Monday, June 17, 2013, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

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Topic:
In this talk, Dennis will cover a number of topics related to Big Data. First we will look at just what is Big Data and the 3 V’s that define it. We will cover the technologies, Microsoft’s and others, in the space and dive into Hadoop (Map/Reduce) with a detailed example. The role of the data scientist and what make a good one will be also discussed. We will wrap up with a number of best practices for dealing with big data.

Speaker Bio:
Highly skilled IT Leader having significant experience and expertise delivering leading edge applications in a variety of business sectors. Industry recognized passion for innovation and entrepreneurial approaches to utilizing IT technologies to match business objectives. As a Technology Evangelist, supports the developer community through public speaking at “Code Camps” and similar events. Co-Founder Hartford SQL Server User Group, former member CT Dot NET Board of Directors, Founder of the New England Silverlight Guild. Strengths include: systems architecture, data warehousing, database design, database performance tuning, Agile methodologies.

Monday, June 10, 2013, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

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Topic:
Want distributed version control in Visual Studio? Want it to work with Team Foundation Server, too? Well, now you can do Git + TFS. And it’s supported by Microsoft, too. It’s now a real, actually supported feature. In this session, Ben will talk about why that’s cool and give you a tour of how to do Git + Visual Studio 2012 + TFS 2012.

About the Speaker:
Benjamin Day is a consultant and trainer specializing in software best practices using Microsoft’s tools. Ben’s main areas of emphasis include Team Foundation Server, Scrum, software testing, and software architecture. He is a Microsoft Visual Studio ALM MVP, a certified Scrum trainer via Scrum.org, and a speaker at conferences such as TechEd and VSLive. When not developing software, Ben’s been known to go running and sea kayaking in order to balance out his love of cheese, cured meats, and champagne. He can be contacted via http://www.benday.com.

Monday, May 20, 2013, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Topic:
We will discuss customization possible with SSDT (templates and snippets) to produce artifacts that conform to your standards. We’ll also look at limits of localdb and strategies to deal with them. Finally – we’ll look at Enterprise deployment strategies.

About the Speaker:
John is the Data Architect at Evolution 1 in Simsbury Connecticut – and Adjunct Professor at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He has 32 years industry experience; working with SQL server since version 4.2 on OS/2, Oracle since 7.3.4. John holds a Master of Science – Computer Science degree from Rensselaer (1995). John is co-organizer of the Hartford SQL User Group.

Monday, May 6, 2013, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

SignalR is a library for ASP.NET that make it possible for you to stream data back to web users in near realtime. Phil will discuss the overall architecture of SignalR, how to install it, and what devices it works on. We’ll demonstrate how to create sites that make use of the library.

About the Speaker:
Phil Denoncourt is a .NET consultant, who over the past dozen years has developed a wide range of .NET applications and has over 20 years experience writing software. He speaks at many venues in the New England Area on a variety of development topics. Phil is certified in a host of .NET Technologies including Team Foundation Server, Windows Communication Framework, SQL Server 2012, and ASP.NET. When not spending time with his wife and children, Phil is an avid fan of Boston teams.

Monday, April 1, 2013, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Many say that the practice of test driven development (TDD) has the ability to transform software engineering. Let’s break it down from a skeptical pragmatist’s viewpoint. This presentation focuses on three key ideas; the blueprint, the toolbox, and the master craft. Let’s look at TDD as a blueprint for writing code and discuss the implications and benefit. Let’s go beyond the theoretical application of TDD and focus on the toolbox, with examples of what developers need to know to get going. Finally, TDD is a master craft of Agile engineering. To be effective with TDD, let’s look at the progression of skills needed to achieve the promised results of TDD and to maximize its value.

About the Speaker:
Stephen Ritchie is the author of Pro .NET Best Practices (http://www.apress.com/9781430240235). He has been writing software professionally for over 20 years. He works as a software development consultant at Excella Consulting in the Washington, D.C. area. His passion for following best practices has taught him to appreciate the value of experience, practical know-how, and continuous learning. Stephen is the .NET best practices steward at Excella Consulting, working with .NET project teams to facilitate and sort out the helpful practices from the unhelpful ones, the practicable from the impracticable, and the “sounds good” from the “it really is good” practices and principles.

Monday, March 4, 2013, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Windows Phone is the fabled “third version” of Windows Phone where, historically, Microsoft gets things right. True to tradition, Windows Phone 8 has a lot to offer to consumers, like new screen resolutions, multi-core devices, NFC support, IE10 and more. But it doesn’t end there: The true value of Windows Phone 8 comes from you, the developers, and the great apps you build. Come learn about all the great features in Visual Studio 2012 and the Windows Phone 8 SDK to help you design even greater apps for greater profitability. We’ll cover new app models like camera lenses and location-aware background agents, speech & voice recognition, in-app purchasing, the new tile options, tooling changes, and more. We’ll also compare the Windows Phone application development model to Windows 8 and discuss how you can share assets between the two. Get ready for some great demos as we dive in the good stuff. Build Mobile Apps. Publish. Profit!

Nick Landry, MVP – Senior Product Manager, Infragistics

Nick Landry (@ActiveNick) is a Senior Product Manager for Infragistics, the world leader in user interface development tools that empower developers to build and style immersive user experiences and rich data visualization in line of business applications across all .NET platforms, the Web and mobile devices (www.infragistics.com).

Nick is at the helm of Infragistics’ mobile, data visualization and geospatial developer tools across multiple technologies and platforms. He previously spent a total of 16 years of his career in IT consulting and services organizations across various technical and business roles, designing, building, managing and selling innovative software solutions for some of the world’s top brands and Fortune 500 companies.

Known for his dynamic and engaging style, he is a frequent speaker at major software development conferences worldwide like TechEd, DevConnections, VSLive, and others, and is a 9-year Microsoft MVP awarded on Windows Phone Development. With over 20 years of professional experience, Nick is a developer and software architect by trade and specializes in Enterprise Mobility, Location Intelligence & Geospatial development, Data Visualization, Touch Computing, Cloud Computing and Game Development with XNA. He wrote multiple technical magazine articles, published white papers, wrote several mobility courses, has been a technical editor for IT books, and holds several professional certifications.

Blog: www.ActiveNick.net – LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/activenick

Friday, February 8, 2013

Unfortunately, due to last minute scheduling conflicts, our February .NET user group meeting is cancelled.

We are planning on having our March meeting as usual. We are also working to reschedule our February speaker for a later date.

Thanks for your continued support.

Monday, January 7, 2013, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Do you dread writing code in JavaScript? Are you interested in alternatives that leverage your .NET/Java skills while maintaining the compatibility of the lingua franca of the web? Are you interested in understanding what CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Script#, Dart and Google Web Toolkit offer? This session will explain what benefits (and drawbacks) these technologies provide using interactive code demos.

Andrew Babiec

Andrew Babiec is a Senior Software Architect at Tallan, with 15+ years of experience in custom business software development, primarily in Microsoft, Java and Oracle technologies. He is an active speaker at New England developer events, code camps and user group meetings, offering insights from his hands-on work at clients such as barnesandnoble.com, XL Insurance and Lincoln Financial Group. In addition, Andrew is a member of the Microsoft Virtual Technical Specialist program, leads the Visual Studio ALM practice at Tallan and has been certified as a PMP and Trainer for the Professional Scrum Developer program at scrum.org.

Monday, December 3, 2012, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

With such a broad range of hardware and operating systems, HTML and Javascript on the web is the sure fire way to ensure your app can reach the broadest audience on all computers and devices. Unfortunately they lack the native features that make for an optimal experience. In this presentation Ben Dewey highlights the native features of Metro Style apps that should be considered when making your development platform decisions. Every app is different and has different needs, this presentation will give you tools to help answer whether to go native or not on your next project.

You will learn:

• How Metro style apps differ from Websites that our industry has built for many years.
• Advantages to the new WinRT Application Model
• Comparison of website features with native JS features

Ben Dewey

Senior Software Consultant
Tallan, Inc

Ben Dewey is currently employed at Tallan, Inc. as a Senior Software Consultant. Ben Dewey works during the day on Web and XAML based technologies with heavy use of WCF and a service-based architecture. In his free time, Ben Dewey works on Apps for mobile platforms and has two apps on the Windows Phone Marketplace. Ben strives to create SOLID applications of the highest craftsmanship while paying special attention to clean User Experiences (UX). Ben Dewey recently completed a book title A Guide to Metro Style Apps for O’Reilly publishing. Ben is actively involved in numerous community events, from speaking at local user groups and helping to organize the ALT.NET Meetup in NYC. In addition he make occasional posts to his blog at http://bendewey.com/blog

Monday, November 5, 2012, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Windows 8 has just been released, and it is an entirely new, bold vision for Windows. It represents a unique balance between the mobile and desktop worlds, a balance between the performance of native code and the productivity of managed code. However, despite the dramatic makeover, .NET, XAML, and Windows Presentation Foundation are not only still part of Microsoft development picture, but they are more important than ever. This talk will give you the tools to be a productive developer in this new environment.

We will first discuss the main design principles and the key new features of Windows 8, including the brand new Start Menu with live, interactive application tiles, the built-in Contracts for communication between applications including Search and Share, the new application lifecycle, and the emphasis of asynchronous operations. Then we will learn about Windows Runtime, the exciting new development platform at the base of Windows 8 that allows easy interoperability between .NET, Javascript, and native code. We will probe into the internals of the platform, look at code samples, and take a detailed tour of the API as we go. We will examine the new controls that have been introduced as part of the new XAML, which exemplify the primacy of touch and a new “fast and fluid” interface. All of the preceding topics will lead into a

discussion of how .NET 4.5 has been tailored to work with the Windows Runtime. We will discover that through the use of metadata, Windows Runtime objects appear just like .NET objects. In other words, developers will be able to leverage the exciting new features of the Windows Runtime without significantly changing the development patterns they already know! Async-await, an exciting new .NET 4.5 language feature, will be explained. We will investigate how async-await gets rid of much of the conceptual difficulty and boilerplate of asyncronous programming. All of this will be illustrated with copious code examples. Finally, an interactive demo with Flickr will be shown, which will illustrate some of the key features we have covered, including async-await, the new application lifecycle, application tiles, and the Search contract.

As a result of this presentation, you will understand how .NET fits into the exciting new world of Windows 8 development and use your existing development skills to create exciting new applications!

Ben Poserow has been a developer for 15 years, working both in Java and .NET. He has worked for the last 5-1/2 years at Sungard Consulting Services, providing application solutions for multiple large clients and currently at Morgan Stanley. He has presented on numerous topics, including AppDomains, .NET Custom LINQ providers, Scala, and Hadoop. He lives in Westchester with his wife Hayley and a 2 year old son, and enjoys reading, running, biking, hiking, and independent movies.