An Evening with Dona Bailey (Creator of Centipede)

An Evening with Dona Bailey (Creator of Centipede) will be held in Harrison, AR, on Tuesday, November 3rd.  There's no cost, but you have to register to attend in order to win any prizes.

A lot of us grew up during the 70's and 80's, so this is going to be huge...
Dona Bailey, the designer and programmer of the video game Centipede, is coming to the Ozarks DNUG in Harrison, AR, on Tuesday, November 3rd. She will give a presentation on 3D Modeling and take questions about her days at Atari.
Here are links to a few articles about Dona...
Dona's Wikipedia Entry
An Interview with Dona
Dona at the Women in Games International Summit
Designing a game that impacted the whole world, using Assembly language and the 6502 processor...I'm amazed and can't wait to hear Dona's stories!

3D Modeling by Dona Bailey

Dona Bailey will give a 3D modeling demo, outline the elements for learning 3D modeling, and speak about the benefits of manipulating 3D space. Making 3D models improves spatial literacy, which is an essential 21st-century literacy. Until recently software packages for 3D modeling were prohibitively expensive, and thus available for only the privileged. Open source 3D modeling software is now accessible for anyone who is interested.
Bailey will also be glad to answer any questions about her work at Atari in Sunnyvale, CA, and the 1981 arcade game, Centipede.

Dona Bailey Bio
Dona Bailey grew up in Arkansas, then moved to California and New York before returning to Arkansas to be closer to family. During her years in California and New York, she worked as a computer programmer, systems analyst, database analyst, and academic data researcher. Since returning to Arkansas, Bailey has taught multimedia courses at the college level, and she is now a faculty member in the department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR). Bailey teaches writing courses that incorporate digital tools and new literacy elements.
Schedule

6:00 PM - 6:45 PM Social Networking
6:45 PM - 7:00 PM Prizes

7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Presentation: "3D Modeling" by Dona Bailey
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM After Meeting Wrap-Up 

To register...

http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=141461

You do want to register so you're eligible to win a prize.  There's no guarantees, but we're looking into giving away a vintage Centipede arcade game.  An Atari Flashback 2 and other gaming prizes are also possible.  You won't know for sure what we're giving away unless you come, and you can't win unless you register.

Mobile Development Symposium with Dan Fergus

The Mobile Development Symposium with Dan Fergus will be held in Harrison, AR, on Friday, October 16th.  There's no cost, but you have to register to attend in order to win any prizes. 

To register...

http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=141458

"I Need a Sword" by Dan Fergus
Writing mobile device applications with the Compact Framework may sometimes make you want to take a sword to your system out of pure frustration. The basics are easy but as always, the dirt is in the details (I was never very good at those little sayings). I do know how you can move beyond those simple windowed looking applications to cleaner more advanced looking applications. We will look at the basics because even the best of us need a refresher once in a while.
Once everyone is up to speed we will take our sword to the code and cut up something useful and interesting. We will cover some of the advanced graphics available, thought not always directly, in the compact framework. Not to belittle a good application but to an end user, speed and looks are often more important than functionality. Too many mobile apps have none of the above. This session will also give you an opportunity to look at the new Mobile 6.5 OS (Sorry, no Mobile 7. If I can’t see it, neither can you). As always we will have time to discuss and ask questions and perhaps even touch on your favorite topic instead of mine. My favorite is data and getting it from here to there and back again. It shouldn’t be this hard. But it can be. So sheath your sword, come by and learn about writing mobile apps with the .Net Compact Framework.
Dan Fergus Bio

Dan Fergus is a Device Application Development MVP, trainer, and the co-author of The Definitive Guide to the .NET Compact Framework by Apress. Dan has also written many articles, print and online, is a frequent speaker at conferences and user groups, and is a contributing editor for Visual Studio Magazine. Dan has worked on device applications ranging from medical patient tracking to delivery truck systems to applications for the professional sports industry.

Schedule

6:00 PM - 6:15 PM Social Networking

6:15 PM - 6:45 PM "Lightning" Presentations:  Quick Mobile Development Tips

6:45 PM - 7:00 PM Prizes 
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Main Presentation: "I Need a Sword" by Dan Fergus
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM After Meeting Wrap-Up

 

For prizes, we will be giving away Resco Mobile Toolkit, Infragistics, ReSharper, CodeSmith, books and more.

---

About Ozarks .NET User Group

The Ozarks DNUG is made up of software professionals in Harrison, Arkansas, and surrounding areas who are interested in gaining technical knowledge and making contact with like-minded professionals.

[kickit]

[shout]

Sample Code of Func<T,bool>

Just some sample code of passing a predicate into a method.

   1:  using System; 

   2:   

   3:  namespace Func 

   4:  { 

   5:      class Program 

   6:      { 

   7:          static void Main(string[] args) 

   8:          { 

   9:              string[] weekDays = {"Sun", "Sat", "Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri"}; 

  10:   

  11:              Display(weekDays, s => s.Length > 2 ); 

  12:              Console.ReadLine(); 

  13:          } 

  14:   

  15:          private static void Display(string[] name, Func<string, bool> func) 

  16:          { 

  17:              foreach (string s in name) 

  18:              { 

  19:                  if (func(s)) Console.WriteLine(s); 

  20:              } 

  21:          } 

  22:      } 

  23:  }

VAN: An evening of Questions and Sharing of group opinions regarding DDD pragmatic concepts facilitated by David Laribee October 14, 2009

Topic

In the spirit of Open Spaces we will be bringing in David Laribee to facilitate a discussion of opinions on Domain Driven Design.

 

Who is Dave?

He is a coach for the product development team at VersionOne. He has 12 years experience designing and developing enterprise applications and coaching Agile teams. David has worked on internal IT, product development, consulting, and rapid prototyping teams across a wide variety of industries. David is a frequent speaker at local and national developer events. He was awarded a Microsoft Architecture MVP for 2007 and 2008 and writes about Agile and Lean methods, coaching, and software design on the CodeBetter blog network.

 

Meeting Details

Times below are Central Daylight Time
Start Time: Wed, Oct 14, 2009 8:00 PM UTC/GMT -5 hours
End Time: Wed, Oct 14, 2009 10:00 PM UTC/GMT -5 hours
Attendee URL: Attend the meeting (Live Meeting)

NWA DNUG: Jimmy Bogard "Testing the Last Mile with UI Testing"

Main Presentation
Title: Testing the Last Mile with UI Testing
Description: The ASP.NET MVC framework greatly improved the web testability story in .NET, allowing for testing of the various components of MVC including controllers, filters, binders and more.  But testing these components in isolation still doesn't prove that your site works as a whole.  Action methods tested by themselves don't prove that the view shown has the correct information on it, or that links work as expected.  For these types of tests, an end-to-end, browser-based test is needed.  But just as it is difficult to test APIs not designed for testability, views not designed for testability can lead to brittle, difficult to understand tests.  In this session, we'll look at the popular UI testing frameworks, and pros and cons of each.  We'll also look at design for UI testability in our MVC application, and how we can greatly ease our testing burden with design techniques in our views.  Finally, we'll look at UI test design as a whole, and examine how we can develop a complete UI testing strategy that eliminates the difficulty in testing the last mile.

Presenter: Jimmy Bogard is a principal consultant at Headspring Systems. He is an agile software developer with six years of professional development experience. He has delivered solutions from conception to production for many clients. The solutions delivered by Jimmy range from shrink-wrapped products to enterprise e-commerce applications for Fortune 100 customers. He is also a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and is an active member in the .NET community, leading open-source projects, giving technical presentations and facilitating technical book clubs. Currently, Jimmy is the lead developer on the NBehave project, a Behaviour-Driven Development framework for .NET, AutoMapper, a convention-based object-to-object mapper and the facilitator of the Austin Domain-Driven Design Book Club. Jimmy is a member of the ASPInsiders group, and received the "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional" (MVP) award for ASP.NET in 2009.

When:
5:30 PM - 5:45 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
5:45 PM - 6:00 PM - Lighting Presentation
6:00 PM - 6:10 PM - Intermission – Presenter switch over
6:10 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 226 (Kansas City Room)