Category Archives: Developer Events

Developer Events

DDD3 – Giveaways!

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With DDD3 just days away, I thought I’d let you in on one of the giveaways!

If you attended one of the 2005 DDD events, you might remember a session by David Laing, 10 Facts and 1 Fallacy of Software Engineering, that made reference to Robert L. Glass’s book, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering…

…well, we’ve got a handful of copies of Robert’s most recent book, Software Conflict 2.0, to give away! All you have to do is be there, may be ask a really good question, or remember some fact about the session you’ve just sat in on! It’s that easy!

Huge thanks to developer.* for donating the books, it is much appreciated!

Software_Conflict_cvr_med.jpg

Software Conflict 2.0
The Art and Science of Software Engineering
By Robert L. Glass
Foreword by Andrew Hunt,
The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC

ISBN: 0977213307 Pages: 308
Price: $29.95 U.S. / UK £22.99
Publication Date: March 10, 2006 Publisher: developer.* Books

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Oh, there might be a couple of “community donated” MSDN subscriptions up for grabs too! Make sure you take along a pen and a small piece of paper!

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[David’s slides and material available here]

Developer Events

DDD3 – Logistics: Geek Dinner, registrations, no bus, book stall timing

Registrations for DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper 3 are now at 409!

Also, this is a gentile remind about the Geek Dinner. You’ll need to sign up for that too. There is space for 40 people, currently we’re at 21.

The event takes place on a Saturday which means that there’s no free bus from Reading railway station to Thames Valley Park. There is a car share/taxi available, more can be found here. Taking a “real” taxi isn’t too expensive, I got change from £10 last time.

Computer Manuals will be in attendance until about 1040 – if you want to buy books, better do this early in the day!

Community, Developer Events, Development

AJAX – Scottish Developers and the BCS joint meeting

Gary Short will be delivering an AJAX session in Dundee next month.

I you do plan to come along, please register via Scottish Developers (it’s free and only takes a minute):
AJAX – BCS Tayside Joint Seminar

When
Start : Thursday 4 May 2006, 19:00
End : Thursday 4 May 2006, 21:00

Where
Dundee University,
Department of Applied Computing,
The Queen Mother Building

Location Map
Note: The Department of Applied Computing has moved buildings. It is Building 61 on the UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE campus map.

ABSTRACT
AJAX itself is not a language but a set of technologies used to enhance user experience on the Internet by allowing further information to be gathered from the server, asynchronously, without the page having to be reloaded.

In this demonstration we will examine the history and evolution of AJAX, before taking a look at some popular web sites that make use of AJAX. The demonstration will end with a code example of how to use AJAX to enhance the user experience, and a question and answer session.

Amazon, Google and Flickr are a few of the companies implementing AJAX in their websites, with many others following suit.

The excitement around AJAX ensure this is a must attend session for anyone involved in web design and development.

BIO
Gary Short is a Microsoft Certified Applications Developer, currently employed in the role of software architect at Computa Limited. He has 16 years industry experience in both desktop and web enabled application development. Previously, he has worked for a number of blue chip companies including Amex, IMS Health and Scottish & Southern Energy. He is currently interested in SCRUM, TDD and other Agile methods.

Developer Events

The Next Generation User Group

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UserGroup

John Price, Dave McMahon and Richard Costall would like to announce the formation of a new User Group called The Next Generation User Group (known as NxtGenUG). The purpose of the User Group is to help its members discover and get excited about all the latest and new technologies coming out of Microsoft such as .NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005, WPF, WCF, WF, LINQ, Office 12 and .NET 3.0.

It doesn’t matter what development language is your language of choice, and we will also be covering techniques and technologies currently out there which people are using now. Our first meeting is on 8th May at the Coventry Flying Club. It’s going to be informative and fun, with great speakers from the community and Microsoft and competitions and prizes every month!

So make a note of the URL: http://www.nxtgenug.net Register with the site and come and join the fun. Membership rates are extremely competitive, and anyone who attended the VBUG launch extravaganza last November will know what to expect.

Check out some of the early content – including a rare interview with Soma Somasegar – Vice President of the developer division at Microsoft in Redmond and an excellent interview with Marcus Perryman – Mr Mobile Devices.

We are really excited about this and i hope you are to… its only version 1.0 of the site and we have SO MUCH MORE TO COME!

Fasten your seatbelts – NxtGenUG is clear for take-off!

Developer Events

DDD3 – Voting Closed

Last Friday saw us close the voting for DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper 3 sessions.

I’ve just made the first pass at the agenda and it looks like, based on the votes, that we’ll have 25 sessions this time around.

I can’t reveal the sessions just yet, but will post them here as soon as we finalise them…which will be within days rather than weeks.

Thanks to all who voted, you shaped the agenda, it was truly a community for the community operation!

Developer Events, General

Microsoft Technical Roadshows 2006

It’s that time of year again – Microsoft hit the road!

Join Microsoft at their 2006 Technical Roadshows across the UK, save these dates:

Technet
02/05/06 Birmingham National Motor Cycle Museum
22/05/06 Edinburgh Dynamic Earth
06/06/06 Manchester Manchester Conference Centre
15/06/06 London (City) Immarsat Centre
21/06/06 Bristol The Watershed

MSDN
03/05/06 Birmingham National Motor Cycle Museum
23/05/06 Edinburgh Dynamic Earth
07/06/06 Manchester Manchester Conference Centre
14/06/06 London (City) Immarsat Centre
20/06/06 Bristol The Watershed

Edinburgh attendees – please note the change of venue: these events are not being held in The Corn Exchange!

Register via here.

.net, Developer Events, TDD

DDD3 – Session voting opens

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ddd3.gif

I am pleased to announce that you may now vote for those sessions that you would like to see on the DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper 3 agenda!

There’s a great line up of speakers available to choose from – some of whom are travelling from further afield to be here! And it sees the return of some familiar speakers, such as Steve Scott.

I have submitted a session, Unit Testing and Code Coverage: Putting it all together, here’s the abstract:

With Test-Driven Development (TDD) now entering the mainstream via such tools as NUnit and more recently Visual Studio 2005 Team System (VSTS), you may be wondering how to “get more” from TDD. I believe that we can improve the quality of our application by using a combination of TDD and code coverage.

Code coverage, whereby we “track” how much of our code is covered during testing, is not new. Indeed, we can practice code coverage and TDD in isolation. However, applying what we know about code coverage against our unit tests allows us to move our applications to the next “quality” level:
no longer is it acceptable to have unit tests on their own, we must know how well written the unit tests are, how much of the classes under test are really being tested?

Over the course of 60 minutes I will introduce the benefits of code coverage using both manual methods and automated tools. I will briefly introduce TDD and will go on to demonstrate the benefits of using code coverage tools against your unit tests, i.e. how well do your tests exercise your classes/application?

Whilst I will be using Visual Studio 2005 and C#, I will discuss Visual Studio 2003 compatibility too. I will be looking at a handful of the code coverage tools that are available, both free and commercial.

If you would like to see this session, please vote for it! And if there’s anything you would like me to cover in this session, please feel free to send me an e-mail or leave a comment here!

Developer Events

Dive Deeper MasterClass

I am pleased to announce that Quality Training (Scotland) Ltd are running a series of developer-oriented events here in Scotland.

The first event takes place in Aberdeen on the 26th of April 2006.

A second event takes place in Glasgow on the 9th of May 2006.

Expect to see sessions covering:

Dive Deeper Inside Windows Vista Part 1
Dive Deeper Inside Windows Vista Part 2
Microsoft Office System 2007 – The Next Big Thing!

SQL Server 2005 – What’s New?
Visual Studio 2005 – Developing the Dream
Windows Vista – Under the Hood

Both events promise to offer an Exhibition area, a Hands on Labs area and the Ask The Experts area; lunch, refreshments and networking opportunities.

More information can be found here.