Cedar Rapids .Net Users Group

NOTE: We will return to the Iowa Hall, Iowa Room D for our August meeting.
ALSO NOTE: This meeting is on the 2nd Monday in August.

Our August 8th, 5:30 @ Kirkwood) meeting will bring Jeff Brand down from Minneapolis to share with us what about developing software for Windows Phone 7.

Jeff has been with Microsoft for over 12 years, starting with the company soon after the release of Windows 95. While at Microsoft, he has been a consultant, an ecommerce specialist, and an enterprise technology advisor. Prior to Microsoft, Jeff was in the Air Force stationed at Offutt AFB in Omaha, NE where he was Chief Network Engineer (his pre-developer days) for the USSTRATCOM LAN. Today, Jeff is a .NET Developer Evangelist for Microsoft’s North Central District. He lives in Minneapolis and often travel to the surrounding states of Nebraska, Iowa, and the Dakotas. In his current role, he is responsible for working with developers and customers that are evaluating or using .NET and assisting in them in understanding and using Microsoft’s developer platform.

If you plan on attending our meeting on August 8th, please RSVP.

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NOTE: We will be the same room as last month – Cedar Hall 3045 and 3046.

Our July 11th (5:30 @ Kirkwood) meeting will bring yet another presenter new to us, Chris Rouw. He will be presenting on Silverlight. We’ve had some introductory presentations on Silverlight previously, so it should be interesting to see Chris discuss it’s application on business applications.

Topic
If you are a .NET developer that is looking to create a business application with a rich user experience, then Silverlight might be the best tool for the job. Chris Rouw will share his thoughts and experiences on Silverlight and specifically using Silverlight to create business applications. The discussion will touch on the following topics along with several real-world examples.

• Silverlight – quick overview
• Creating Business Applications using Silverlight
• Using WCF RIA Services to manage your data

Chris Rouw is a partner at Far Reach Technologies in Cedar Falls and has been working with Silverlight for over two years (since Silverlight 2). Chris and the team at Far Reach have created and implemented over 10 Silverlight business applications for internal use and for clients.

If you plan on attending our meeting on July 11th, please RSVP.

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NOTE: We will be the same room as last month – Cedar Hall 3045 and 3046.

Our June 6th meeting will bring another presenter new to us, James Hare. He will be presenting on enforcing C# code standards using StyleCop and FxCop. We’ve looked briefly at both before with short demos, but have never had a full presentation on them. It should be enlightening.

Topic:
Most organizations have a set of code standards that they adhere to in an attempt to make code consistent and maintainable.  Unfortunately, enforcing these standards in code reviews can be time consuming and take attention away from real issues such as design and performance.  This presentation talks about ways to automate some basic code standards rules using Microsoft’s StyleCop and FxCop tools.

Speaker
James Michael Hare is a solutions architect and C++/C# developer at a major financial services company located in Saint Louis, Missouri.  He has been developing for over 17 years and enjoys both developing, blogging, and mentoring.  He also blogs at http://www.geekswithblogs.net/BlackRabbitCoder and can be reached on twitter as @BlkRabbitCoder.

If you plan on making our meeting on June 6th, please RSVP.

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Code First is a new approach to building your model in Entity Framework 4 that allows you to create your domain model with plain .NET classes that are completely under your control. Previously in Entity Framework you were required to build your model with an EDMX file that forced your model to be expressed in a visual designer. While this approach works in some situations, it can get in the way of your development work-flow and can create extra baggage developers don’t need.

Code First relies on a set of conventions that handle connection strings, mapping to your storage solution, defining primary keys, finding relationships between classes and more. Of course all of these conventions can be overridden in code as well, which gives you plenty of flexibility.

In this talk I’ll describe and demonstrate the core features of Code First so you can make an informed decision as to its usefulness in your development environment.

Bio: Chris Sutton is a software developer and technical trainer in Eastern Iowa. He is organizing a .NET user group in Iowa City and he co-founded the Iowa Code Camp in 2008. Chris is a Microsoft MVP, a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) and holds the MCPD:Enterprise certification. He has been consulting and speaking on web related topics since 2005, and he has 11 years of professional software development experience and loves developing for the web. He also enjoys hiking and biking in the summer and snowshoeing in the winter.

If you plan on making our meeting on May 7th, please RSVP.

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February 7th, 2011 at 5:30pm

PowerShell is Microsoft’s next-generation command-line shell and scripting language. This session will discuss why you need it, how to use it, and what makes it different from any other shell on any platform. Beyond its traditional uses for system administration, PowerShell provides full access to .NET for Read-Eval-Print loops (REPL), rapid prototyping, object exploration and extensibility. After an overview of language features and what’s new in version 2.0, we dive into an interactive demo, so come prepared with questions you have or problems we can solve together. I will also share lessons learned building posh-git, a PowerShell environment for Git.

Keith Dahlby is a .NET developer, language geek and C# MVP from Cedar Rapids. He works as a software guru at J&P Cycles and blogs about various software development topics with Los Techies. Keith has spoken at community events around the midwest and studied Human-Computer Interaction at Iowa State University. His talks have been described as “terrific!”, “very interactive!”, and “the best I’ve seen all hour!”

January 10th, 2011 at 5:30pm

Language Integrated Query (LINQ, pronounced “link”) is a Microsoft
.NET Framework component that adds native data querying capabilities
to .NET languages. Think of LINQ as the SQL you write in your .Net
code against almost anything that holds data.

This presentation will introduce the LINQ syntax and concepts. We will
cover LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Objects, Standard Query Operators for LINQ
as well as Extension Methods. Developers can return to work tomorrow
and start implementing what they learn in VisualStudio 2008 or 2010.

Presenter: Dustin Thostenson

Dustin Thostenson is an independent .Net consultant, leading Delta 3
Consulting. He has been a developer and trainer in the Des Moines,
Iowa area for the last dozen years. His focus has been on Microsoft
technologies (ASP, VB, C#) with an emphasis on web development.
Experiences span from developer to architecture and mentoring roles.
To keep it interesting he teaches a couple of evening classes in
programming at Des Moines Area Community College, helps lead the Iowa
Dot Net User’s Group and volunteers in Central Iowa. To keep it real
he spends time with his wife and 4 kids. Follow Dustin on Twitter
@dustinson .

Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC) is an event where they release information about trends and targets for their technology and tools releases that developers can use to build solutions. Last year they talked about Windows Phone, Silverlight 4, Azure and more. In this session Mike Benkovich will take us thru the main messages of what is announced at this year’s conference and show what new things developers should be aware of. From IE9 to Windows Phone Development, to OData and Azure, it will be a demo packed fun night of exploring the possible.

Mike Benkovich (twitter: @mbenko) delivers technical presentations around the U.S. as a developer evangelist on the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) team at Microsoft. He has worked in a variety of professional roles, including architect, project manager, developer, and technical writer. Mike is also an author of two books, published by WROX Press and APress, that show developers how to get the most from their SQL databases. Since appearing in the 1994 Microsoft DevCast, Mike has presented technical information at seminars, conferences, and corporate boardrooms across America.