Dallas C# Special Interest Group

October 2, 2008 - Silverlight with Visual Studio 2008 + Expression Blend

Summary

This is going to be one of the most unique talks on Silverlight that we've ever done. We have no agenda, just a ton of topics, experience and information on Silverlight, UX, and designing amazing user applications. Bring your questions, experience and let's have a great time discussing all of these topics! We'll overview Silverlight 1 and 2, the tools, features and abilities of Silverlight as well as walkthrough common scenarios, uses and pitfalls of practical Silverlight development in the field as well as highlighting some of the new and exciting Silverlight 2 features: DeepZoom, Isolated Storage, Data and Visual Templates. Silverlight 2 opens a whole new world of possibilities and options to .NET developers in the Rich Internet Application space. Combining the best of web application deployments with traditional Windows development, this best of breed application platform is changing the world of on-line as well as line-of-business applications. The most significant part of being a successful Silverlight developer is your ability to work well with data, and the ability to work well with designers.

About Caleb Jenkins

Caleb Jenkins is a Principal Consultant with Improving Enterprises, National Speaker for the International .NET Association (INETA), Microsoft MVP, featured presenter for xTrain.com and Adobe.TV, technical editor for Wrox Publishing and certified Scrum Master. Improving Enterprises, Inc (http://ImprovingEnterprises.com) specializes in delivering enterprise solutions, agile methodologies and mentoring on the Microsoft and Java platforms. Host, cameraman and editor for http://CommunityCast.tv; as a long time community leader and former Microsoft Developer Evangelist, Caleb is well known for his engaging speaking style, depth of knowledge and creative energy. As a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, Certified Trainer and .NET architect, Caleb has helped to design and implement enterprise .NET Solutions for some of the largest companies in the world; American Airlines, Countrywide Mortgage, CGI-AMS, Dollar Thrift Automotive Group and Sunoco Inc. to name a few. Caleb lives in the Dallas area where he continues to date his beautiful wife and busies himself playing Candy Land and Xbox 360 with their four incredible children. Occasionally he writes curriculum, speaks at conferences, and writes code for silly things like Twitter applications. Eventually he'll post some of the gazillion interviews that he's recorded on CommunityCast or blog at http://developingUX.com

September 4, 2008 - Lightning Presentations

Summary

Your fifteen minutes of fame. Ever wonder if you've had them yet? With inflation and the rising cost of fuel, most analysts predict that your fifteen minutes is actually just a paltry thirteen point four-seven. For this month only, we're giving you a chance to seize your minutes at amounts unseen since 2007! If you would like to present, then please bring either 1) your laptop, or 2) a usb drive with whatever you need. I'll have at least one laptop with VSTS, SQL Developer Edition, and Vista. Expect to spend 5-15 minutes (including setup/tear down) talking about your topic. I will stop you at 15 in order to allow others to speak. If we run out of topics, then I have something in mind, but I am not going to tell... The speaking slots are first-come, first-served - either email [contact (at) this domain name] or sign up at the meeting.

About You

You are a member of the Dallas C# Sig. Or you're not, but you want to be. Or you don't, but you want to present.

August 7, 2008 - A gentle, schizophrenia introduction to scrum and xp

Summary

UPDATE NOTICE: I was informed of this by our good friends over at Microsoft today (Tuesday, 5 Aug, 2008), and so I am trying to ensure that you are informed. Due to scheduling conflicts at Microsoft this week, we will be hosting the meeting at the Improving offices (15950 Dallas Parkway, Suite 500, Dallas, TX 75248), not at Microsoft. I sincerely apologize for the late notice, as do the developer evangelists over at Microsoft. They are working hard to clear things up and get the meeting put back in place going forward. More on that as the news arrives. In honor of Agile 2008, which is going on this week in Toronto, Canada, we'll take a look at Scrum, XP, and Lean, in two acts. In the first Act, Jef will perform a "greater tuna-esque" soap-opera episode introducing the key concepts. In Act II, the group will get to experience Scrum via Jean Tabaka's popular "59 minute scrum" exercise. We have some great giveaways this month, including a MSDN subscription with Team Suite (that's right... a one year subscription to MSDN with Visual Studio Team Suite edition).

About Jef Newsom

Jef is a founder of Improving Enterprises. Improving is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for learning solutions, which is a sufficiently long-winded way of saying that Improving offers Microsoft [Official Curriculum] training. They also have a number of custom courses on agile development and software analysis and design. Improving strongly believes that training is most effective when applied in the context of a structured mentoring program co-incident with on-the-job practice, and their consultants are experts at providing just that type of environment. Jef is a strong proponent of agile software development practices and is proud to be one of the first 70 people to be recognized as a Microsoft Certified Architect for Solutions, an one of only 90 people ever to have received the distinction of Microsoft MVP for Solutions Architecture. Prior to founding Improving, Jef spent nearly five years with Axys Solutions/Geniant, where he was a Principal Consultant. Jef also spent several years at ObjectSpace prior to that, where he learned about object-oriented software development from some of the best people in the industry. Jef is husband to his beautiful wife Aimee and father to his two wonderful children, Eva (almost 5!), and Ben (16 mos).

July 17, 2008 - Concurrent Programming in a multi-core world.

Summary

Concurrency in software, whether server-side or desktop, is becoming more important. Our new multi- processor machines and multi-core processors require that our software use multiple threads to get maximum computing power. As .NET developers, it's important that we understand the core mechanisms available for threading, synchronization, and locking that are available to us. Come see step-by step examples and code walk-through for programming concurrency in .NET using the System.Threading namespace and the fundamental constructs for multi- threaded systems.

About Todd Girvin

As Vice President of Improving Enterprises, Inc., Mr. Girvin leads the Microsoft Technology Practice and is a Principal Technology Consultant. Mr. Girvin co- founded Improving Enterprises in August, 2004. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) and Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD), he contributes to the technical direction of the company and to the developer community through the Microsoft Architect Council, Agile Project Leadership Network, DFW SharePoint User Group, and Dallas C# SIG.

May 1, 2008 - Deep Linqing: Learn how Linq works under the covers.

Summary

Linq to SQL is one of Microsoft's shiny new toys for us in the developer community. We've seen presentations on how to use Linq to SQL. Now, we're going to look under the covers at how the library is structured so that we can get the best use out of the tool. We'll explore IQuerayble, Expression Trees, MappingSources, Data Contexts, Entiity Sets and Refs, and more. You should come away from the discussion with a clearer understanding not only of how the library is structured, but also what its limitations are and how it can be used within your project.

About Jef Newsom

Jef is a founder of Improving Enterprises. Improving is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for learning solutions, which is a sufficiently long-winded way of saying that Improving offers Microsoft [Official Curriculum] training. They also have a number of custom courses on agile development and software analysis and design. Improving strongly believes that training is most effective when applied in the context of a structured mentoring program co-incident with on-the-job practice, and their consultants are experts at providing just that type of environment. Jef is a strong proponent of agile software development practices and is proud to be one of the first 70 people to be recognized as a Microsoft Certified Architect for Solutions, an one of only 90 people ever to have received the distinction of Microsoft MVP for Solutions Architecture. Prior to founding Improving, Jef spent nearly five years with Axys Solutions/Geniant, where he was a Principal Consultant. Jef also spent several years at ObjectSpace prior to that, where he learned about object-oriented software development from some of the best people in the industry. Jef is husband to his beautiful wife Aimee and father to his two wonderful children, Eva (almost 5!), and Ben (16 mos).

April 3, 2008 - BDD

Summary

Test-driven development takes development to the next level by forcing a tight cycle of red-green-refactor. Behavior-driven development pushes the methods even further. It has been said that Behavior-driven development is test-driven development done correctly. For me, TDD had proven to be a powerful design and productivity tool, and behavior-driven development has helped me focus that design to increase my productivity even more. We'll look at some of the tools that support BDD, including NBehave and NSpec.

About Jef Newsom

Jef is a founder of Improving Enterprises, LLC. Improving is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for learning solutions, which is a sufficiently long-winded way of saying that Improving offers Microsoft [Official Curriculum] training. Improving strongly believes that training is most effective when applied in the context of a structured mentoring program co-incident with on-the-job practice. Jef is a strong proponent of agile software development practices and is proud to be one of the first 70 people to be recognized as a Microsoft Certified Architect for Solutions, an one of only 90 people ever to have received the distinction of Microsoft MVP for Solutions Architecture. Prior to founding Improving, Jef spent nearly five years with Axys Solutions/Geniant, where he was a Principal Consultant. Jef also spent several years at ObjectSpace prior to that, where he learned about object-oriented software development from some of the best people in the industry. Jef is husband to his beautiful wife Aimee and father to his two wonderful children, Eva (4 1/2), and Ben (16 mos).

March 6, 2008 - MEETING CANCELED

Summary

Due to the inclimate weather, we are going to cancel the meeting tonight.

About Jef Newsom

February 7, 2008 - Extending WCF: Digging into the behavior model

Summary

The web fundamentally changed how we think about creating and deploying systems. WCF was created as a universal distributed computing platform with a unified programming model for many different underlying technologies. At it's core, it offers numerous points of extension at which you can introduce what it refers to as behaviors. The Connected Systems team took a stab at creating some strong, first class support for creating web- based (as opposed to web service based) systems. The apis were previously released in beta form along with some very cool apis called the Biztalk Services. With the recent release of .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, the APIs were brought into the fold, so to speak. Now, the APIs are really nice to program with, but there are a few things that would make them easier to use, especially when creating RESTful applications. We'll use the behavior extensibility model to make the [already easy] Web-style development even easier.

About Jef Newsom

Jef is a founder of Improving Enterprises, LLC. Improving is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for learning solutions, which is a sufficiently long-winded way of saying that Improving offers Microsoft [Official Curriculum] training. Improving strongly believes that training is most effective when applied in the context of a structured mentoring program co-incident with on-the-job practice. Jef is a strong proponent of agile software development practices and is proud to be one of the first 70 people to be recognized as a Microsoft Certified Architect for Solutions, an one of only 90 people ever to have received the distinction of Microsoft MVP for Solutions Architecture. Prior to founding Improving, Jef spent nearly five years with Axys Solutions/Geniant, where he was a Principal Consultant. Jef also spent several years at ObjectSpace prior to that, where he learned about object-oriented software development from some of the best people in the industry. Jef is husband to his beautiful wife Aimee and father to his two wonderful children, Eva (4 1/2), and Ben (14 mos).

January 3, 2008 - Augmenting Reality with .NET

Summary

Augmented Reality is a future technology being researched which combines real world data with computer generated (virtual) data. A recent example is the 'Eye of Judgment' turn-based card game for the Playstation 3, which uses a camera to recognize real world playing cards and animate the virtual battle on a TV screen. This presentation will look at creating an Augmented Reality (AR) application in .NET using DirectShow, WPF 3D, and ARToolKitPlus. We'll look at how DirectShow is used to capture camera data, how AR Library is used to track real world markers, and how WPF 3D is used to render virtual objects.

About Casey Chesnut

casey chesnut is an independent developer that specializes in .NET and pervasive computing. He has received the Microsoft MVP award in a number of different categories : Tablet PC, Compact Framework, Web Services, Media Center, and Office Communications Server (current). His blog and development articles which can be found on his website: http://www.brains-N-brawn.com.

December 6, 2007 - Grokking the Zen of WPF

Summary

With the recent RTM of Visual Studio and .NET 3.5, we have new tools and apis for developing amazing user experiences using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). As an enterprise developer, WPF provides a unified platform for integrating applications, documents, and media. However, approaching WPF for the first time can be as daunting as approach the .NET framework for the first time. Gaining an understanding of the underlying architecture is essential to getting the most out of WPF. At the core of the model is the the Control, and at the core of the Control is the notion of content. This talk will be a code-only exploration of WPF's content model. We'll look at Data Templates and Styles, and we'll look at data binding in WPF. We'll also throw in a little bit of Linq and friends.

About Jef Newsom

After being abducted by aliens, Jef found that he could resolve distances down to the nanometer scale. However, due to a consequence of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, he found himself coping with extreme dizzyness and nausea. Once he adapted to his new, more nauseous existence, he formed Improving Enterprises, a Dallas-based consulting and training company with Todd Girvin. Early this year, they completed a merger with another talented group of consultants and exes, and have been growing like crazy (adding to Jef's dizzyness). He specializes in agile approaches to developing software using .NET. He a proud husband and father of two, and wishes he had more time to play guitar and less time to write about himself in the third person.

August 2, 2007 - Ruby vs. C# 3.0 - A Smackdown

Summary

When Ruby developers talk about using the language and libraries like Rails, they often use the terms like "joy." Microsoft has released the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), which is a set of libraries that provide a standard, shared, dynamic type system, a standard hosting model, and fast dynamic code generation. This DLR will make it easier for .NET developers to experience this "joy" first-hand. Microsoft has also released IronPython and [recently a beta of] IronRuby. In honor of these releases, the C# SIG is delighted to welcome Adam Keys, leader of the Dallas Ruby Brigade, a local user group for Ruby enthusiasts. Adam is going to give an overview of Ruby and specifically show how existing Ruby features map to the new C# 2.0 and 3.0 features. In true smackdown style (and assuming we can get the dual presentation going!), Jef is going to try to keep up in C# using Orcas Beta 2 and .Net 3.5.

About Adam Keys

Adam is a software developer from Dallas, TX. He's been working on a book about Web Services and Ruby that he hopes to finish before the galaxy collapses on itself. He also writes on his weblog, The Real Adam on topics ranging from celebrity rumors to Ruby and microformats. When not writing bios in the third person, Adam volunteers for dog rescue and as a feral cat caretaker. In general, Adam also likes to crack jokes and make those around him laugh. Its a curse.

June 7, 2007 - REST and WCF Web Programming

Summary

The web fundamentally changed how we think about creating and deploying systems. WCF was created as a universal distributed computing platform with a unified programming model for many different underlying technologies. At the end of the day, one glaring hole remained in the WCF platform. The most commonly used distributed computing platform in the world (the web) wasn't supported as a first class citizen. Enter WCF for the Web. and Biztalk Services. The Connected systems team took a stab at creating some strong, first class support for creating web- based (as opposed to web service based) systems. The apis are currently released in beta form along with some very cool apis called the Biztalk Services. In this presentation, we'll look at the new APIs and learn about how we can benefit from them. We'll also take a quick look at the Biztalk Services (assuming I get guest net access working on Vista at Microsoft :)).

About Jef Newsom

Jef is a founder of Improving Enterprises, LLC. Improving is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for learning solutions, which is a sufficiently long-winded way of saying that Improving offers Microsoft [Official Curriculum] training. Improving strongly believes that training is most effective when applied in the context of a structured mentoring program co-incident with on-the-job practice. Jef is a strong proponent of agile software development practices and is proud to be one of the first 70 people to be recognized as a Microsoft Certified Architect for Solutions. Prior to founding Improving, Jef spent nearly five years with Axys Solutions/Geniant, where he was a Principal Consultant. Jef also spent several years at ObjectSpace prior to that, where he learned about object-oriented software development from some of the best people in the industry. Jef is husband to his beautiful wife Aimee and father to his two wonderful children, Eva (3 1/2), and Ben (2 mos).

May 3, 2007 - Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control, and the open source Castle project

Summary

Learn how to use the powerful techniques of Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection to simplify your design, decrease coupling, and make your application more extensible and maintainable.

About Craig Neuwirt and Todd Girvin

Craig Neuwirt is a proud father and husband, and a principal consultant at Improving Enterprises. He has been working on enterprise software for well over a decade, and is an master of OO design and distributed systems development.

April 5, 2007 - WCF and SOA development (Level 300)

Summary

Learn how to take advantage of the new windows communication foundation to build robust applications.

About Abraham Saldana

Abraham Saldana has been working as a consultant in Microsoft technology for over eight years. He has worked for different clients, including Fortune 100 companies within the United States and Mexico. Abraham started programming in a Dos world, moved to Visual Basic 5 and 6, and eventually to .Net using both, Visual Basic and C#. Currently, Abraham is a lead developer at True.com and his role includes helping architect this highly visible website using ASP.Net 2.0 and SQL 2005.

March 1, 2007 - Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0

Summary

About the presentation: The web fundamentally changed how we think about creating and deploying user interfaces, and Microsoft has taken lessons from that experience and recent smart client development to create Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). WPF has been built from the ground up, and has greatly simplified the challenge of creating compelling user experiences on windows. It provides a unified platform for integrating documents, media, and applications.This talk will give you exposure to WPF concepts like: Documents, Media, UI, Vector and Raster Graphics, Transforms, Animation, Routed Events, and Dependency Properties. The following links provide more information on WPF: WPF at netfx3 - http://wpf.netfx3.com/ Visual Studio Extensions for WPF and WCF - Nov 2006 CTP - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f54f5537-cc86-4bf5-ae44-f5a1e805680d&DisplayLang=en Charles Petzold's WPF site - http://www.charlespetzold.com/wpf The WPF Blog (from Frog Design in Austin) - http://www.thewpfblog.com/Mike Harsh's very cool WPF/e Pad - http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh/archive/2006/12/22/wpf-e-pad.aspx

About Jef Newsom

Jef is a founder of Improving Enterprises, LLC. Improving is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for learning solutions, which is a sufficiently long-winded way of saying that Improving offers Microsoft [Official Curriculum] training. Improving strongly believes that training is most effective when applied in the context of a structured mentoring program co-incident with on-the-job practice. Jef is a strong proponent of agile software development practices and is proud to be one of the first 70 people to be recognized as a Microsoft Certified Architect for Solutions. Prior to founding Improving, Jef spent nearly five years with Axys Solutions/Geniant, where he was a Principal Consultant. Jef also spent several years at ObjectSpace prior to that, where he learned about object-oriented software development from some of the best people in the industry. Jef is husband to his beautiful wife Aimee and father to his two wonderful children, Eva (3 1/2), and Ben (2 mos).