Boston .NET User Group

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

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:03:36 -0400

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

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:03:52 -0400

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

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:14:35 -0400

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

Tue, 04 May 2010 07:58:54 -0400

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

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:22:30 -0400

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

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:21:00 -0400

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?

DotNetMobile Visits Boston Mon 5/3: 5-9 pm

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:11:51 -0400

Monday 5/3/2010
Microsoft NERD
Cambridge, MA

Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell are loading up the DotNetMobile (a 30 foot RV) and driving to your town again to show off the latest and greatest in
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0! And to make the night even more fun,
we’re going to bring a mystery rock star from the Visual Studio world
to the event and interview them for a special .NET Rocks Road Trip
show series. Along the way we’ll be giving away some great prizes,
showing off some awesome technology and having a ton of laughs.

So come out to the most fun you can have in a geeky evening – and find
out what’s new and cool in Visual Studio 2010!

This stop will include an intro to F# and a special topic panel
discussion on F# featuring New England F# User leaders:

Richard Hale Shaw
Rick Minerich (MVP)
Talbott Crowell

http://vs2010roadtripboston.eventbrite.com/

May 5/6 (Thu) Boston .NET UG Meeting: SPECIAL DATE

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:34:00 -0400

Boston .NET User Group is doing a joint meeting with the Beantown .NET User Group at the Microsoft NERD building in Cambridge on Thursday, 5/6/2010. This month we have Chris Dias from Microsoft. Chris is the Visual Studio Group Program Manager and he’ll be talking about what’s new in Visual Studio 2010.

As always, the meeting is open to everyone so bring your friends and co-workers – better yet, bring your boss. It is not required to RSVP for our meetings but if you know you’re coming, please RSVP by email Ben Day (Beantown leader) at benday@benday.com by 3pm on the day of the meeting to help speed your way through building security and to give us an idea how much pizza to order.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is our monthly meeting for May and we will NOT be having a meeting in Waltham on Wed 5/12.

OpsCamp-Boston Thu 4/22 at NERD

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 08:04:17 -0400

The organizing committee (Chris Burchell, Dave Nielsen, John Willis & John Treadway) would like to invite everyone to OpsCamp-Boston next Thursday, April 22nd at the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center. OpsCamp-Boston is an unconference, which means it’s free and the attendees help run the sessions. There is also free food and drinks! http://opscamp.org/boston/.

All the members of the user group community are invited to take part in OpsCamp-Boston. We ran our first OpsCamp in Austin this year and it was a huge success. The main idea around OpsCamp is to discuss interesting solutions around development and operations issues. Some people call this DevOps.

OpsCamp is an event aimed at bringing together IT professionals who are interested in the evolution of systems management and application deployment as it bridges physical and virtual infrastructure and especially cloud computing technologies. The event will be conducted in a participant-driven unconference style made popular by events like FooCamp, BarCamp & Bloggercon.

Wed 4/14 Meeting: Building Secure Applications - Avoiding the Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:27:00 -0400

Building Secure Applications - Avoiding the Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
Chris Eng
Wednesday 4/14/2010
6-8 pm
Microsoft Waltham Office

The CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration)/SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) list of the Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors is becoming the “standard” for developing secure applications in many large enterprises. Even the State of New York and DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) plan to implement procurement contracts that include language mandating application security.

This session will cover:

Prevalence of attacks using vulnerabilities listed in the CWE/SANS Top 25
CWE categories illustrated with code snippets in .NET, Java, and other languages
Impact of attacks on your application and your customers
Methods to identify, track and remediate these vulnerabilities

Whether you manage internal development activities, work with third party developers or are developing a Commercial off- the – shelf application for enterprise, your mandate is clear- safeguard your code and make sure you’ve avoided the CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors.

Reference Information:

CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration) http://cwe.mitre.org/top25/index.html
SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) http://www.sans.org
COTS (Commercial off- the – shelf) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_off-the-shelf
DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) http://www.dtcc.com/

About Chris Eng, Senior Director of Research at Veracode, is responsible for integrating security expertise into Veracode’s technology and helping to define and prioritize the security feature set of Veracode’s service offerings. His professional experience includes stints at Symantec, @stake, and the US Department of Defense, where he specialized in security assessments and offensive research. Chris has presented at security conferences such as the Black Hat Briefings and OWASP AppSec and has been quoted as a subject matter expert in various industry publications.

Boston Code Camp: Sat 3/27 - Register Now

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:01:58 -0400

Our Spring 2010 Code Camp will be held this Saturday, 3/27 at the Microsoft Northeast Office in Waltham, MA. A session list and registration are availableat http://tinyurl.com/ycylbcy. Please register so we know how much pizza to buy for lunch. See you Saturday!

O'Reilly Book Discount for Boston .NET User Group Members

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:38:41 -0400

O’Reilly has generously offered a 35% off O’Reilly, Microsoft Press, No Starch, Paraglyph, PC Publishing, Pragmatic Bookshelf, Rocky Nook, SitePoint, or YoungJin books and 45% off ebooks you purchase directly from O’Reilly. Just use code DSUG when ordering online at www.oreilly.com or by phone 800-998-9938.

Boston Geek Dinner 3/23 6:30-8:30 pm

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:30:20 -0400

Boston Beer Works
112 Canal Street
Boston, MA 02114 USA

Same as always, we meet up stairs at the bar beside the pool tables - then
grab a table if we need to. Its at Boston Beer Works on Canal Street close
to the TD Garden. If you don’t know me - here’s a picture of me. I’ll be
the one at the bar reading MSDN magazine or some Windows Azure book and
drinking a coke.

Contact Jason Haley w/ questions: jason@jasonhaley.com

Volunteer needed to lead MVC discussion at tomorrow's meeting

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:37:06 -0500

The person who volunteered to lead the MVC discussion from 5-6 pm tomorrow is ill and can not make the meeting.

We are looking for someone to volunteer and lead the discussion. You don’t need to be an MVC expert, just lead the discussion.

If you can help out please contact Chris Pels at chris.pels@bostondotnet.org before 5 pm today, Tue 3/9.

Thanks

Announcing New England GiveCamp 6/11-13/2010

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:30:00 -0500

GiveCamp is a weekend, coding “marathon” at which small teams of developers, designers, and other technologists work on customer software solutions for non-profit organizations. This is a community driven and executed event, technology-agnostic, serving the entire New England region.

Get all the details at http://newenglandgivecamp.org.

TechEd 2010 Birds-of-a-Feather Session Proposals Being Accepted

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:46:07 -0500

If you are going to TechEd 2010 in New Orleans in June there will be Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions organized by INETA and volunteers from the community. These are open discussions on any technology topic (including non-Microsoft) led by a volunteer from the developer community.

Abstract submission is now open using the BOF page on the TechEd site. Take a look and check it out.

Wed 3/10 Mtg: Session 1-ASP.NET MVC, Session 2: F#

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:28:32 -0500

Our upcoming March monthly meeting will be held on Wednesday 3/10/2010 at the Microsoft Waltham MA office. The meeting will feature two sessions, a discussion group on ASP.NET MVC 2 and a presentation on F#.

SESSION 1: ASP.NET MVC 2
5:00-6:00 pm
Discussion Leader: Bob Goodearl

ASP.NET MVC 2 which will be inlcuded in the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 (April 12th release) builds on the initial version and provides some exciting new functionality. This session will be a discussion where everyone is invited to share their experiences with ASP.NET MVC. You are encouraged to bring your laptop with and MVC related work you would like to share with the group. This will be informal, you don’t have to prepare just show your code.

Visit the MVC site.

About Bob Goodearl
Bob is President of RGood Software, is a software consultant with more than 28 years of experience as software architect, designer, and developer. He is platform “agnostic,” and his first concern is solving his client’s business problem.

In the past four years Bob has led the RGood Software team in delivering architecture, developing and deploying several .NET applications, including both client side and dynamic ASP.NET Web Applications using C# and SQL Server 2000. He is a member of the Boston Dot NET User Group and shares his .NET expertise as one of the leaders of the development of bostondotnet.org, a key resource for the New England .NET community.

SESSION 2: F# and You!
6:00-8:00 pm
Rick Minerich

Why would a programmer choose a specific style of programming for a specific task? The answer is that when you work close to your problem domain you can build things more quickly and with a lower error rate. Functional programming languages sit much closer to the domain of mathematics which makes them ideal for programming in the small. However, F# is not simply a functional programming language. Its blend of the functional and object oriented gives it a power and flexibility beyond that of other .NET platform languages.

Visit the F# Developer Center.

About Rick Minerich
Shortly after graduating from UMass Amherst Rick joined Atalasoft, a Microsoft Platform ISV with an image processing bent located in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Since that time he’s worked hard to become a part of both the .NET and greater functional programming communities. This has culminated in the launch of the New England F# User Group and a Microsoft MVP award. Currently, he spends most of his time working on the soon to be released book Professional F# 2.0.

Wed 2/10 BDN Meeting CANCELLED!

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:16:13 -0500

Due to the lovely winter weather the Wed 2/10/10 Boston .NET User Group meeting is cancelled.Please spread the word to anyone you know in the group.

We are working to have Rick back for one of the upcoming meetings.

Wed 2/10 IMPORTANT: Meeting may be cancelled due to weather: check back

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:21:43 -0500

With the potential for bad weather on Wednesday 2/10, Microsoft may close the Waltham office and our meeting would be cancelled. Please check back Wednesday morning.

Wed 2/10 Mtg: Volunteer need to make announcements and introduce speaker

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:10:17 -0500

Unfortunately, I have to go away on a business trip this coming Wednesday 2/10 and need a volunteer to make a few brief announcements and introduce our meeting speaker. If you can help out please email me at chris.pels@bostondotnet.org.

Thanks,
Chris