July 2011 Meeting - Brian Sullivan on Building a More Maintainable Model with Entity Framework Code-First

The next Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group meeting will be held July 12th, 2011 at 6:00 PM at 8th & Walton in Bentonville (note the new location). Brian Sullivan will guide you through building a true POCO model, basic mapping techniques, and leveraging conventions to keep your mappings DRY using EF "Code-First".

Please RSVP before noon on July 12th so we can order enough food for everyone.

Meeting Information

Title: Ditch the Designer - Building a More Maintainable Model with Entity Framework Code-First

The whiz-bang visual designer features of the Entity Framework demo well, and may even work for small projects, but anyone who's worked with EF knows that on larger projects, the design surface quickly becomes unusable and a bottleneck to your development process. Thankfully, the Entity Framework team has heard our anguished cries and introduced a new API for defining your EF models, dubbed "Code-First". In this presentation, Brian will guide you through building a true POCO model, basic mapping techniques, and leveraging conventions to keep your mappings DRY.

About the Presenter: Brian Sullivan

Brian Sullivan is a developer analyst for Falcon Applications, LLC in Shreveport, LA. He got his start in programming maintaining legacy mainframe applications in COBOL at a large trucking company, but quickly realized he needed to find a more productive environment in order to stay sane. He jumped at the opportunity to help transition some of those COBOL applications to .NET, and he hasn’t looked back since. He has been working with Microsoft technologies for about 6 years, and is interested in increasing the exposure of agile techniques and methodologies in the Microsoft developer community. He currently runs the Shreveport .NET User Group and speaks frequently at local user groups and regional conferences. Brian is a graduate of Harding University in Searcy, AR.

Agenda

6:00 PM - 6:15 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:15 PM - 8:10 PM - Main Presentation
8:10 PM - 8:30 PM - Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where (NEW LOCATION)
8th & Walton
902B South Walton Blvd, Suite 18
Bentonville, AR 72712

June 2011 Meeting - Pete Davis on Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)

The next Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group meeting will be held on June 14, 2011 at 6:00 PM. Pete Davis will be show everyone how to use Microsoft's new plugin-style framework MEF.

Get your Ticket for the meeting here! Remember his is how we figure out how much food to get so please help us make sure we have enough for everyone.

This Month's Meeting Information

Title: Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is Microsoft's solution for easily creating a plugin-style framework for your application. By handling the assembly management and reflection to find parts, MEF makes it virtually effortless to create an application that's extensible at run-time and, if you publish your API, allows 3rd parties to add extensions to your applications. Because MEF enforces a vertical separation of concerns and can only interact with your application through a limited API, application maintainability and stability are generally easier to achieve.

Presenter:
Pete Davis is the co-author of the ancient text, Windows Undocumented File Formats. In another life, he wrote for the now defunct Windows/DOS Developers Journal, Dr. Dobbs Journal and PC Magazine. These days he keeps a pretty low profile but still likes to play with new technology. In a tribute to his nerdy side, his daughter was born on 10/11/10 at 1:01pm (or 373 decimal).

Agenda
6:00 PM - 6:15 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:15 PM - 8:10 PM - Main Presentation
8:10 PM - 8:30 PM - Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where
Technology 101
105 SE 22nd St, Suite #7
Bentonville, AR 72712

Hope to see you there!

NWA DNUG: Windows Phone 7 Launch Event

You have been hearing a lot about the new Window Phone 7 lately. Did you miss the bubble with iPhone development because you didn’t want to learn a whole new language and framework? Then you're invited to a hands-on event for Windows Phone 7.

Get some help getting your Windows Phone 7 app into the marketplace. You’ll receive everything you need to develop an app—including some good community fun, sample code and templates. You can work individually or collaborate with others as a team.

Chris Koenig, Senior Developer Evangelist with Microsoft will be joining me for this fun, fact filled, dare I say Lab filled event.

Attendees will also receive a special entry card for a chance to win a Windows Phone 7, after your app has been submitted to the marketplace.

Be there!

Get started

Download the Toolkit
Register at the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace
Download the Windows Phone Mobile Advertising SDK to monetize their app

Date: March, 8th, 2011
Time: 6:00 P.M. – 9:00 P.M.
Place:

Technology 101
105 SE 22nd St, Suite #7
Bentonville, AR 72712

Please RSVP: nwadnug032011.eventbrite.com

NWADNUG: 2011 Kick Off and Code Karoake

The next Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group meeting will be held on February 8, 2011.



Announcements:

Northwest Arkansas TechFest - Friday, March 25th, 2011 - Call for Speakers

Meeting Information:

Title: 2011 Kick Off and Code Karaoke

In this meeting we will have an open discussion about what the group wants to do in 2011 and any remaining time will be Code Karaoke.

What is Code Karaoke?

Code Karaoke is for everyone in the group that has something they want to discuss or present. If you desire please come ready to show or discuss a topic for 5-10 minutes. This can be anything development related that you have been doing, working on, or trying to learn.

Agenda

6:00 PM - 6:15 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:15 PM - 6:30 PM - 2011 Planning
6:30 PM - 6:40 PM - Intermission
6:40 PM - 8:10 PM - Code Karaoke
8:10 PM - 8:30 PM - Closing

Where
Technology 101
105 SE 22nd St, Suite #7
Bentonville, AR 72712

Please come with ideas of what you would like to accomplish for 2011 for the group and your fun short informational or code presentation.

Hope to see you there!

NWADNUG: Northwest Arkansas Give Camp

The next Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group meeting will be held on December 14th, 2010 5:30 PM. Matt Hinze will be presenting Inversion Control in Action.



Remember his is how we figure out how much food to get so please help us make sure we have enough for everyone.

Announcements:
Northwest Arkansas GiveCamp - January 14-16, 2011 - More Info

Meeting Information

Title: Northwest Arkansas Give Camp

This meeting will be a discussion and planning for how we can be involved with the Northwest Arkansas Give Camp event being held in January. Please bring yourself and anyone at your company that would be interested.

Agenda

6:00 PM - 6:15 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:15 PM - 8:10 PM - Give Camp Planning

Where
Technology 101
105 SE 22nd St, Suite #7
Bentonville, AR 72712

NWA DNUG: David Walker “Developing for Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight Tips &Tricks”

The next Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group meeting will be held on November 9th, 2010 6:00 PM.

Remember his is how we figure out how much food to get so please help us make sure we have enough for everyone.

Announcements:
Tulsa Techfest - November 12, 2010 - Open Call for Speakers - Registration
Northwest Arkansas GiveCamp - January 14-16, 2011 - More Info

Meeting Information

Title: Developing for Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight Tips &Tricks

In this session you will learn Tips & Tricks that you will find very useful in developing applications for the Windows Phone 7 device. From caching of data, objects, XML and images in IsolatedStorage to Databinding, Templating and more. You will leave with the tools that will tremendously speed up your time to market.

Presenter:

David Walker is an Senior Application Development Manager with Microsoft. He has over 15 years experience in application development with over 50% of that employed as a consultant. He has been an MCP since 2003, MCAD and MCSD since 2005, and was a Microsoft MVP - ASP/ASP.NET from July 2007 – July 2009. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was formerly a board member for INETA (Vice President, Speakers Bureau), President of the Tulsa Developers .NET users group, founder and President of the Tulsa SQL Server Group and Tulsa Java Developers, Vice President of the Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group. He has been the Chairman over the TulsaTechFest event which is going on its fifth consecutive year as the region’s largest technical training event. He also launched the very successful first annual NWA TechFest on July 8th 2010.

Agenda
6:00 PM - 6:15 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:15 PM - 6:30 PM - Lightning Presentation
6:30 PM - 6:40 PM - Intermission - Presenter switch over
6:40 PM - 8:10 PM - Main Presentation
8:10 PM - 8:30 PM - Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where
Technology 101
105 SE 22nd St, Suite #7
Bentonville, AR 72712

Hope to see you there!

NWA DNUG: Jay Smith "Estimate Tasks with Planning Poker"

The next Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group meeting will be held on October 12th, 2010 5:30 PM. Jay Smith will be show everyone how to estimate tasks using Planning Poker.

Get your Ticket for the meeting here! Remember his is how we figure out how much food to get so please help us make sure we have enough for everyone.

Announcements:
Houston TechFest 2010 - October 9, 2010
Northwest Arkansas CodeCamp - October 23, 2010 - Registration Open
Tulsa Techfest - November 12, 2010 - Open Call for Speakers
Northwest Arkansas GiveCamp - January 14-16, 2011 - More Info

Northwest Arkansas Code Camp
The Northwest Arkansas CodeCamp is less than 20 days away. Registration is still pretty low so please help get the word out. There will be 6 tracks of sessions covering everything from mobile to ASP.NET development. Check out http://nwacodecamp.com/ to register and plesae forward this event information to anyone you feel would be interested.

This Months Meeting Information

Title: Planning Poker is a consensus-based estimation technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of tasks in software development . It is a variation of the Wideband Delphi method. In this session you will learn not only what planning poker is but how to facilitate it with your team. Using Planning Poker to estimate task on your project is not only accurate its fun.

Presenter:
Jay Smith is an ASP .NET MVP and works for Tyson Foods, Inc. as a PMO Architect and Evangelist where he works with teams to test bed processes and technologies. Jay is also one of the founding members of the Northwest Arkansas .Net User’s Group and host of User Group Radio - The Community Leadership Podcast. Jay often presents to the community on various topics including Agile Software Development, Object Oriented Principles, and Application Architecture.

Agenda
6:00 PM - 6:15 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:15 PM - 6:30 PM - Lightning Presentation
6:30 PM - 6:40 PM - Intermission - Presenter switch over
6:40 PM - 8:10 PM - Main Presentation
8:10 PM - 8:30 PM - Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where
Technology 101
105 SE 22nd St, Suite #7
Bentonville, AR 72712

Hope to see you there!