CINNUG Blog

Jennifer Marsman, a Developer Evangelist from the Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) team, has worked up a great road trip for a Group Manager on the Visual Studio team.  That road trip is making a stop here in Cincinnati on Monday, November 17th and we are making a CINNUG Special Event out of it!

It's not often we get a guest out from Redmond.  Please come out and listen to Mark Mydland talk about the changes that are coming with Visual Studio 2010 (Rosario).  This meeting will be on November 17th at the MAX Training facility in Mason, OH starting at 6:00 PM. Oh, did I mention that by coming to this event you are picking up an extra chance to win the membership drive prizes at the regular November CINNUG meeting?

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The phrase “drive quality upstream” has been abused so badly by ALM software vendors that it has to be relegated to the platitude junk pile along with such all time favorites as “work smarter not harder,” “think outside the box,” and “synergistic leveraging of code reuse.”  Before we drive quality anywhere, we need to give quality a seat at the table. VSTS Rosario release will do this by automatically gathering critical information about the project and code and making that data available when, where and to whom it is needed. During this discussion we will examine how Rosario impacts quality across the application lifecycle by:

Allowing testers to provide developers with details about what the code did instead of just providing the details about what the tester did.
Allowing development leads and architects to visualize and understand their current code (not the code they wish they had, but the code they really have) so that they can minimize the impact of changes; and
Allowing developers to understand the impact of their changes in terms of affected tests, concurrency and bounds checking. 

The Rosario release of VSTS will bring all project stakeholders together to allow richer information to be shared across every role to make software quality accessible and achievable.

Presented by Mark Mydland

Mark Mydland is a Group Manager for the Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Testers product at Microsoft.  In the past 12 years, Mark has worked as a developer and consultant across a wide variety of applications and industries.  Mark first joined Microsoft in 2001 working as a member of the Natural Interactive Services Division (NISD).  During his time in that group, Mark was the development manager for a team focused on analytics for assessing the efficacy of natural language interpreters with a particular emphasis on driving authoring simplification and relevance quality for user assistance.  Based on this work, Mark filed numerous patents and coauthored a paper for the SIGIR journal.  In 2004, Mark left Microsoft to work as a Director of Development at Getty Images where he led a change in process from a traditional waterfall methodology to a scrum-based agile approach which brought the release frequency from 12-18 months down to 1 month.  Since Getty made extensive use of VSTS, it seemed a natural fit for Mark to join VSTS on his return to Microsoft in 2006.  Mark received his B.S. from West Point in 1991.  He has also held positions with USWeb/marchFirst and Andersen Consulting/Accenture. 

In July we started our membership drive which will end at our November meeting on Tuesday, November 25th.  For each meeting of CINNUG or CinARC you attend you get a chance to win one of our prizes (but you must be present in November to win).  For each friend you bring that has never been to a CINNUG or CinARC meeting you'll get another chance to win.  If you come to a special event you'll also get another chance to win.  As you can tell, this can add up pretty fast. 

We've published that fact that our membership drive is in full swing, and how to get chances, but up until now we haven't indicated what the prizes will be.  Well, the time has come to spill the beans (on at least some of the prizes):

• An Xbox 360 Elite
• 1 year subscription to the O'Reilly Safari Books Online service.
• $1,000 worth of training from MAX Technical Training

And the big winner will get a 1 year Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscription.  Yep, that's right, the big prize is a year's subscription to the highest level of MSDN you can get worth $10,939 MSRP!  Now that's a cool prize to get just for coming to some meetings.

If you want to win you have to come to the November meeting on 11/15.  You can still pick up some chances to win as we have four more meetings prior to our November meeting (two CinARCs, a CINNUG meeting and a special event).  Come and bring a friend!

Two free events are being hosted by Microsoft next week on Tuesday, Oct. 7th: MSDN Unleashed (previously known as DevCares) and ArcReady.  These events are FREE training for you and your colleagues.  If you aren't signed up you should be asking yourself why.

MSDN Unleashed Event (Formerly known as DevCares) will be meeting from 1:00 PM-4:00PM at the Microsoft Office in Mason on October 7th.  They will be covering an intro to WPF, and what's new in VS2008 SP1 and .NET 3.5. Register at: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032386201&Culture=en-US

The ArcReady Series is coming back for the fall quarter and will also be held on October 7th at the Microsoft Office in the morning from 9:00AM-11:30AM. This quarter's topic is architecting for the modern distributed applications. Register at: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032385969&EventCategory=1&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Good stuff.

This month we had planned on having Chris Woodruff talk to us about Astoria (ADO.NET Data Services); however, he was unable to make it. If you were pining for that talk he is giving the same talk next week on Wednesday (Sept 24th) night for the Dayton .NET Developers Group. Check out their site for more details.

As a substitute for Chris' talk Mike Wood gave an Intro to PLINQ presentation. After the pizza break Narayana Yeluru gave a grok talk on Adding Virtual Earth and Google Maps to your Applications. You can get the presentation materials for both talks by following the links on the presentation names.

We also took nominations for our director positions. We had a total of six nominations, but two of the nominees that were not present declined.  Therefore, it looks like no actual election is necessary and we can announce our new Board of Directors now!

Mike Wood, Lead Director
Phil Japikse, Director
Matt Brewer, Director
Andy Erickson, Director

These gentlemen will take on their positions officially starting on November 15th. 

As we say congratulations to these volunteers we say thank you to two of our current directors.  Dan Hounshell and Nino Benvenuti have been great assets to the group and, while they may not be directors any longer come November, I'm sure they will still bring great value as members.  Nino was a founding director of the group and his work over the last three years plus years has been greatly appreciated.  Dan has been a director for around a year.  Please take some time to thank these two for their hard work the next time you see them.

Attendance (21): This month we saw about half our normal crowd, but it was to be expected when over half of the Cincinnati area still didn't have power, we were on a special night and at a different location. We hope that all of our members came out of the storm well. This month we continued our 2008 membership drive. The rules are the same as last year: come to a meeting and get a chance to win. Bring someone to a meeting that has never come before and both you and your guest get a chance to win. This year's membership drive will end at the November CINNUG meeting. Note that attending CinARC and any CINNUG Special events DO count towards you chances to win!  You must be present in November to win.

• The 2008 Membership Drive has started! Come to CinARC and CINNUG meetings to get chances to win. We haven't decided on the prize this year, but last year it was an XBox 360.

Upcoming Events

• The 2008 Indy Techfest has been announced and will be held on October 4th.
• The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has opened registration! This is a huge conference out in LA that is only held when Microsoft has big announcements to make. http://www.microsoftpdc.com
• MSDN Unleashed Event (Formerly known as DevCares) will be meeting from 1:00 PM-4:00PM at the Microsoft Office in Mason on October 7th.  They will be covering an intro to WPF, and what's new in VS2008 SP1 and .NET 3.5. Register at: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032386201&Culture=en-US
• The ArcReady Series is coming back for the fall quarter and will also be held on October 7th at the Microsoft Office in the morning from 9:00AM-11:30AM. This quarter's topic is architecting for the modern distributed applications. Register at: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032385969&EventCategory=1&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US
• Ann Arbor will have a Day of .NET on October 18th.  Check it out: http://www.dayofdotnet.org/AnnArbor/Fall2008/.

October Meetings:

We have two CINNUG related meetings coming in October!  Remember that each one you attend gets you a chance to win the Membership Drive prize.  Keep up to date on what's coming on our home page: http://www.cinnug.org.

August 2008 Meeting Recap

This month Leon Gersing talked about Script.aculo.us and Prototype. Jim Holmes also spoke about Code Complexity. The materials for Jim's presentation can be found here. We hope to post Leon's presentation at the CINNUG download site soon and a blog entry will be created to announce the posting.

Attendance (33): Remember our 2008 membership drive. The rules are the same as last year: come to a meeting and get a chance to win. Bring someone to a meeting that has never come before and both you and your guest get a chance to win. This year's membership drive will end at the November CINNUG meeting. Note that attending CinARC and any CINNUG Special events DO count towards you chances to win!  You must be present in November to win.

Announcements:

• The 2008 Membership Drive has started! Come to CinARC and CINNUG meetings to get chances to win. We haven't decided on the prize this year, but last year it was an XBox 360.
• Elections for CINNUG Directors will be held in October. All the rules and such can be found in our Bylaws but in order to nominate, be nominated or become a Director you must be a Supporting Member, which means you have attended at least three out of the last Six meetings inclusive of Oct). You must also be a Supporting Member to vote.
• MSDN Unleashed - Oct 7th at the MS office in Mason
• ArcReady - Oct 7th at the MS Office in Mason
• If you are interested in starting a book club please contact the CINNUG Administrators. This will be members reading a technology book and meeting to discuss it. 
• If you are interested in getting together for some peer/pair programming sessions to solve fictional problems for the purpose of learning TDD, BDD, patterns, coding styles and perhaps even other languages contact the CINNUG Administrators. We are tentatively thinking of calling these Bitslinger events or Code Fests.

Upcoming Events

• The 2008 Indy Techfest has been announced and will be held on October 4^th. http://www.indytechfest.com/
• Ann Arbor Day of .NET will be October 18^th. http://dayofdotnet.org
• The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has opened registration! This is a huge conference out in LA that is only held when Microsoft has big announcements to make. October 27th-30^th, preconference Oct. 26th. http://www.microsoftpdc.com

September Meetings:

We have two CINNUG related meetings coming in September!  Remember that each one you attend gets you a chance to win the Membership Drive prize.

CinARC Meeting (Tuesday, September 9th)

Come join this new special interest group as we discuss topics related to software architecture.  This meeting is run using the fishbowl technique where the attendees are encouraged to share their thoughts with everyone while keeping the meeting from becoming a free for all. :)  What topic will we cover?  Well, that's up to the attendees!

The CinARC meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 9th at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason , OH .

CINNUG: Microsoft Project Astoria and the Semantic Web (Tuesday, September 16th at Microsoft Office in Mason, OH)

The goal of Microsoft Codename Astoria is to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by web clients within a corporate network and across the internet. The Semantic Web brings to the Web the idea of having data defined and linked in a way that it can be used for more effective discovery, automation, integration, and reuse across various applications. Astoria applications are reachable over HTTP, and URIs are used to identify the various pieces of information available through the service. Chris will show how the Semantic Web can bring new opportunities to your business and/or clients using new technologies like the Astoria Project.

Presented by: Chris Woodruff

Chris Woodruff is an Architect in the West Michigan Practice group at NuSoft Solutions. His work involves integrating new technologies, assisting development teams with architecture designs, and helping with development standards. Chris is the VP of the West Michigan .NET User Group and also is an Advisory Council Member at Capella University for the External Information Technology Advisory Council. Chris is the founder and coordinator of the Day of .NET West Michigan and also helps with other Day of .NET events in Michigan. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the College of Engineering at Michigan State University. In his spare time, Chris coaches his sons sporting teams and plays poker.

Grok Talk: Narayana Yeluru will be presenting a shorter talk on Google Maps and Virtual Earth.

The CINNUG meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 16th (Special Night and Place!) at 6:00 PM at the Microsoft Office in Mason, OH.

Russ MacMahon, a member of the user group, has shared with us that UC will be celebrating 50 years of computing with a conference.  You can find out more about this event in the upcoming weeks by keeping an eye out on the Applied Science web site.  You can register at UC conferencing.

Here are some of the topics for the conference:

• Hans Jaffe and the early days of computing
• Wearable and pervasive computing
• Business of the Web and social networking
• The rise of Photoshop and the devolution of truth

There are a lot more topics on the docket, so check it out!

Mark your calendars!  Microsoft's free events for the fourth quarter of the year have been announced. 

Both events will be on October 7th at the Microsoft Office in Mason.

The ArcReady event is on "Architecting for the Modern Distributed Application".  This event will be from 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM.  [Register]

MSDN Unleashed (the event formerly known as DevCares) will be held in the afternoon from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM.  The topics for this event are: "Demystifying WPF" and "Developing Applications with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1". [Register]

This is free training!  Get registered and we hope to see you there!

Jim Holmes gave our Grok talk this month on Code Analysis.  I've posted his slide deck (which has urls in it for the tools he demonstrated) here.

Enjoy!

Phil Japikse, who is a regular at the CINNUG and CinARC meetings, will be presenting his Test Driven Development in .NET talk for the Cincinnati Programmer's Guild (CincyPG) on Wednesday, July 20th (that's this Wednesday!).  If you aren't familiar with the CincyPG they are non-platform specific user group that meets at MAX on the third Wednesday of the month at 6:00 PM.  We have some cross over of members from our groups so if you want to learn more about the group ask Joe W. or Maggie L. about it at the next meeting.  You can find out more about the group at their website: http://cincypg.org/. 

You can try out the Safari Online service for a 10 day free trial.  Here's some info on it:

"Safari ® Books Online Library is like having your own personal reference library filled with content from thousands of books and videos by the most respected authors and publishing brands in the industry. Get online access to more than 6,000 books from top technology publishers, including Addison-Wesley Professional, Cisco Press, Exam Cram, IBM Press, Prentice Hall, Que, and Sams. Start your free trial today!

URL: www.Informit.com/safaritrial"

For those interested in riding the bus to DevLink there is now an official DevLink Bus page!  Go fill in the contact form so that you can get your name on the list.  More information is forthcoming as the organizers are soliciting sponsors to help offset the cost.  If you know of a company that is interested in getting their name one the devLink bus page and on a banner/sign for the bus then please contact us so we can forward the information on to the organizers.

If you have been waiting to buy your devLink pass (registration) then don't wait too much longer.  The early registration deadline ends July 3rd.  Right now the cost is $50.00 while starting July 4th it bumped to $75.00.

The June meeting went off really well. This month we had Tim Wingfield come talk to us about ASP.NET MVC. It was great to have Tim drive down from Columbus to share with us. After the pizza Leon Gersing gave a quick pattern talk on the Single Responsibility Principle.

Attendance (47): Once again average attendance is picking up! This is great. We are thinking of starting another membership drive. Last year we gave away an Xbox 360! We'll see what we can rustle up this time.

• Please remember that starting this month our monthly meetings shifted to the Fourth Tuesday of every month (switching nights with CincySQL). Our next CINNUG Monthly meeting will be on July 22nd.
• Starting with the July CinArc meeting the SIG will meet monthly on the second Tuesday of every month! Thanks to MAX Technical Training for again providing us a space and night to meet. Next time you're in MAX be sure to thank Stacey for her time.

Upcoming Events

• Would you like to give to charities but don't have the cash? What about sharing your coding or design skills instead? Check out the Ann Arbor Give Camp! On July 11th-13th developers from around the Heartland district will be coding to help charities. They really need help with this so if you can spare some time they are even willing to get remote help. Donate your code to charity and skip the drive to MI. Contact me immediately if you are interested in helping.
• CodeStock is a one day event similar to a Day of .NET. It is in Knoxville, TN on Saturday, August 9th. Get registered and find out more at their website.
• devLINK bus!  If you are interested in going to devLINK, but don't feel like driving there is a bus-share being organized by Amanda Laucher. Let me know at admin@cinnug.org if you are interested and I'll get your name to Amanda. More information about the bus will be hopefully be out later this week.
• There will be a Kentucky Day of .NET in Louisville, KY on August 30th. They are in the process of getting things squared away but keep an eye on this site.  Speakers: They will be putting out a call for speakers soon.
• September 6th: Chicago Day of .NET. Notice a pattern? These things are popping up everywhere!
• Do you want to discuss improving software development? Oh, do you want to do it while camping? Then this is just the thing for you. The Agile Summer Camp is the weekend of September 5th-7th in Brighton, MI. They have a cabin reserved.
• The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has opened registration! This is a huge conference out in LA that is only held when Microsoft has big announcements to make. http://www.microsoftpdc.com

July Meetings:

We have three CINNUG related meetings coming in July!  Mark your calendars it's going to be a busy month.

CinARC Meeting (Tuesday, July 8th)

Come join this new special interest group as we discuss topics related to software architecture.  This meeting is run using the fishbowl technique where the attendees are encouraged to share their thoughts with everyone while keeping the meeting from becoming a free for all. :)  What topic will we cover?  Well, that's up to the attendees!

The CinARC meeting will be held on Tuesday, July 8th at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, OH.

Open Spaces Event (Wednesday, July 9th)

The Dayton .NET Developer Group and CINNUG are teaming up to put on an Open Spaces Event!  MAX Technical Training is graciously hosting the event at their Mason facility.  Open spaces events are not about "eyes front" presentations, but rather about sharing the views of the attendees on topics they've chosen.  Several talks will be going on at once throughout the building, so come join us!  As usual, pizza will be provided.

The Open Spaces Event will be held on Wednesday, July 9th at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, OH.

CINNUG: Creating a Silverlight 2.0 Presentation in Silverlight 2.0 (Tuesday, July 22nd)

Get ready for a recursive experience! This presentation is actually a Silverlight 2.0 application which gives a presentation about the features of Silverlight 2.0 and how to use them to build a presentation about Silverlight 2.0. Got that? You'll learn about the XAML elements, dynamic languages, data binding and networking support available in Silverlight 2.0 Beta.

This is the same presentation Matt gave at CODODN, however with the newest release of Silverlight 2.0 at MIX his talk has been updated.

Presented by:

Matt Casto

Matt Casto is a Developer for the Application Development consulting practice at Quick Solutions, Inc. He has been designing and programming web and windows applications on the Microsoft platform for 10 years. Recently, Matt has been focusing on learning all things Silverlight and also wrote the CodeMash Session Scheduler (http://www.codemash.org/sessionscheduler/). Matt maintains his blog at http://programwith.net/

The CINNUG meeting will be held on Tuesday, July 22nd at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, OH.

Don't forget that Bill Steele will be presenting topics on XNA and Robotics Studio tomorrow night (Thursday, June 19th) at MAX Train starting at 6:00 PM.  We'll have pizza between the sessions.

ReviewNet has posted a SQL skills test that you can use to review your SQL abilities.  Here is the announcement they sent the group:

"ReviewNet would like to extend an opportunity to your user group members to take our new SQL Server skills tests to evaluate their skill level. Individuals that complete a beta test will be credited as an advisory panel member on our website at http://www.reviewnet.net/meetexperts.cfm. Individuals receive their test results and can see where their skills compare with other test takers. Participants also qualify for our Advisor Rewards program and a chance to receive quarterly cash prizes. You can learn more by visiting http://www.reviewnet.net/advisor.htm. I would like to extend this opportunity to you and your members."

For anyone interested in going to CodeStock in Knoxville, TN in August you may want to check out the message board thread that has started regarding carpooling.