NWA DNUG: Microsoft 2010 Product Team Tour

Special Meeting Time: June 1^st, 2010  Please update your calendars

Randy Walker has organized this awesome tour, this looks to be one highlights of the year.  You don’t want to miss it!

Special Meeting Time: June 1^st, 2010  Please update your calendars

When:
5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764

Room: Oklahoma City Room (218)

NWA DNUG: Dennis Palmer - LINQ to XML and XML Literals in VB.NET

Main Presentation

Title: XML is Everywhere: LINQ to XML and XML Literals in VB.NET

Description:
These days it's getting rare to find a software application that does not use some form of XML. It's everywhere! Remember ages ago (back in 2001) when you wrote your xml parser?

Hopefully you 've been using XPath and the .NET classes inside the System.XML like XmlDocument and XmlNode for the last few years. But that's so 2003.

With the 3.5 release of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2008, there is a whole new way of working with XML.. Whether you're creating, editing or consuming XML, you need to know LINQ to XML and the XML Literals within Visual Basic. But don't take my work for it! Kathleen Dollard on Hanselminutes show #152 said, "If you code in any language and do not understand XML Literals in VB9, you're selling yourself short. Go learn about it... It's a really powerful mechanism."

We'll cover LINQ to XML, how to enable XML Intellisense, and using VB XML Literals for dynamically generating XML.

Demos will include:

• Data binding with LINQ to XML queries from the Twitter API.
• Windows Installer XML (WiX), which was the first Open Source project to come out of Microsoft.
• XML Literals View Engine for ASP.NET MVC.

While this technology was introduced with Visual Studio 2008, the code and demos will using Visual Studio 2010.

Presenter:

Dennis cut his coding teeth teaching himself BASIC on a TI 99/4a in the early 80's. In the late 90's he discovered Delphi where he worked with few record labels to put software on their music CD's. After 5 years of working with PHP and PHP MVC he discovered Microsoft .NET and C#. In his spare time, he is learning Python, Silverlight, iPhone development and returning to C# form some ASP .NET MVC projects.

Dennis was recognized as the 2nd runner up for the Inland Empire .NET User Group Most Valuable Member award for 2008-2009. In August 2009 he and his family relocated to Texas.

When:
5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764

Room: Dallas Room (222)

RSVP:
Please RSVP: Please accept or decline

NWA DNUG: John Oswalt & Jeremy Sharp "The Microsoft Mix Download"

Main Presentation

Be sure to join us on April 13, 2010 for the John and Jeremy show. John Oswalt and Jeremy Sharp will be taking us on a awesome ride through some of the most talked about content that was presented recently at the Microsoft Mix conference in Las Vegas, NV.

Mark your calendars and get ready for the Microsoft Mix Download!

Title: The Microsoft Mix Download

Come hear a download of the latest Microsoft technology news that was announced at the Microsoft Mix 2010 Conference. Topics will include the latest updates on ASP.NET MVC 2, Open Data Protocol (OData), Visual Studio 2010, ASP.NET 4, Silverlight 4, and the new Windows Phone 7 Development.

Presenters:

John Oswalt is a Lead Developer/Analyst for Tyson Foods, Inc. based in Springdale, AR and a Microsoft Certified Professional in ASP.NET. He is currently the President of the Northwest Arkansas .NET User Group (@nwadnug). He has over 10 years experience in developing websites and applications. His passions for programming languages include ASP.NET, C#, HTML, CSS, VB.NET, SQL, JavaScript, and many others. He is the owner of a few different types of blogs on the internet (Technology – letsblogabout.net) and (Sports – www.callthehogs.com). You can also follow him on Twitter (@joswalt).

Jeremy Sharp is a graduate of the University of Arkansas in computer science, Jeremy has devoted his entire career to the development of Intranet, Internet and Extranet enterprise business applications for both large and small corporations. Over the last ten years he has worked in a variety of industries, including consumer products, health care, education and transportation. Jeremy's client list comprises many well-known local and national names, including Tyson Foods, Arkansas Occupational Health Care, North West Technical Institute and J.B. Hunt.

When:

5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764

Room: Kansas Room (226)

NWA DNUG: Brian Sullivan "Introduction to Object-Relational Mapping with NHibernate"

Main Presentation

Title: Introduction to Object-Relational Mapping with NHibernate

Description:
Object-Relational Mappers (ORMs) have started to make their way into mainstream .NET development with the advent of LINQ-to-SQL and the Entity Framework from Microsoft. Before that, though, there was NHibernate. Based on the Java Hibernate project, NHibernate is one of the most mature .NET ORMs in the marketplace. The Fluent NHibernate project builds on this to make NHibernate a breeze to configure. In this presentation, Brian will discuss the pros and cons of ORMs in general, and demonstrate how NHibernate can take the pain out of writing your persistence layer.

Presenter:
Brian Sullivan is a developer for Falcon Applications, LLC in Shreveport, LA. He has been working with Microsoft technologies for about 5 years, and is interested in increasing the exposure of agile techniques and methodologies in the Microsoft developer community. He is a graduate of Harding University in Searcy, AR.

When:
5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center 922
East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764

Room: Kansas Room (226)

NWA DNUG: Devlin Liles "Intro to Intermediate Generics"

Main Presentation

Title: Intro to Intermediate Generics

Description:
In this talk we start with the basic uses and details of generics, assuming no foreknowledge of generics. This will take us through what generics are, what they mean to the compiler, and how they can be leveraged. We will progress to more advanced uses and finish by writing a point of sale example using generics to save time and code. This will take us through writing our own generic functions, actions, predicates, and applying constraints to give type based member access inside the generics.

Presenter:
Devlin Liles a Programmer Analyst at Tyson Foods, Inc., leads the Tyson internal .NET user group (DEVLOOP), and is the chairman of the Tyson Development Conference, a 250 person .NET event in the fall. His current project is currently working on Smart device front ends for SAP.

Since 2007 he has been presenting on software development practices and tools to audiences around the Arkansas and Oklahoma area. He is a regular presenter at the Tyson .NET user group and is a regular presenter user groups and events.

When:
5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room: Kansas Room (226)

A Night at Fast Lane Entertainment

Northwest Arkansas .NET User Group, Northwest Arkansas SQL User Group and TekSystems have teamed up to have a social night. Mark your calendars for the fun evening full of socializing, bowling, and gaming. Feel free to bring a guest.

When: Wednesday, January 27th

Where: Cosmo Bowling Lanes @ Fast Lane Entertainment

Time: 6 PM - 8:30 PM

NWA DNUG: Chris Koenig "ugPDC: Best of PDC Tour" - Tuesday, Jan 12th

Main Presentation

Title: ugPDC: Best of PDC Tour

Description:
Join Developer Evangelist Chris Koenig for a whirlwind tour of the major announcements from PDC ’09. We’ll look at the changes and improvements to Windows Azure, new features introduced in Silverlight 4.0, and Visual Studio 2010/.NET 4.0.

Presenter:
Chris Koenig is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris worked as a Senior Architect on the Architecture Strategy Team for The Capital Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect, Developer and Development Team Lead for the global solution provider Avanade. As a consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. Chris is a devoted husband and father of four awesome children who keep him very busy. In his spare time, Chris serves as Scoutmaster for his oldest son's Troop, and Committee Chair for his youngest sons' Pack. Chris also enjoys travelling, cooking, camping and playing guitar.

When:
5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways


Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room 130 (Generations Room)