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Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday November 12, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

WinCe .NET Development
Pat Tormey

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Visiting from the wilds of New Hampshire Pat Tormey will show you everything you need to know about .Net programming WinCe gadgets.

Pat’s current project is a work in process (The best time to ask questions) to manage a touch screen display running WinCe with FrameWork 3.5 to control an embedded “brain” for a Plasma Cutting Torch. (We’ll leave the torch home but bring the brain!).

You already have all the tools you need in VS 2008 with the Windows Mobile SDK. It just like Windows Forms only everything is SMALLER.. Less Ram. Smaller Screen

No hard disk.. and a slow processor!. But VS 2008 connects up thru the ActiveSync, or if you are Vista-nista, Windows Mobile Device Center attaching your debugger directly to the running WinCe gadget.. Once you know what is there and what’s missing you can stop turning down the LITTLE jobs and get Mobile.

Pat Tormey is President of Four Square Solutions, a consulting company providing application design and development services. Pat is a Microsoft Certified Professional (VB & C# Web) and frequent speaker in the New England area. He also leads the New Hampshire .NET User Group.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday October 8, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

LINQ Demystified
Dan Mezick

6:00-8:00 p.m.

LINQ is rather poorly explained across the entire range of books, web, and blogs. What is LINQ? Attend this session to get context on what LINQ is, what technologies make up the LINQ foundation, and why you care. LINQ is the 'under ORM', the Microsoft API for building Object Relational Mappers.

Attend this session to learn how technology from .NET 1.0 (that's right, 1.0) is a pivotal piece of LINQ. Attend this session to understand LINQ from both a high level (think OR/M) and a low level (think iterators and delegates). Iterators, generics, IEnumerable and delegates-- **all** of these topics are .NET 2.0 (or earlier) technology. And are all central to understanding and using LINQ under .NET 3.5.

LINQ is not OR/M. LINQ is, quite literally, the "ORM API". You exit this session knowing exactly where LINQ fits, how to program using it, how to avoid pitfalls, and where to find the best resources for further study. You exit this session completely clear on essential LINQ concepts, facilities and techniques-- complete with the source code.

To prepare for this session, see the following links:
LINQ, the ORM API.....the 'under ORM'
http://www.newtechusa.com/agile/blog/?p=11
http://www.newtechusa.com/agile/blog/?p=15

Dan Mezick is a expert at explaining Microsoft development tools, with over 14 years of experience teaching software development. Dan teaches C# and ASP.NET programming for North Haven, Connecticut-based New Technology Solutions (www.newtechusa.com) and also delivers Agile mentoring and coaching. He leads and organizes Agile/CT (www.newtechusa.com/agile). He holds software patents related to software development tools, and is an invited presenter at developer events such as CodeCamp, Agile2007 and Agile2008. Reach Dan at dan.mezick_AT_newtechusa.com.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday September 10, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Developing Collaborative Applications with SharePoint Technologies
Bob German

6:00-8:00 p.m.
SharePoint is a great platform for developing applications that build on its “out of the box” capabilities for collaboration, document management, publishing, search and more. In this session we’ll focus on applications that help teams to collaborate, based on real customer solutions: how to use SharePoint workflow to provide customer self-service; how to combine collaboration and reporting to provide a 360 degree view of business entities; how to track a team working on complex documents and more. In each case we’ll look at the business solution and the code required to make it work.

Bob German is a Technology Architect at the Microsoft Technology Center in Boston, MA. Bob specializes in web sites, portals and collaboration technologies, including Microsoft SharePoint and related technologies. With over 25 years of industry experience, Bob helps customers create and prove out solutions which fit their business and technology needs.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday August 13, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Reflection, with Custom Attributes
Dan Mezick

6:00-8:00 p.m.
Reflection is an important topic for your all-round deep understanding of .NET platform mechanics. For example, without reflection, there is no possibility of dynamic Intellisense. The reflection classes allow you to dynamically discover, identify and call methods on a class in a DLL. When you need to get going with Reflection and Attributes, what you really need is a very good explanation, and solid piece of code that demonstrates just how to use the API. This session provides both.

Attend this session to see .NET Reflection and custom .NET Attributes in action-- and to get clear on using Reflection and authoring Custom Attributes. You exit the session with the complete application, in commented C#.NET source code

Dan Mezick is a expert at explaining Microsoft development tools, with over 14 years of experience teaching software development. Dan teaches C# and ASP.NET programming for Connecticut-based New Technology Solutions (www.newtechusa.com). He holds software patents related to software development tools, and is an invited presenter at conferences such as Agile2007 and Agile2008. Reach Dan at dan.mezick_AT_newtechusa.com.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday July 9, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Introduction to Game Development with XNA
Chris Bowen

6:00-8:00 p.m.
Summer is upon us, so what better excuse to break away from the norm and discuss games? This meeting is for people who enjoy games, and have always wanted to know more about how they’re made… and maybe how to make their own. XNA (http://creators.xna.com) is a game development platform based on the .NET Framework that helps to make it easy to develop games for Windows, Xbox, and now the Zune as well. Using the free XNA Game Studio, you can use those same C# skills that pay the bills by day for creating your own games by night (or really whenever you'd like.) We'll introduce XNA, show you around the XNA world, then create a simple 2D game from scratch to give you a feel for game mechanics and the architecture of XNA. This session requires no game development experience, only a passion for coding and for games!

Chris Bowen (http://blogs.msdn.com/cbowen) is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, covering the Northeast. An avid gamer, Chris is also Microsoft’s XNA Champion for the northeast and active in the Boston area game development community. A software architect and engineer with over 16 years of experience, Chris joined Microsoft after holding senior architect and developer positions at companies such as Monster, VistaPrint, Staples, and IDX Systems and consulting on web presence and eCommerce projects with others. He is coauthor of "Essential Windows Communication Foundation" and "Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System". He specializes in application architecture and building highly-scalable transactional web systems and holds an M.S. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Management Information Systems, both from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday June 11, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Programming Silverlight – Adding Rich Interactive Applications to Your Web Site In 2 Hours
Jesse Liberty

6:00-8:00 p.m.
This code-intensive introduction to Silverlight Development is targeted at developers with little or no Silverlight 2 experience. Liberty will present a brisk, high-value set of examples to demonstate what Silverlight programming is all about, and will point you to the free on-line resources you’ll want to begin building Silverlight 2 applications. “This is a zero-hype, developer to developer presentation of what I honestly believe is a very powerful technology that nearly every .NET developer will want to start learning in the next six months.”

Jesse Liberty ("Silverlight Geek") is a Microsoft Senior Program Manager whose business card reads “Silverlight Geek”. Liberty works for Scott Guthrie, in the Silverlight Development Division where he is responsible for the creation of tutorials, videos and other content to facilitate the learning and use of Silverlight.  He is a best-selling author of more than a dozen programming books including the forthcoming Programming Silverlight, O’Reilly 2008.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday May 14, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Windows Workflow and WCF Help Make “Software + Services” a Reality
Michael Stiefel

6:00-8:00 p.m.

The future of software is a combination of local software and Internet services interacting with one another. Software should run in locations that have the maximum compute power while minimizing the amount of data that has to be transfered. Sometimes mission critical software has to run even when disconnected to the Internet. When reconnected, the various data sources have to be reconciled. By bringing together the worlds of rich clients and services in the cloud, you can get the best of both worlds.

Two critical technologies for putting together these two worlds are Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). WCF makes it possible for the different worlds to talk to each other. WF makes it possible for applications to run when and where it is appropriate, and to easily wait for data to arrive.

.NET Framework 3.5 has begun the integration of these two technologies. This gateway to the world of Software + Services is what we will explore.

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 April 9, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Building User Controls in Silverlight 2.0
Fritz Onion

6:00-8:00 p.m.
The primary mechanism for reuse in Silverlight 2.0 is the user control. This talk will walk through the steps for building effective user controls in the newly released Silverlight 2.0 beta, including steps for creating user control projects in Visual Studio 2008, editing user control user interfaces with Expression Blend 2.0, exposing properties and events from user controls, as well as control packaging.
Fritz Onion is a co-founder of Pluralsight, a premier Microsoft .NET training provider. Fritz is the author of Pluralsight's ASP.NET curriculum, with courses delivered around the world. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book Essential ASP.NET (Addison Wesley), and is currently working on a second edition that will cover ASP.NET 2.0. He is a columnist for MSDN Magazine and is also a regular speaker at industry conferences. You can read Fritz's blog at http://pluralsight.com/fritz/.
Code Camp 9: I Came, I Saw, I Coded
In the words of Julius Caesar: Veni, vidi, vibi

Saturday & Sunday April 5-6, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Come join us for another weekend of great presentations from your peers in the community at this FREE community organized event! Register and view the session at www.thedevcommunity.org.
Visual Studio/SQL Server/Windows Server 2008 Launch Event

Tuesday March 18, 2008
The Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
415 Summer St, Boston, MA

9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

Spend a Day Getting an In-Depth Look at These New Products!

Check out the details of the Boston Launch Event and register today (first come, first served.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday March 12, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA


MIX 2008 Recap

5:15-6:00 p.m.

Pizza and drinks courtesy of LATTIX.

See an overview of some important developer tools announced at the MIX '08 conference in Las Vegas last week along with some observations from several people that attended the conference. Several incredible demos of real life web sites using Silverlight, Microsoft's new browser plug-in will be shown as well as part of a great interview of Steve Ballmer by Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures.


To Know the Dependencies is to Understand the Architecture
Neeraj Sangal

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Have you ever found the need to change or update a large system? How do you understand such a system? How can you determine what far reaching effects a change may have?

This presentation will showcase a new technique which utilizes inter-module dependencies to represent and manage the architecture of complex software applications. Using these dependencies a dependency models is built which provide a precise big picture view of the architecture. These models use a Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) to provide a developer's view of the architecture that is highly scalable compared to the box and arrow diagrams that are common today.

This approach will be demonstrated by applying it in commonly used applications based on the .NET framework. It will also be applied to a SQL Server database to examine the data architecture from the perspective of dependencies within its elements. Finally, the dependency analysis will be used to extract the architecture and show how actual models can be created for multiple generations of an application to highlight how architecture evolves and how it often begins to degrade.

If there is interest, this approach will be used for a system provided by somebody in the audience. If you are interested in examining your system, please bring your dlls containing managed code for analysis on a memory stick. You should have an overall understanding of the architecture of your system so you can provide the critical input to interpret and transform the DSM. For best results, bring something large and complex!

Neeraj Sangal is President and CTO of LATTIX, a company specializing in Software Architecture Management solutions and services. He has analyzed the architecture of many large software systems. Over the last few years, Neeraj has pioneered the use of Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) in software architecture. This new approach utilizes dependencies for the creation of highly scalable models that permit a precise specification and enforcement of the architecture. Prior to Lattix, Neeraj was President of Tendril Software, a leader in model-driven development and synchronized UML models. Tendril was acquired by BEA/WebGain. Prior to Tendril, Neeraj managed a distributed development organization at HP. Neeraj is a regular speaker at technical conferences, user groups and industry events.
Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Thursday January 31, 2008 (SPECIAL NIGHT)
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Understanding Software + Services
David Chappell 

The move to service-orientation is well underway, both inside enterprises and on the Internet. What role does traditional software play in a world of on-line services? In particular, how is Microsoft approaching the combination of software plus services? This presentation provides an overview of this area, giving an introduction to and a perspective on this emerging combination.

Note: This replaces our Feburary 13th meeting!

David Chappell is Principal of Chappell & Associates in San Francisco, California. Through his speaking, writing, and consulting, he helps IT professionals around the world understand, use, and make better decisions about enterprise software.

David has been the keynote speaker for dozens of conferences and events in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America. His popular seminars have been attended by tens of thousands of developers, architects, and decision makers in forty countries. He has also spoken at many universities, including the National University of Singapore, Moscow State University, and Sweden’s Uppsala University.

David’s books have been published in ten languages and used regularly in courses at MIT, ETH Zurich, and other educational institutions. He is Series Editor for Addison-Wesley’s award-winning Independent Technology Guides, and he’s been a columnist for several publications. In his consulting practice, David has helped clients such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Stanford University, and Target Corporation adopt new technologies, market new products, train their sales staffs, and create business plans.

David’s comments have appeared in The New York Times, CNN.com, and many other publications. Earlier in his career, he wrote software for supercomputers, chaired a U.S. national standardization working group, and played keyboards with the Peabody-award-winning Children’s Radio Theater. David holds a B.S. in Economics and an M.S. in Computer Science, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.You can reach him at: www.davidchappell.com

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday January 9, 2008
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Resistance is Futile: The Productivity Gains of Moving to LINQ (and X/DLinq)
Richard Hale Shaw

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Compare the new LINQ constructs (and other new features in C# 3.0) to C# 2.0 and .NET 2.0/3.0, and you'd think they created an entirely new language. The addition of lambda expressions (and the new => operator) -- not to mention the from-each construct and extension methods -- make it pretty bizarre. Throw in var, and it starts to look like JavaScript! But the fact is: C# 3.0 and LINQ are built on features of C# 2.0 that have been around for some time, and these new features are, in many respects, logical extensions to technology that's long been tested and put into play.

In this overview of LINQ, XLINQ and DLINQ, Richard will show how these features work and why they'll deliver major production pay-offs as you incorporate them into existing code bases. We'll start with the fundamentals of LINQ -- and how it's predicated on any sequence or object that implements IEnumerable -- and proceed to look at other sources of data such as databases (using DLINQ -- now known as LINQ to SQL), and XML documents (using XLINQ -- now known as LINQ to XML). Once we're finished, you'll have a clear picture of the productivity gains to be obtained by these new extensions to C# and .NET, and why you'll eventually do anything to avoid going back.

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 Holiday Event!

Wednesday December 12, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Annual Holiday Potluck & Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest

5:30-8:00 p.m.

Join us for our annual informal gathering to chat with fellow developers and enjoy the holiday season. As is our tradition, this will be a "potluck" event where each person is requested to bring a food item to share. This year courtesty of Chris Bowen our Developer Evanglist for Microsoft Northest we will also have gaming, t-shirts, and a raffle for a 8 GB Zune! Hope you can join us.

Register for the event and get a FREE copy of Visual Studio 2008 (First 150 registrants only) if you bring a food item for the PotLuck!

NOTE: IN ORDER TO GET YOUR FREE COPY OF VISUAL STUDIO 2008 ALL REGISTRANTS (REGULAR & WAITLIST) MUST CHECK-IN AT THE EVENT BEFORE 7:00 P.M. OR FORFEIT YOUR COPY.

WAITING LIST POLICY: The registration count has reached 150 so additional registrants will be put on a waiting list for a free copy of Visual Studio 2008. If someone registered in the first 150 people does not check-in at the event by 7:00 p.m., we will then give copies to individuals on the waiting list who have checked-in by 7 p.m. in the order they registered. For example, registrant #151 will get the first unclaimed copy, #152 the second copy, etc.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday November 14, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Mobile Devices Web Design and Development with ASP.NET 2.0 and Beyond
Don Sorcinelli

6:00-8:00 p.m.

An ever-increasing number of mobile device users are leveraging the power of the Internet while on the go. Most web sites, however, are not optimized for limited mobile web browsers, limited user input functionality and limited screen real estate. In addition, many ‘mobile web sites’ are optimized for a specific web browser, while many exist. In this presentation, you will learn about the challenges posed by modern mobile web development and learn the design principles that will lead to effective development. In addition, you will learn some of the best practices to employ to extend existing web application architectures. You will also learn about the powerful features included in the ASP.NET 2.0 platform and Visual Studio 2005 that can greatly reduce the amount of time required to develop and test your mobile web applications.”

Don Sorcinelli has been involved with planning, developing and deploying enterprise applications for over 15 years. His involvement in these processes expanded to include the PDA platforms starting in the late 1990’s.

Don was awarded Most Valuable Professional status for Windows Mobile Devices by Microsoft Corporation in January 2004 for his work with the Windows Mobile user and developer communities.

Don currently is Co-Manager of the Boston/New England Windows Mobile User and Developer Groups, and Editor-In-Chief of BostonPocketPC.com (http://www.bostonpocketpc.com). He can be contacted at donsorcinelli@bostonpocketpc.com.”

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday October 10, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

6:00-8:00 p.m.

The Social Web and “Digital Natives:” What Developers Should Know
Tony Pino

Emerging modes of social production such as blogs, wikis, tagging, folksonomies and mashups have changed the face of the internet and hold important considerations for those developing the next wave of applications. As “Digital Natives,” those who have grown up in a digital world and for whom connectedness is taken for granted, mature and both forge the online space into a more social one and become mainstream users of software, it is important to understand how they interact with technology, information, and with each other online.

We’ll look at the concepts and tools that form the “web 2.0” buzzword with an eye towards helping developers who are building applications in this new world: a primer on blogs, wikis, tagging, and other new aspects of today’s web; the importance of a feedback loop for users and the lack of a software adoption cycle; the importance of peer review; why we all need to “set our data free” so it can be “mashed up” with other data, services, and visualizations, and how to stay abreast of these new happenings.

The presentation aims to be useful to both those unfamiliar with these topics and those who may use some of these new technologies and would like to explore them more and with an eye towards developing software for tomorrow’s user base.

Tony is a researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

Presentation and Discussion with the Common Language Runtime Team from Redmond
Mike Downen, Jesse Kaplin, Melitta Andersen, and Andrew Dai

Mike Downen is a Lead Program Manager on the Common Language Runtime team, focusing on the base class libraries, security, reflection, and add-ins. Before becoming management overhead, he was the Program Manager for security on the CLR. He has been on the CLR team for 4 years, and has been at Microsoft for over 9 years, starting as a developer in Office. Jesse Kaplan is the PM on the CLR team for Add-Ins and Extensibility, runtime versioning, and hosting. Melitta Andersen is a Program Manager on the Base Class Libraries team of the Common Language Runtime. She currently works on the base types, globalization, localization, and numerics. She’s been at Microsoft for two months, plus an internship with this same group last summer. Andrew Dai is a new Program Manager for Security on the Common Language Runtime group. He is currently involved with the CLR security model and APIs as well as internal security assurance. Andrew has been with Microsoft for a little over two months and is a college hire.

REMIX '07 Boston

Monday/Tuesday October 8-9, 2007
Hyatt Regency, Cambridge, MA

Don't miss this event that was SOLD OUT in Las Vegas last April!

REMIX is an event for developers and designers showcasing the new Microsoft technologies for media and rich Internet development such as the new browser plugin Silverlight.. Check out the details and Register using the code RM07EXTB and receive a $100 discount.

Code Camp 8: Rise of the Silverlight Surfer

Saturday/Sunday September 29-30, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Join us for another great weekend of peer-to-peer information sharing!

Register or submit a speaker abstract at www.thedevcommunity.org.

Boston .NET User Group September Monthly Meeting

Wednesday September 12, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Web Services Security: Where are we now?
Robert Hurlbut

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Web Services are commonly used for both internal Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and B2B connectivity, and XML is the world's most successful and widely deployed data format. There have been a lot of work done over the past few years to help address security issues with web services, but there is still more to be done. Developers need to understand the common attacks and the best ways to build secure web services applications in order to defend against these attacks.

This presentation will introduce developers to the common web services attacks as well as current tools and issues within the web services security field. We will cover current recommendations in using SSL, the WS-* standards, REST, and other secure mitigations against the common attacks. Some of the current web services security tools will also be demonstrated

Robert Hurlbut is an independent software architect/developer and consultant and owner of Hurlbut Consulting, Inc. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Security Development. Robert specializes in application security, distributed architectures and database architecture and development. He has spoken at industry conferences, including WIN-DEV, New England Code Camp, Heartland Developers Conference, DevTeach, and VSLive!. Read his blog at http://weblogs.asp.net/rhurlbut.

Boston .NET User Group August Monthly Meeting

Wednesday August 8, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Identity choices: Who are you and how do I know?
Patrick Hynds

6:00-8:00 p.m.

The .NET platform has raised the bar on built in security mechanisms especially with the release of the latest version 3. This makes life easier for developers to incorporate sound security design in their applications. But the challenge of security is an infinite surface, and there are trade-offs in every decision for what will be protected and what will not. We need to do this right especially in areas that impact the user experience. In this session we will explore the best way to approach decisions about securing your applications with an eye on identity and identity management, highlighting the tools and techniques used by both the hackers and the hacked. There are no perfect systems and thus there are many choices with pros and cons to each choice. When this session ends we hope to equip you to face those choices fully informed.

Patrick Hynds, is a Microsoft Regional Director and the President of CriticalSites. Named by Microsoft as the Regional Director for Boston, he has been recognized as a leader in the technology field. An expert on Microsoft technology and experienced with other technologies as well (Websphere, Sybase, Perl, Java, Unix, Netware, C++, etc.), Patrick previously taught freelance software development and Network Architecture. He has been a successful contractor who enjoyed mastering difficult troubleshooting assignments. A graduate of West Point and a Gulf War veteran, Patrick brings an uncommon level of dedication to his leadership role at CriticalSites. Experienced in addressing business challenges with special emphasis on security issues involving leading-edge database, web and hardware systems. Patrick often speaks at major technical conferences including: TechEd US, TechEd Hong Kong, the Middle East Developer's Conference in Cairo, Egypt, Microsoft Security Summit in New York and Boston, DevDays, Code Camp and many more. In spite of the demands of his management role at CriticalSites, Patrick stays technical and in the trenches acting as Project Manager and/or developer/engineer on selected projects throughout the year.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday July 11, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

A Tour of Microsoft AJAX 1.0
Chris Pels, iDevTech

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Microsoft AJAX 1.0 provides .NET developers integrated client script libraries and server classes for a powerful development framework. This presentation will provide an overview of the AJAX architecture as well as several specific examples including using the ASP.NET membership service via AJAX, building custom AJAX controls, and AJAX localization features.

Chris Pels founded the consulting firm iDevTech www.idevtech.com in 1986 and has been instrumental in the architecture, development, and implementation of a wide variety of business systems and databases during his 20 years as a technology consultant. He has extensive experience in many aspects of business, database design, several programming languages, and statistical analysis. As an enterprise architect, his current focus is on software as a service (SAAS) system design and implementation. He has been a speaker at the VSLive, Code Camps, Microsoft DevDays and numerous other events. Chris holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He is a Microsoft XML MVP, Immediate Past President of INETA NorAm, and Leader of the Boston .NET User Group. He can be reached at chris.pels@idevtech.com.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday June 13, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

.NET Technology Series

5:30-6:15 p.m.

Join this session designed to introduce an interesting aspect of .NET or a useful tool each month.

The monthly .NET Technology Series will present useful .NET related tools, programming techniques, interesting applications, and more! This session is for both new and experienced .NET developers. Discussions are informal with everyone's input welcome. Come join us!

NET Development for the 2007 SharePoint Technologies
Bob German, Microsoft

6:30-8:30 p.m.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 offer lots of great new capabilities for building collaborative applications and custom solutions. During this talk, we will examine web part development, custom workflows and many other extensibility points available for .NET developers in these new technologies.

Bob German is a Technology Architect at the Microsoft Technology Center in Boston, MA. Bob specializes in web sites, portals and collaboration technologies, including Microsoft SharePoint and related technologies. With over 25 years of industry experience, Bob helps customers create and prove out solutions which fit their business and technology needs.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Tuesday May 8, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

.NET Technology Series

5:30-6:15 p.m.

Join this session designed to introduce an interesting aspect of .NET or a useful tool each month.

The monthly .NET Technology Series will present useful .NET related tools, programming techniques, interesting applications, and more! This session is for both new and experienced .NET developers. Discussions are informal with everyone's input welcome. Come join us!

Web Services in a Post Web 2.0 World
Mike Culver, Amazon.com

6:30-8:30 p.m.

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 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 $2 billion developing a world-class technology and content platform that powers Amazon web sites for millions of customers. Most people think “Amazon.com” when they hear the word; however developers are excited to learn that there is a separate technology arm of the company, known as Amazon Web Services or AWS. 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 200,000 developers have registered on Amazon’s developer site to create applications based on these services. Of course, the session will also feature code, in the form of writing a C# WinForms client that consumes Amazon Simple Storage Service. You’ll see that as easy as writing a WinForms app is, consuming the Web service is even easier. More importantly, it’s an opportunity for an interactive discussion about what the future, shaped by Web services and Web Scale Computing, looks like.

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. www.RichardHaleShawGroup.com.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday April 11, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

.NET Technology Series

5:30-6:15 p.m.

Join this session designed to introduce an interesting aspect of .NET or a useful tool each month.

The monthly .NET Technology Series will present useful .NET related tools, programming techniques, interesting applications, and more! This session is for both new and experienced .NET developers. Discussions are informal with everyone's input welcome. Come join us!

.NET 3.0 Series
Building Applications with Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation
Michael Stiefel

6:30-8:30 p.m.

Microsoft Windows Workflow (WF) is part of the .NET Framework 3.0, and offers a programming solution that lets you focus on writing business workflows immediately without having to solve the difficult problems of workflow plumbing. In this session, I will demonstrate how to build real world workflows. This will require overcoming some difficult challenges. Businesses have complex policies that are difficult to express. Workflow Foundation allows you express these business policy constraints as rules which may vary depending on the specific business conditions. Most real life workflows run for long periods of time, this talk will show how to use compensation, rather than the classic ACID transaction model to build workflows. In addition, I will demonstrate how these long running workflows can communicate asynchronously with other people and software.

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.

Code Camp 7: Deer in Headlights

Saturday March 31-April 1, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

The every popular Code Camp is back for Version 7.0!

Code Camp is a FREE weekend long event where local developers share their code through lecture and informal discussion sessions. All developers are welcome to submit abstracts and present, no review, no selection process, everyone gets to present. This is a great opporutunity to present something you are working on or passionate about and also get some valuable public speaking experience. Visit thedevcommunity.org for details and to register. Hurry, the last several Code Camps have sold out!

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday March 14, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

.NET Technology Series

5:30-6:15 p.m.

Join this session designed to introduce an interesting aspect of .NET or a useful tool each month.

The monthly .NET Technology Series will present useful .NET related tools, programming techniques, interesting applications, and more! This session is for both new and experienced .NET developers. Discussions are informal with everyone's input welcome. Come join us!

.NET 3.0 Series
Deep Dive into XAML and WPF
Puneet Sarda

6:30-8:30 p.m.

In this Session Puneet will cover the following with regards to the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) in .NET 3.0:

  • Introduction to XAML and Tools involved in making WPF application and Resources available.
  • WPF Overview with coverage of WPF Architecture and WPF application compilation process.
  • Samples showing off features of WPF.
  • Create an application to better understand WPF and the API's involved.

Puneet Sarda is a Software Developer at Fidelity Investments in Smithfield, RI. Last year, while doing his Master's in computer science, he entered Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2005 competition where his team made it to the top 9 in the US finals. He has been programming in .NET for the last 3 years. In his spare time he enjoys playing with the upcoming technologies.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday February 14, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

.NET Technology Series

5:30-6:15 p.m.

Join this session designed to introduce an interesting aspect of .NET or a useful tool each month.

The monthly .NET Technology Series will present useful .NET related tools, programming techniques, interesting applications, and more! This session is for both new and experienced .NET developers. Discussions are informal with everyone's input welcome. Come join us!

.NET 3.0 Series
Building Applications with Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation
Michael Stiefel

6:30-8:30 p.m.

Microsoft Windows Workflow (WF) is part of the .NET Framework 3.0, and offers a programming solution that lets you focus on writing business workflows immediately without having to solve the difficult problems of workflow plumbing. In this session, I will demonstrate how to build real world workflows. This will require overcoming some difficult challenges. Businesses have complex policies that are difficult to express. Workflow Foundation allows you express these business policy constraints as rules which may vary depending on the specific business conditions. Most real life workflows run for long periods of time, this talk will show how to use compensation, rather than the classic ACID transaction model to build workflows. In addition, I will demonstrate how these long running workflows can communicate asynchronously with other people and software.

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 January 10, 2007
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

.NET 101 Series: red-gate SQL Refactor
John Raleigh, Boston .NET User Group Member

5:00-6:00 p.m.

If your job involves looking at a lot of SQL Server T-SQL statements, then you’re gonna love this demo. If you do HTML and have ever worked with the freeware HTML Tidy program, then this will look familiar. But that’s where the parallel stops. This product is a must for anyone dealing with T-SQL on a daily basis. SQL Refactor allows you to automatically format your SQL code and database objects in the style of your choice.

SQL Refactorimproves the quality of your code, making it easier to read, understand and share amongst a team. A companion tool to SQL Prompt, SQL Refactor dramatically speeds up database development and administration, without impacting on the behavior of your database and applications.

Raffle for a free copy of SQL Refactor donated by red-gate Software for attendees of this session!

.NET 3.0 Series
The Future is Here: Grokking C# 3.0 with C# 2.0
Richard Hale Shaw

6:30-8:30 p.m.

You may have heard about the new Language Integrated Query (LINQ) features being added to C# 3.0. While powerful and elegant, the root of C# 3.0 lambda expressions and query features are already available in C# 2.0, in the form of anonymous methods and custom Iterators. The former are methods that you can write "as-if" they were inline, inside of an existing methods: method building blocks as found in functional programming languages. The latter are complete implementations of IEnumerator/IEnumerable -- but generated by the compiler, so you only have to supply the MoveNext logic. Understand these and you're ready for C# 3.0!

In this talk, Richard will start with C# 2.0 anonymous methods, show how they work, and show how C# 3.0 lamda expressions are a more elegant and powerful way of creating them. Then he'll turn to C# 2.0 custom iterators, and show how their compiler-generated classes are the basis for the powerful search features of found in C# 3.0. Finally, he'll show how using pipelining patterns let you wire-together custom iterators to filter, order and otherwise manipulate collections -- the basis for Sequence.Where and Sequence.OrderBy in LINQ!

Richard 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 December 13, 2006


Annual Holiday Potluck Party!

5:30-7:30 p.m.

Come one, come all to our annual holiday gathering

Come join our annual holiday potluck gathering which is an informal event focused on netowrking and just hanging out with fellow members. Each person is asked to bring a food or beverage to share with the group. Please don't all bring desserts this year as we are still recovering from sugar overload :-). This is a great opportunity to just hang out with your fellow developers. Hope to see you there.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday November 8, 2006

.NET Question Night

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Get all your .NET questions answered from local experts and your fellow developers.

This month we will hold a special .NET Question Night where everyone is encouraged to bring any and all questions on any aspect of .NET (ASP.NET, WinForms, data access, and more). We'll make a list of everyone's questions and then several local experts and your fellow developers will get you answers. This is a unique opportunity to get your questions answered and also to learn about real life problems and their answers from fellow developers that may benefit you. Come join us!

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday October 11, 2006

.NET 101 Session

5:00-6:30 p.m.

Join this session designed to introduce a particular aspect of .NET each month.

The new monthly .NET 101 session will cover a .NET topic area at an introductory level for both people new to .NET development and experienced developers learning a new area. Come join us!

Building Web Applications with AJAX

6:30-8:30 p.m.
Stuart Jones

Companies that carved out a competitive edge in the 1990’s through innovative software applications face a different challenge in the new millennium: their clients want instant access to these applications via the web. When evaluating a number of equally capable software solutions, clients are increasingly choosing web-based solutions that require no installation on client machines and provide instant access from virtually any location.

Re-architecting an existing software solution for the web is a difficult task given the static nature of HTML vs. the dynamic nature of most user interfaces. The AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technique can help overcome the limitations of pure HTML to create feature-rich user interfaces matching those of most client/server-based applications.

This presentation looks at the basics of how AJAX works and offers a survey of the different toolkits that provide an AJAX platform for web applications. We will compare and contrast the Microsoft XMLHTTP object, a few of the AJAX frameworks currently available and the newer Atlas framework.The talk also presents some recent web-enabled applications that relied on AJAX for their novel approaches to web user experiences. The emphasis will be on the practical aspects of AJAX so that attendees will be able to use this exciting technique in their own web applications to create powerful web-based user interfaces.

Stuart Jones is president of Berwick Heights Software (www.berwickheights.com), which has specialized in the design and implementation of web services, enterprise systems, web-enabled applications and relational databases since 1994. Recent clients include IDT Corporation, Time Warner Cable, Atlanta International Airport and SAP. With over twenty years of software development experience, Dr. Jones offers in-depth expertise in service oriented architecture (SOA), web services (REST, SOAP, WS-*), object oriented design, message queuing, streaming media and database design. He is currently a member of the HR-XML Consortium, which is drafting a standard for processing human resource documents via web services. His blog can be read at www.berwickheights.com/blog.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday September 13, 2006
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

.NET 101 Series: Pattern Oriented Development Design Patterns From Analysis To Implementation
Alan Shalloway

5:00-6:00 p.m.

Join this session designed to introduce a particular aspect of .NET each month..

This seminar discusses how design patterns can be used to improve the entire software development process - not just the design aspect of it. Design patterns are usually thought of as being limited to solving local design/implementation problems. However, they can be very useful in:

  • providing a more powerful design alternative than identifying your classes by the nouns in your problem domain or abstracting out your special cases
  • developing maintainable code that is more robust to new variations in requirements
  • avoiding "paralysis by analysis"
  • creating a larger perspective on how to do and manage software development

Learn:

  • what design patterns are
  • how they take advantage of a new perspective on object-oriented design
  • the strategy design pattern
  • the abstract factory design pattern
  • how to use design patterns in analysis to discover and manage variations - the Analysis Matrix
  • a new perspective on object-oriented design that goes beyond relying on class hierarchies
  • how using patterns in design can assist you in creating a big picture while deferring decisions at a detail level
  • how to reduce risk by getting feedback faster
  • how design patterns and agile development methods complement each other

This seminar is intended for those people who have little or no experience using design patterns. However, if you understand design patterns, this seminar shows you a different way to think about them. Patterns are much more powerful when considered from analytical, design and implementation perspectives -- which is a fairly uncommon view of patterns.

Alan Shalloway is the CEO of Net Objectives. Since 1981, Alan Shalloway has been both an OO consultant and developer of software in several industries. Alan is a frequent speaker at prestigious conferences around the world, including: SD Expo, Java One, OOP, OOPSLA. He is the primary author of Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design and is currently co-authoring three other books in the software development area. He is a certified ScrumMaster and has a Masters in Computer Science from M.I.T. He concentrates his training and coaching in Lean Software Development, Design Patterns, and Agile Software.

Fritz Onion
Code Behind and Compilation in ASP.NET 2.0

6:30-8:30 p.m.

While much stays the same in the core infrastructure with this release of ASP.NET, there is one significant change that you will notice the first time you create a new .aspx page in your project: the code behind model is different. Actually, even more than that, the entire compilation model has changed. The introduction of partial classes, special compilation directories, and the new aspnet_compiler.exe utility give the Web developer an unprecedented number of options for deployment and compilation of his Web application. This session will cover the details of the new code behind model and compilation features of ASP.NET 2.0 in depth, exploring not only the standard usage model, but also unexpected combinations that lead to interesting alternative deployment models. We will also cover the supplemental Web Deployment Projects addition to Visual Studio .NET 2005 which provides even more alternatives for compilation and deployment.

Fritz Onion is a co-founder of Pluralsight, a premier Microsoft .NET training provider. Fritz is the author of Pluralsight's ASP.NET curriculum, with courses delivered around the world. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book Essential ASP.NET (Addison Wesley), and is currently working on a second edition that will cover ASP.NET 2.0. He is a columnist for MSDN Magazine and is also a regular speaker at industry conferences. You can read Fritz's blog at http://pluralsight.com/fritz/.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday August 9, 2006

.NET 101 Session
How to Implement the ASP.NET 2.0 Membership System

5:00-6:15 p.m.

Join this session designed to introduce a particular aspect of .NET each month. The new monthly .NET 101 session will cover a .NET topic area at an introductory level for both people new to .NET development and experienced developers learning a new area. Come join us!

Architecting Effective SQL Server Data Access Solutions

6:30-8:30 p.m.
Adam Machanic

Today's applications are increasingly dependent upon data and databases, sometimes to the point where the term "data-driven" might be an understatement. Unfortunately, interfaces between the object-oriented and database worlds are still not especially rock-solid, and sometimes it feels as though working with the database from an object-oriented application is a much more painful process than it should be. In this session we will discuss methodologies for architecting and maintaining data access routines that can act as a solid foundation for application development. We will also analyze common anti-patterns that many developers don't realize they're using, and discuss the problems they can cause.

Adam Machanic is an independent database software consultant, writer, and speaker based in Boston, Massachusetts. He has implemented SQL Server solutions for a variety of high-availability OLTP and large-scale data warehouse applications, and also specializes in .NET data access layer performance optimization. Machanic has written for SQL Server Professional magazine, serves as SQL Server 2005 Expert for SearchSQLServer.com and is co-author of "Pro SQL Server 2005". In addition, he regularly speaks at user groups and community events throughout New England on a variety of SQL Server and .NET-related topics. He is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for SQL Server and a Microsoft Certified IT Professional.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday July 12, 2006

5:00-6:00 p.m.

Open Q&A Session

This month the first hour of the meeting will be an informal audience led Q&A session. Come join us and bring your questions or an interesting piece of code to show.

Techniical Overview of the New England Speaker Registry

6:00-8:00 p.m.
Chris Pels

The New England Speaker Registry was developed to foster the development of new and existing speaker as well as provide a central location for anyone to search for speakers. The Speaker Registery provides a mechanism for all developers to register as a potential speaker for a user group meeting or other organization. In addition, a user group or other organization can search the Speaker Registry for potential speakers.

This session will review all aspects of the Speaker Registry built using Visual Studio 2005/.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 including architecture, database design, object oriented middle tier, and user interface. The session will also cover the use of MapPoint 2006 web services for map display and providing directions. This is an excellent opportunity to see a real life implementation of a .NET 2.0/SQL 2005 system. If you are thinking about making the move to .NET 2.0, have made the move, or are just curious about these new tools you should benefit from this session.

In addition to the technical aspect of this session you will learn about the opportunities available to speakers at all levels of expertise to take advantage of exciting speaking opportunities.

Chris Pels, a Microsoft XML MVP, has been developing applications for 20 years on a consulting basis with his company iDevTech located in Providence, RI. He is President of the Boston .NET User Group as well as INETA North America.

New England Mega User Group Meeting
Developing with .NET in 2006 -- What's Hot and What's Not

Panel and Mini-Cabana Discussions

Monday June 12, 2006

Boston Convention Center/TechEd 2006, Boston, MA
6:30-9:30 p.m.

Do you develop in the world of Microsoft .NET?
Would you like to know more about .NET technologies?

If you answered yes to either question, don't miss this event. Join us for a free and wide-ranging discussion with a panel of nationally-recognized experts on Microsoft development technologies. Architects and developers from the Boston area and around the world will be in attendance at this Boston Mega User Group Meeting held in conjunction with TechEd Boston 2006 .

View Details 

Birds of a Feather Sessions at TechEd 2006

June 13-16, 2006

If you’re going to Tech·Ed 2006, June 11–16, in Boston, you’ll be listening to Microsoft experts, partners and gurus on a range of topics. But what about the other topics you find important and interesting?

Where, among thousands of your peers at the conference, do you find the folks who share your questions or passions on some particular technology or concern? Where do you go to take part in discussions after listening all day? That’s what Birds of a Feather sessions are for!

A Birds of a Feather session is a one-hour open discussion on any topic that concerns you. It is proposed and moderated by you, community members, not Microsoft employees. It is not a talk, it is not a presentation. There are no slides or projectors. It is not scary. It is just you and your fellow professionals seizing the opportunity to have a discussion and meet one another.

Leading a Birds of a Feather session is as easy as 1-2-3!

1. Propose a topic for discussion. Proposals are due by March 31, 2006.

2. Tell your friends and colleagues to vote for your session so we can see there’s interest..

3. Show up at Tech·Ed 2006 and spend an engaging hour with people who share your interests.

Anyone can propose a Birds of a Feather session for Tech·Ed 2006 on any topic. You do not need be a rock star, expert, or legend to lead a Birds of a Feather session. You just need to be you. If you have some knowledge about the topic, some good questions to get things rolling, and can call on people to speak, then you’ve got what it takes!

Act today! Proposals need to be submitted no later than March 31, 2006, and you want people to have a chance to vote for your proposal as one of their favorites!

The Birds of a Feather sessions are of, by, and for the community. They are directed jointly by the premier user group community organizations, Boston .NET User Group for the developers and Culminis for the IT professionals.

Connect with your community, propose a Birds of a Feather session, and attend the Birds of a Feather sessions at Tech·Ed.

Birds of a feather really do flock together!

Boston Tech-Security Conference

Thursday, May 11, 2006
The Conference Center at Bentley, Waltham, MA

You'll come away with advice and knowledge that you can start applying to your environment immediately.

This year, the Boston Tech-Security Conference will bring together private industry, government decision makers and technical enthusiasts in the fields of Information & Network Security. This unique conference format will provide several interactive high intensity training sessions as well as tremendous networking opportunities.

Topics may include: Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems, Wireless Security, Web Hacking, Contingency Planning, Vulnerability Assessments, Threat Management Workshop, Computer/PDA & Enterprise Forensics, Password Recovery & Disk Wiping Tools, Internet Investigation Techniques.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday May 10, 2006

Mega Meeting Planning Session

4:30-5:00 p.m.

Open planning session for the June 12th Mega User Group meeting.

Technology Cabana

5:00-6:30 p.m.

Join this monthly technology discussion modeled on the popular Cabanas at TechEd the past few years.

This is an informal session where your can learn and get your questions answered by the presenter or fellow developers. Come join us!

Applied Visual Studio Team System

6:30-8:30 p.m.
Chris Bowen

Visual Studio Team System offers a wide variety of integrated tools and technologies to help improve the process of developing software. By now, you've probably heard a bit about VSTS, so in this session, there will be a brief overview, but we'll quickly go beyond the PowerPoints to spend time using Team System.

You'll see how integrated unit testing will make your code more reliable and maintainable, how static code analysis will help identify problems in your code and how profiling can identify performance bottlenecks - before your users do. We'll also cover the extensive web and load testing features of Team System. Along the way, you'll see how Team Foundation Server works to integrate these activities, storing code, collecting data and generating reports.

Chris Bowen is Manager of Architecture at VistaPrint, which specializes in custom-printed products with website through manufacturing systems all based on the .NET Framework. He is also coauthor of the soon-to-be-released WROX title "Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System". Prior to joining VistaPrint, Chris was Lead Architect at Monster.com in Maynard, MA and has held senior consulting and development positions in a variety of industries.

A frequent contributor to and participant in local New England developer events, Chris is a member of the Microsoft New England Architect Council and a Microsoft Certified Professional. Chris holds an M.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Management Information Systems from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His blog can be found at http://cbowen.net.

Code Camp 5: Code Frenzy

May 6-7, 2006

MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

Are you a developer interested in improving your .NET skills? Then this is the event to attend.

Code Camp 5: Code Frenzy! promises to be both bigger and better than anything we have done before. This free two day seminar is designed as a series of intensive code related demos and technical sessions to guide the developer to the next skill level. The continuing goal of the Code Camps is to provide an intensive developer to developer learning experience that is fun and technically stimulating. The focus is on delivering programming information and sample code that can be used immediately. All training, slides, manuals and demo code is provided free!

This two day camp is hosted in our Waltham facility. The leading technical camp counselors from both Microsoft and the New England Developer Community will share their technical expertise and experiences. Each track starts with a “get the code” basics before advancing to more advanced topics.

Want to speaker at Code Camp?

Code Camps are open to anyone that is interested in speaker whether this is your first public speaking experiences or you are a seasoned verteran. This is a great opportunity to share your knowledbe with fellow developers and get some valuable public speaking experience. We have a range of room/audience size from large (100) to small (12 or so) so there are lecture style settings and smaller discussion format. The more people that speak, the better the experience for everyone. We encourage you to submit one or more session abstracts. If scheduling allows we will accept all your abstracts. If we have more abstracts than slots we will ask people with multiple abstracts to eliminate one or more to allow everyone to speak. So get your abstract in today! Deadline is 4.30.2006. 

INETA Live
SharePoint 123

Wednesday April 19, 2006

Via Live Meeting
3:30-4:30 p.m. (Eastern Time, GMT-5)

This web cast will feature the first session (level 100), which will provide a gentle introduction to SharePoint - what it is and how to use it effectively.

SharePoint 1, 2, 3! is a new concept in community-based training being offered to the development community by the development community. SharePoint 1, 2, 3! offers six sessions designed to train developers to install, use, and develop custom software for Microsoft's Windows SharePoint Services. SharePoint 1, 2, 3! is designed to be a start to finish training session that has a 100 level course, a 200 level course, and a 300 level course to get into all aspects of SharePoint. With two types of meetings; a lecture style seminar followed by a hands on lab session, you will be able to try the technology yourself.

Boston Area Geek Dinner

Tuesday April 18, 2006

Boston Beer Works on Canal Street

If you are in the Boston area you are invited.

Boston Beer Works is one block from North Station/Fleet Center. We will probably be upstairs playing pool, so stop by.In case you are new to these dinners, there is a picture of me on my site, so you will know what I look like ;) My Cell: 617-901-8534.

Boston .NET User Group Monthly Meeting

Wednesday April 12, 2006
Technology Cabana

MSFT Office, Waltham, MA
5:00-6:30 p.m.

Join this monthly technology discussion modeled on the popular Cabanas at TechEd the past few years.

This month Bob Goodearl, BDN Member and consultant, will build on Chris Pels' presentation of last month with a closer look at the ASP.NET Membership Provider. The discussion will include tradeoffs in designing an extended Membership Provider. Demonstrations will include multiple extended Membership Providers and a Winforms tool for examining Membership data. This is an informal session where your can learn and get your questions answered by the presenter or fellow developers. Come join us!

Leveraging the New Windows Mobile APIs

6:30-8:30 p.m.
Don Sorcinelli

The .NET Compact Framework 2.0 provides a wealth of new APIs for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices. With managed access to Outlook Mobile, device and application state, phone, GPS and camera, there is something for almost all Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone developers to leverage in order to enhance their application.

Join us for this discussion and demonstration of how you can enhance your Windows Mobile 5.0 applications with a minimum amount of coding, using Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Compact Framework 2.0.

Don Sorcinelli is the founder of BostonPocketPC.com, Don Sorcinelli has been involved with the web site since its initial inception.Don has been involved with planning, developing and deploying enterprise applications for over 15 years. His involvement in these processes expanded to include the PDA platforms in the late 1990’s. He has a broad range of software development skills, including experience in desktop development languages (including Visual Basic, Visual Basic.NET and C#), web application development (including HTML, ASP, ASP.NET and PHP) and multiple database environments.

Don also has provided training and mentoring on numerous topics pertaining to enterprise planning and deployment. He also regularly presents on Pocket PC topics at both regional and national Pocket PC and PDA meetings and conferences (including Planet PDA and Pocket PC Summit), and is a regular contributor to the Enterprise section of Pocket PC Magazine and writer for Austrailian Personal Computing Magazine.

Don currently is Co-Manager of Club Pocket PC - Boston, the Boston/New England PocketPC User and Developer Groups, and has served in this capacity since April of 2001. He can be contacted at donsorcinelli@bostonpocketpc.com.

Devscovery Conference

April 11-13, 2006

New York, NY

Devscovery Conference in New York, NY April 11-13 (3 days) is just around the corner. As always, the multi track sessions will be instructed by industry experts including, Jeff Prosise, Jeffrey Richter, John Robbins, Dennis Hurst, Richard Hundhausen, and Justin Smith.

The sessions will include in-depth coverage of The .NET Framework, Debugging and content from our new 2006 course offerings like Indigo, Atlas, ASP.NET 2.0, C# 3.0 and a lot more!

Devscovery is unlike any other conference because it provides focused and in-depth instruction. It's a deeper dive into .NET development topics and will leave you with details and specifics that directly apply to you and your work.

The tuition for this event is $900 per student. We're offering a promotional Early Registration Discount of $100 (see below) for those who register by February 22*.

If you have any questions, would like to see a detailed agenda and session descriptions, or are interested in attending, please visit Devscovery web site.

Visual Studio Team System Kick Start

March 14 – April 11, 2006

MSFT Technology Center, Waltham, MA
7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

This is a multi-day class that will run from March 14 through April 11.

The new Microsoft Visual Studio Team System offers tightly integrated and extensible tools that enable software development teams to reduce the complexity of development and improve communication and collaboration throughout the development process. Please join Thom Robbins in this five night course we will begin with a review Visual Studio Team System. We will then review each of the VSTS roles: Architect, Developer and Tester. Finally we will look at Team Server and integration with other platforms. The course will be lecture style with assignments designed to reinforce the lectures. This course is brought to you by Microsoft and the College of Computer and Information Systems at Northeastern University.

Shillman Hall, Northeastern University
Lecture hall on Northeastern University's campus
Forsyth Avenue
Boston Massachusetts 02115
United States

SQL Server Bootcamp

Saturday April 8, 2006

Bentley College-Waltham, MA
9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.

Join this monthly technology discussion modeled on the popular Cabanas at TechEd the past few years.

In this one day class, you will get a broad hands-on overview of SQL server and SQL server BI. Please sign up quickly as there are only 25 slots available.

Requirements

Since this is a hands-on class, you will need to bring your own notebook computer. It should meet these requirements requirements:  Prior to coming to the class, you should install Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition - Download Here

Agenda

  • 9:00 – 10:00 - Database Overview, SQL Server Overview, SQL Server Versions
  • 10:00 – 10:15 break
  • 10:15 – 11:30 – SQL Server Hands on – In this session we will install various tools and sample databases to support SQL Server Express. We will then go hands-on to use some of the sample databases and finally we will create our own database.
  • 11:30 – 12:00 – Database Project
  • 12:00 – 1:00 – Thom and Philip will remain at the lab, but you will have one hour to get lunch and come. We will answer questions if you want to do more hands-onto work with SQL server hands-on.
  • 1:00 – 2:30 – Developing with databases
  • 2:45 – 4:00 – SQL Server BI, overview and hands-on group projects
  • 4:00 – 4:15 – Wrap-up

VSTS for Everyone: Best Practices for the Whole Team

Wednesday-Friday, March 29-31, 2006

Martin L. Shoemaker and Richard Hale Shaw
8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

With the release of Visual Studio Team System, Visual Studio isn’t just for developers any more. It’s now a power tool that integrates with MS Office and other tools to support the work of all participants in the development process. In this tutorial, we’ll look at each major role in the development process, and we’ll see what tools are used in each role, how those tools integrate with VSTS, and how the role is carried out. And then we’ll see how the workflow capabilities in VSTS tie all of these roles together into a larger process. And finally, we’ll see how to customize the process and the tools to fit your project and your team.

In this tutorial, we will work through a sample project over the course of the day. Attendees will receive the sample project materials so that they can work alongside the instructor, if they have machines with VSTS; but feel free to show up and participate even if you don’t have VSTS.

Topics covered will include:
--Putting the Team in Team Systems
--Requirements Management with VSTS
--Task Management with VSTS
--Modeling Your Architecture and Design
--Building and Maintaining Solutions
--Unit Testing and Test-Driven Development
--Refactoring and Snippets
--Integrating Technical Writing into VSTS
--Integrating Testing into VSTS
--Tracking and Reporting

Microsoft Technology Center
890 Winter St. First Floor
Waltham Massachusetts 02451 United States

Mini-Code Camp: Security Edition

Saturday, March 25, 2006

8:30 AM -5:00 p.m.

You know the drill- don't code buffer overflows, watch the SQL Injection, use a firewall, do the threat thingy, but you know there is more. You know that security is a war and you can't win by following a few rules. You have to wage war in the same take no prisoners style that the hackers use.

Come to the Mini Code Camp Security Edition where Duane Laflotte and Patrick Hynds (the original Geeks in Black) will show you what the enemy is doing as well as how to secure your position. Security is a war, Don't fight fair!

Microsoft Waltham Office
201 Jones Road, 6th Floor
Waltham, Massachusetts 02451

INETA Live
So You Want to Hold a Code Camp?

Wednesday March 22, 2006

Via Live Meeting
3:30-4:30 p.m. (Eastern Time, GMT-5)

Code Camps have enjoyed unprecedented success over the past two years as an informal way to bring developers together to share code.

Have you held a Code Camp in your area and want to improve the next one? Would you like to learn how to organize the first Code Camp in your area? Join Thom Robbins, Microsoft Northeast Region Developer Evangelist, and Chris Pels, Boston .NET User Group Leader founders of the Code Camp concept to discuss best practices for building a successful Code Camp.

Topics will include:
-What is a Code Camp?
-How do you get speakers?
-What are options for a facility to hold the event?
-and more!

This will be a discussion where attendees will have the opportunity to contribute by sharing their experiences and also to get their questions answered.