Boston .NET User Group

9/8/2010 Meeting: Test-Driven Development in VS2010: Theory and Practice

We will kick off our Fall meetings on Wednesday 9/8/2010 from 6:00-8:00 pm with a presentation by Michael de la Maza on test driven development titled:

Test-Driven Development in VS2010: Theory and Practice
Wednesday, 9/8/2010
6:00-8:00 pm
Microsoft Waltham MA Office 

Do you want to learn how to radically improve the quality of your C# code? Do you want to learn how to use the test-driven development features in Visual Studio 2010?  Do you want to learn how to use TDD to support rapid refactoring?   Then this event is for you!

Come to this .NET User Group meeting to learn about many of the testing features in VS2010.  We will explore high-level concepts and then walk through examples and demonstrations in VS2010. 

About the speaker: Michael de la Maza holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT and was VP of Corporate Strategy at Softricity (acquired by Microsoft in 2006).  He is the co-leader of the F# User Group (www.fsug.org) and has spoken extensively at Microsoft user groups and community events.  Michael is an independent agile consultant and counts EMC, Intuit, and Verizon among his clients.  He can be reached at hearthealthyscrum.com.

Michael is also teach a class on Agile Software Development in VS2010: Test-Driven Development. For more information visit http://vs2010tdd.eventbrite.com/

Boston Code Camp 14: Sat 10.2.2010

The 14th Boston Code Camp will be held on Saturday October 2nd at the Microsoft Northeast office in Waltham, MA.

Code Camp is a a day of presentations from peer developers in the community in an informal setting. Anyone can present, and this is a great opportunity to share your knowledge or something interesting you have been working on recently. Everyone that submits an abstract gets to present. There is no review process.

In addition, it is a great opportunity to discuss technical issues with your peers in the presentations and informally throughout the day.

Speakers can now submit abstracts and you can register at

www.thedevcommunity.org

Boston Geek Dinner August 25th, 6:30-8:30pm

We had a great turn out at the last one - the most people since I’ve been
back in the Boston area.  I’ve checked with a few of you (on the short list)
ahead of time and there should be at least 4 or 5 of us that can make it.

Please feel free to bring anyone you want with you … as long as they can
take listening to us talk about various technology topics for a few hours J

We’ll be upstairs by the pool tables in Boston Beer Works on Canal Street.

Contact Jason Haley (jason_AT_jasonhaley.com) with questions.

Fall meetings kick-off: Wed 9/8

Michael de la Maza will kick-off our Fall meetings on Wednesday 9/8 with a presentation on test-driven development in .NET. Details as we get closer to the meeting. Mark your calendar.

Summer Meeting Hiatus: Resume on Wed 9/8/2010

The Boston .NET User Group will not meet during July and August this summer. Our meetings will resume on Wed 9/8 6-8 pm at our usual location. Details as we get closer.

Any information on other events or items of interest during the summer will be posted here.

Hope everyone has a great summer and gets a chance to relax.
Enjoy! 

Boston Geek Dinner: Wed 7/28 6:30-8:30 pm

Are you up for a Geek dinner July 28th from 6:30 – 8:30pm or so? We had a pretty good turn out at the last one (considering it is summer). I’ve checked with a few of you ahead of time and there should be at least 4 or 5 of us that can make it. Please feel free to bring anyone you want with you … as long as they can take listening to us talk about various technology topics for a few hours J We’ll be upstairs by the pool tables in Boston Beer Works on Canal Street.

Contact Jason Haley: jason@jasonhaley.com

Boston Geek Dinner 6/23 6:30-8:30 pm

From Jason Haley
jason@jasonhaley.com 

Are you up for a Geek dinner June 23rd from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. 

It’s been a couple of months since the last one … so I think it’s time for another.  I’ve checked with a few of you ahead of time and there should be at least 4 or 5 of us that can make it.  

Please feel free to bring anyone you want with you … as long as they can take listening to us talk about various technology topics for a few hours. 

We’ll be upstairs by the pool tables in Boston Beer Works on Canal Street. 

Boston .NET User Group: May Meeting Thu 5/6

An Evening with Chris Diaz, Visual Studio Group Program Manager
A joint meeting between Beantown .NET and Boston .NET User Groups

Thursday, 5/6/2010, 6p – 8p (Special Date & Location)
Microsoft New England Research & Development (NERD)
1 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA

Directions: http://microsoftcambridge.com/About/Directions/tabid/89/Default.aspx
Parking: Paid parking is available in 1 Memorial Drive.

Please RSVP Ben Day (Beantown leader) at benday@benday.com by 3pm Thu 5/6, or sooner :-), to help speed your way through building security and to give us an idea how much pizza to order.

Join us for this unique and timely opportunity to gain insights directly from the Visual Studio team with Chris Dias, Group Program Manager for the Visual Studio Platform team. The evening will include demonstrations and Q&A ranging from what’s new in Visual Studio to a deeper look at extending Visual Studio in new and useful ways. You will leave with a deeper understanding of Visual Studio 2010 and the Visual Studio Platform.

About Chris Diaz

Chris is the Group Program Manager for the Visual Studio Platform team. In this role, he leads the best team of Program Managers at Microsoft designing and delivering the next generation Tools platform and developer experiences that are the foundation for the Visual Studio product line, from Express through Ultimate. In addition to engineering Visual Studio, Chris’ team is responsible for building a vibrant Ecosystem around our tools through the Visual Studio Industry Partner program.

Chris started at Microsoft 16 years ago in Product Support Services with Visual Basic 3.0.  He was the guy answering the phones at 6 a.m. specializing in data access technologies, specifically DAO and ODBC.  Chris provided support for the Beta releases of Visual Basic 4.0, working on forums answering questions, funneling feedback to the product team, and submitting bug reports from customers.  He joined the product team as a Program Manager for Visual Basic 5.0 and worked on almost every feature of VB over the next few years. Chris moved on to be the Group Program Manager for Visual Basic .NET 2002, 2003, and 2005.

In 2004 Chris became the Project Manager for the 2005 wave of product releases (Visual Studio .NET 2005, the .NET Framework, and Visual Studio Team Suite).  After the launch of VS 2005, he moved on to be the Business Manager for the Visual Studio product line, aligning the strategies for each of the businesses within Visual Studio (Pro, Non Pro, Tools, and ALM).

In 2007 Chris moved to his current role on the VS Platform team to begin the modernization of Visual Studio. For VS2010, Chris’ team introduced a new, modern Editor with a rich extensibility model based on the Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF). They updated the presentation layer of the VS shell to separate the UI from the data model and take advantage of the WPF platform. The team created the new project system for Visual C++ based on MSBuild in order to increase the scalability and extensibility of native code projects.

Chris was born and raised in New England and now lives in Redmond, WA with his wife and children.

Habitat for Humanity at Tech·Ed 2010

Charity:

Habitat for Humanity

When:

Saturday June 5, 2010 (42 days)

Where:

New Orleans, LA

It has been four years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast as the worst civil disaster in American history. It is estimated that 400,000 jobs were lost and 275,000 homes were destroyed, ten times as many as any other natural disaster in US history. The total cost is estimated at $100 billion in damages making Katrina the most costly hurricane in US history. Up to 15 million people were affected by Hurricane Katrina, and New Orleans itself is still struggling to rebuild. One of the biggest needs is for new housing, and to help we’ve arranged for a volunteer group to work with Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild New Orleans on Saturday June 5th, 2010, the Saturday before Tech·Ed. This is your opportunity to help an area that still has immense need, as well as to network with fellow geeks and eat more shrimp and oyster poboys! You should try the fried alligator too.

INETA Community Leadership Summit Meeting 2010

http://www.ineta.org/summit2010/

INETA Community Leadership Summit Meeting 2010

1:00 PM · June 6, 2010 · Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, LA

Register today for your spot at the INETA Community Leadership Summit being held in conjunction with Tech·Ed North America 2010 in New Orleans, LA

Here are more details. Sessions planned are below. Three calls for action…

1.  Go register to attend. Free to attend, just register in advance for our head count for silly things like planning food, space, etc. (yes, I said food, we’ll give you some snacks to help the mid-afternoon brain slump). Not planning on attending Tech·Ed? We have a limited number of day passes for that day. Email julie.yack@ineta.org to request one, while supplies last.

2.  Volunteer to facilitate a session or two. No special requirements to do this, just the desire to help the community and some knowledge on the topic you’ve picked. You can see what we need below. Sessions are NOT lecture, no PowerPoint, just interactive discussions and learning from one another. We are all the experts at something, let’s learn from that. Email julie.yack@ineta.org.

3.  We have 12 slots for sessions and only 10 listed. How should we fill the others? Send your ideas to julie.yack@ineta.org and we’ll vote on the day of the event to fill the other spots. We have some ideas in mind, but really want this event to be what the attendees want, so let’s fill the afternoon with what will help YOU.

Do you qualify to attend? Well, since you’re reading this, chances are yes. However, I will qualify it a little for you. This event is for folks that are our professional .NET community leaders. You don’t have to be THE leader of a group, but in that mindset. You help with speakers, sponsors, etc. Then yup, it’s for you. Yes, this is hosted by INETA North America, but if you want to attend and are part of PASS or GITCA or from another region, drop an email to julie.yack@ineta.org we’ll work on getting you included.

Sessions

• Growing your membership

You’ve got great speakers, content, and volunteers, now get some more members.

• Sponsor relations

Hear from the sponsors themselves about how to make the most of your relationship with them so it is mutually beneficial.

• Crash Course in planning big events

Want to do a code camp? Day of .NET? Where to start? Learn from those out their doing it, and then have your own success story to tell.

• Effective use of social networking for your group

Yes, social networking seems to be the most overused buzz words of the year. But what can you do to use this powerful and free resource?

• Who/What is INETA anyway?

Open Q/A with INETA NORAM Board

• Anything goes

What did we forget? Got a topic that’s too small for a whole session? Let’s get that covered.

• To SIG or not to SIG?

At some point in the life-cycle of your group it seems like you might want to split off to have a special interest group. Does it make sense? How do I do it?

• GITCA/PASS/UGSS who are they? Do I need them?

You hear about these other organizations, now come hear FROM them and see if maybe there’s a missed opportunity for your groups.

• How to find content for your meetings

With so many new technologies coming out all the time, how and where do we find the reliable content?

• Herding cats, aka managing your volunteers

Managing volunteers is a tough task, but necessary for any user group leader, how do you manage the group and the tasks?