I am pleased to announce that the agenda for DDD7 is now live:

http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/agenda.asp

Watch this space for Registration details!

Technorati Tags: DDD, DDD7, DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper

When:
Monday 13th October 2008, doors open 6:00pm, meeting starts 6:30pm

Where:
UWE (University of the West of England), Frenchay, Bristol (see FAQ for directions and a map) – Room 2q50 (in Q block)

What:
“Producing Production Quality Software” and “Interaction based testing with Rhino Mocks”

Who:
Oren Eini is the author of Rhino Mocks and a major contributor to Castle and NHibernate.

Why:
Because Oren is in the UK for a couple of weeks and we’ve managed to nab him whilst he’s here. This is a rare opportunity to listen to someone who can make a real difference to the success of your project.

How do I sign up for this meeting:
Send an email to meetings at dotnetdevnet.com and quote your user name and the October Extra meeting.

“Producing Production Quality Software” Abstract:
Working software is no longer the only thing that we need to produce. We need to create a software system that has a chance of surviving in the cruel world of production system, outside the clean room and sterile environment of development and QA. Understanding bottlenecks in the system, preventing cascading failures and recovery strategies have ceased being the problems of the very high end players. With the cost of system downtime being measures in $$$/second, this is an area we have to consider all the way. In this talk we will cover how we can map common weaknesses in the system design, “preemptively” protect ourselves from them, and produce software systems that can withstand the real world hostile environment.

“Interaction based testing with Rhino Mocks” Abstract:Beyond the simplest scenarios, all objects had collaborators that they work with. This flies in the face of testing objects in isolation. This is the problem that mock objects were created to solve. In this talk you will learn what mock objects are, how to utilize them and best practices on when / how to utilize them. Rhino Mocks is a mock objects framework for .Net whose core goals are to let the developer rely on the compiler work well with refactoring tools.

Bio:
Oren Eini is an independent consultant based in Israel, focusing on architecture and best practices that lead to quality software and zero friction development processes. He is the author of Rhino Mocks, the most popular mocking framework on the .Net platform as well as a member of other well known open source projects, chief among them are the Castle project and NHibernate.
Oren is an internationally known speaker, and the author of the soon to be published book: Building Domain Specific Languages with Boo.

More information can be found here:
http://www.dotnetdevnet.com/Meetings/tabid/54/EntryID/26/Default.aspx

Technorati Tags: Oren Eini, dotnetdevnet, rhino, rhino mocks

With REMIX around the corner on 18/19th September 2008, once again the community is gearing up to provide it’s own unique brand of “entertainment while you learn” plus opportunities for all members of the UK Community to take part in events and promote their groups and themselves.

To that end, the REMIX team are organising another Speaking Competition along the lines seen at TechEd and the UK Launch. There’s been some discussion recently about promoting new speaking talent on this thread. Well, here is a fantastic opportunity to do just this by offering the chance to speak at a major event to your user group members. In the process they can get some help in improving their speaking skills plus have a chance to win an Xbox 360! Yes “Ready Steady Speak” is back for REMIX.

For those of you not familiar with it, the format is as so:

Contestants will present a 5 min session on a subject of their choice relating to Web Development or Web Design. They will present in front of the REMIX audience and in front of a panel of judges. If there are more than a certain number of contestants (TBD), there will be ‘heats’ earlier in the day with the winners of the heats in a ‘speak-off’ in the evening session. The ‘speak-off’ will take place as stated in the evening of the first day of REMIX and the first prize is an Xbox 360 + Goodies!

Prerequisites:

Mandatory

• Speakers must NOT have previously presented ‘full sessions’ at DDD, TechEd, DevWeek, SDN, SQLBITS, VBUG Conference, NxtGenUG FEST or any similar such conferences.
• Speakers must create a new session of their own with new material which can be based on existing material but cannot be a simple copy of it.
• Speakers must limit their session to as close to 5 mins as possible (overrunning time will cause the speaker to be marked down).
• Speakers must not have previously won Speaker Idol or “Ready Steady Speak” UK Launch – Sorry to James Coulter!
• Speakers must state their desire to enter the competition by no later than close of play on Monday 15th September 2008. E-mail dave ^AT^ nxtgenug ^DOT^ net to express your interest!

Desirable

• Speakers should provide if at all possible their own laptop, but one can be provided if necessary. The speaker should notify the organisers of any software prerequisites.
• Speakers should have spoken previously at a User Group meeting even if only for a 10 min mini-session or ‘nugget’. This is NOT mandatory.

The likes of Scott Guthrie will be there and could be in your audience!

Technorati Tags: REMIX

MSDN Events
MSDN Event – Rich Internet Applications with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
Location: Reading
Date: 2 September 2008
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383782&Culture=en-GB

MSDN Event: Rich Internet Applications with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
Location: London
Date: 4 September 2008
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383660&Culture=en-GB

MSDN Event: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
Location: Reading
Date: 2 October 2008
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383659&Culture=en-GB

MSDN: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
Location: Manchester
Date: 7 October 2008
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383656&Culture=en-GB

MSDN: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
Location: Birmingham
Date: 14 October 2008
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383649&Culture=en-GB

MSDN: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
Location: Bristol
Date: 22 October 2008
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383652&Culture=en-GB

MSDN: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
Location: Exeter
Date: 23 October
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383655&Culture=en-GB

MSDN Roadshow Re-Run
Location: London
Date: 24 October 2008
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383788&Culture=en-GB

TechNet Events
TechNet Event: Microsoft Virtualisation and Management Technologies
Location: London
Date: 4 September 2008

TechNet Event: Microsoft’s Visions for Unified Communications
Location: Reading
Date: 2 September 2008

TechNet Event: Microsoft After Hours
Location: London
Date: 10 September 2008

TechNet Event: Virtualisation Licensing In-depth
Location: Reading
Date: 2 October 2008

TechNet Event: SQL Server 2008
Location: Manchester
Date: 7 October 2008

TechNet Event: Windows Powershell – Around the Datacentre in 80 Scripts
Location: Birmingham
Date: 14 October 2008

TechNet Event: Small Business Server 2008
Location: Bristol
Date: 22 October 2008

TechNet Event: SQL Server 2008
Location: Exeter
Date: 23 October 2008

TechNet Event: Exchange Server 2007
Location: London
Date: 29 October 2008

TechNet Event: Small Business Server 2008
Location: London
Date: 29 October 2008

Technorati Tags: MSDN, MSDN Events, TechNet, TechNet Events, Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, Small Business Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, SQL Server 2008, Small Business Server 2008, Virtualisation, Unified Communications, Rich Internet Applications, Microsoft, Windows Powershell, Powershell

Via Barry Dorrans, here’s your chance to win an MSDN Premium subscription.

Alternative link http://londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk/?p=74

Barry’s rules (those currently published and those that may be published at a later date) are considered final.  The DDD organisers (individuals and Microsoft) cannot enter into any correspondence relating to this kind and generous offer.