Speaker: Paul Lockwood

Topic: Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration is one of the easiest wins that most .NET teams have yet to implement. Automated builds are common on Java teams and we need to catch up! Paul Lockwood will demonstrate how easy it is to install and configure Cruise Control for C# or VB.NET projects. Additionally this session covers the basics of MSBuild, NAnt, NUnit, NCover, and FxCop.

Paul Lockwood is a confirmed code junky. His hands have rarely left a qwerty keyboard since buying a ZX81 in 1981. He has almost two decades IT experience working as a consultant in the UK, Switzerland, Germany and the USA. Paul is a popular presenter at user groups. His presentations are known for being very interactive and most of all fun!

Presentation Material

March 4, 2008

Speaker: Milan Negovan

Topic: Usability

The old adage "Build it and they'll come" is dangerously inaccurate. If you pay no attention to usability, "they" won't come. Do design and aesthetics matter? How simple should simplicity get? What is The Paradox of Choice and how does it affect UI design? How can copywriting make you or break you? We'll look at these and many other questions as we discuss the ingredients of usability.

Presentation Material

February 5, 2008

Speaker: Michael de la Maza

Topic: Scrum: An Agile Software Development Methodology

At a recent academic software conference, a senior representative from a CMMI Level 5 Fortune 500 company said: "We do a very good job of building the wrong software slowly." Why is the traditional software development process so unsuccessful and what alternatives exist? Join Michael for an extended encore discussion on Scrum (previously presented at our code camp), an agile development process. He will begin with a group activity that illustrates some of the key principles of Scrum. Michael will then discuss tools, such as Scrum for Team System (http://www.scrumforteamsystem.com/), that support the Scrum process. Michael is a Certified Scrum Master and facilitate the monthly C# Day events (www.learn2learn2program.com) in Waltham, MA.

Presentation Material

January 2, 2008

Speaker: Richard Hale Shaw

Topic: Resistance is Futile: The Productivity Gains of Moving to LINQ (and XLINQ and DLINQ)

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.

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.

Presentation material coming soon

December 4, 2007

Speaker: John Zablocki

Topic: ASP.NET Development with Castle

The Castle Project is an open-source framework providing support for enterprise and web applications. The framework currently consists of four projects that may be used in concert or individually. Each Castle project has the same goal - to simplify .NET development. Monorail is an MVC framework inspired by Action Pack (Ruby on Rails). ActiveRecord is an implementation of the Active Record data mapping pattern, built on top of the NHibernate ORM. MicroKernel and Windsor Container provide two levels of Inversion of Control support. This discussion will focus on using Monorail and ActiveRecord to build ASP.NET web applications. When possible, emphasis will be given to topics that demonstrate the greatest contrast between Monorail and traditional Web Forms development.

John Zablocki is an Application Architect at webloyalty.com, an international marketing services company based in Norwalk, CT. He is also an adjunct professor at Fairfield University in the Dolan School of Business. Currently, he is teaching Intro to Business Programming. John is primarily interested in web technologies, preferring alternative approaches within ASP.NET. He regularly incorporates open source ports such as The Castle Project, IronPython and Spring.NET into his personal and professional projects.

Presentation Material

November 6, 2007

Speaker: Chris Bowen

Topic: Enterprise Library 3.0, Software Factories, Guidance Automation Toolkit

The Patterns & Practices group at Microsoft was formed to provide various forms of guidance to developers and architects creating applications with Microsoft tools and technologies. The group keeps churning out great tools, reference code, and guidance to show you Microsoft's and industry recommendations for designing, developing, and deploying great applications. In this talk, we'll cover the major guidance packages from P&P - Enterprise Library 3.0, the various Software Factories, the Guidance Automation Toolkit and more, explaining how they could fit in with your development efforts. The tools and guidance from the P&P group are freely available with source code, and your awareness of them will help you be a more effective developer and architect.

Presentation Material

October 2, 2007

Speaker: Peter Laudati

Topic: Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX

September 4, 2007

Speaker: Lenni Lobel

Topic: Building Custom Code Generation Tools for Visual Studio 2005

Dive into the world of code generation. In this session, you’ll see how to tap into the extensibility features of the Visual Studio 2005 IDE and create custom code generation tools that can boost your productivity and streamline the development process dramatically. Learn how to leverage the power of the CodeDom and build VS- integrated language-agnostic code generators capable of emitting source code in any .NET language. We’ll also demonstrate how to call into and extend Microsoft’s Typed DataSet Generator for enhanced DataSet and business classes. Finally, we’ll cover deployment issues for distributing your VS custom tools.

Leonard Lobel is a Principal Consultant at twentysix New York, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. He is also CEO and co-founder of Sleek Technologies Inc., and specializes in Microsoft-based solutions with an early adopter philosophy towards new technologies. Programming since 1979, his experience spans a variety of business domains, including publishing, banking and retail store management. Lenni has served as chief architect and lead developer for various organizations, ranging from small shops to high-profile clients. He is also a consultant, trainer, author and a frequent speaker at industry conferences and user groups.

Presentation Material

August 7, 2007

Speaker: Jim Bonnie

Topic: Subsonic and DotNetNuke

Let Subsonic on in, one more DAL can't hurt...

Subsonic is an open source Data Access Layer that promises, “All your database are belong to us”. This session gives a quick overview of the various Data Access Layer methods that exist for DotNetNuke, along with a newcomer to the family, Subsonic. A demonstration of the power and flexibility of Subsonic is provided using a working system. The system has a feature rich Business Object Layer that is populated using the Subsonic Data Access Layer. A demonstration of the ease of data access is provided. Finally the packaging and installation of the Subsonic sub-system via a DotNetNuke module is demonstrated, showing how this functionality can easily be added to other DotNetNuke sites.

Presentation Material

July 3, 2007

Speaker: Stephen Forte

Topic: Agile Development

We'll explore Agile development - what does it mean, and what is it trying to solve in our day to day projects? Why do most software projects fail and what are the main differences between Agile and traditional methodologies?

We’ll also look at the leading methodologies: Scrum and eXtreme programming, then talk about the best practices in implementing Scrum and selling it to management. The talk will be followed by extensive Q&A.

Presentation Material

June 5, 2007

Speaker: Jean Barmash from Infusion Development

Topic: Spring(.NET) Code Rejuvenation with Aspect Oriented Programming and Dependency Injection

Object Oriented Programming is very good at allowing us to encapsulate objects. However, the abstraction often breaks down when we need to worry about so called secondary concerns - things like logging, caching, transaction support, security, etc. To implement those we often have to have identical code not related to the core functionality that's duplicated in many places.

Aspect Oriented Programming tries to address some of the limitations of Object Oriented programming by allowing programmers to express secondary concerns through a single code module. This gets us closer to the ideal of "One Requirement - One Piece of Code." In this session we will examine what Aspect Oriented Programming is, and how it can help us to have better code.

We will use Spring.NET as our framework to show examples.