston Technology (now Comverse) grew from a startup venture into a billion dollar telecommunication firm during the 1990s. Dr. Jones led the effort in bringing the company from a ten person engineering team generating $2 million in revenue to a fifty-plus person team generating over $40 million in revenue, all within a two year time frame.

Before his success at Boston Technology, Dr. Jones worked for Apollo Computer in their distributed systems group. He designed and co-wrote the world’s first concurrent software license server, a then novel way of protecting software licensing in a networked computer environment. He received a patent as part of the team that developed the concurrent license server and led the effort in promoting the idea to software companies and businesses.

A member of both the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) and the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Dr. Jones received his M.S. in Computer Science from SUNY-Stony Brook and his B.S in Computer Science from Florida State University. Also a recognized composer of modern chamber music, which often employs computer-generated sounds, he earned his PhD in Music Composition from Columbia University. His music is performed in concert halls and music festivals throughout the United States and Europe.