Announcements and Events

Developing Office Add-Ins with VSTO in Visual Studio 2010 - with Jake Ginnivan

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group Thurs, April 1st where Jake Ginnivan  will build an application from the ground up using VSTO (Outlook) complete with unit testing, IoC, WPF integration and a few other features which lead to maintainable and robust applications. He will cover the pitfalls of COM Interop and how to avoid performance and memory issues, how to structure your solution so it is fully unit testable, the common extensibility areas of outlook, how to use WPF inside Outlook, how to deploy your application using ClickOnce and the patterns you can use to make it all fit together. All of these concepts will be demonstrated by building a Outlook add-in in Visual Studio 2010 which brings many aspects of Facebook into Outlook, including Contact/Facebook profile integration and synchronising Facebook events into your calendar.

TOPIC:    Developing Office Add-Ins with VSTO in Visual Studio 2010

DATE:     Thursday, April 1st, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth

COST:     Free. All welcome

Jake Ginnivan is a Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist in WPF and has worked in roles that have spanned both software development and information technology since late 2006. He has worked on internal systems and utilities such as TimeCards (VSTO, WPF, LinqToSql, and SQL), data importers/exporters among others, as well as automating existing software deployments and server rollouts. Jake’s passion lies with WPF technology and designing good application architecture. Jake is also a member and contributor to the Perth .NET community of practice, ALT.Net Perth and the Perth Silverlight Designers and Developers Network. He maintains a blog at http://jake.ginnivan.net and can be contacted at http://twitter.com/JakeGinnivan

There will be a door prize of a choice of license from JetBrains (one of ReSharper , TeamCity Build Agent, dotTrace Profiler, RubyMine, IntelliJ IDEA).

What's New in Visual Studio 2010 - with Dave Gardner and Michael Minutillo

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group Thursday March 4th where Michael Minutillo and Dave Gardner will present a session on many of the new features in Visual Studio 2010, which is due to be released in April with a host of new and enhanced functionality. The improvements range from minor tweaks to major new features. In this hands-on session they will demonstrate the new code editor, better multi-monitor support, IntelliSense improvements, new debugging tools, ASP.NET v4 and Web deployment enhancements, and built-in support for MEF, T4 support, and MVC2

TOPIC:    What's New in Visual Studio 2010 

DATE:     Thursday, March 4th, 5:30pm - 7:00pm
VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

Dave Gardner is a seasoned.NET developer and the Chief Software Architect at Intilecta Corporation. Dave has an ongoing passion to produce well-designed, high-quality software products that engage and delight users. Since the mid-90's, Dave has worked as a solutions architect, consultant and developer, and lent his expertise to organisations in Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia.  Dave is the co-author of Professional Visual Studio 2008 and the upcoming Professional Visual Studio 2010, and occasionally blogs about Visual Studio and .NET at http://www.professionalvisualstudio.com.

Mike Minutillo is .NET software engineer with a BSc in computer science. He is a regular attendee at the Perth .NET Community of Practice where he has given presentations on new features of C#, ASP.NET MVC and Test-Driven Philosophy. Mike is half of the winning team in the 2008 Microsoft DevSta programming competition winning best overall application and best mobile application.  Mike is co-author of the upcoming Professional Visual Studio 2010. He maintains a technical blog at http://wolfbyte-net.blogspot.com/ and can be contacted at http://twitter.com/wolfbyte/

There will be a door prize of a choice of license from JetBrains (one of: ReSharper, TeamCity Build Agent, dotTrace Profiler, RubyMine, IntelliJ IDEA).

DevJam Community Event: Topics

For our end of year meeting of the Perth .NET User Group (Thursday,  3rd December), we are running another DevJam event.

DATE:     Thursday, Dec 3rd, 5:30pm
VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome. No need to RSVP.

The speaker line up is:

·         Piers Williams:            Windows 7 Touch

·         Jeremy Thake:             SharePoint 2010 toolbox in VS2010, resistance is futile!

·         Paul Cooper:               T4 templates in Visual Studio

·         Rhys Campbell:           AOP with Unity

·         Jake Ginnivan:             Introduction to VSTO Outlook Add-ins

·         Ying Low:                     Caliburn

·         Adrian McGrath:         Windows 7 Virtualisation

·         Mike Minutillo:           .NET on RAILS

There will be pizza and refreshments provided, as well as a few give aways.

December DevJam Community Event

For December's meeting of the Perth .NET User Group (Thursday,  3rd December), we are running another DevJam community event, where anyone can give a short talk about anything .NET software development related.

DATE:     Thursday, Dec 3rd, 5:30pm
VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

You can talk about any development topic but it must be between 5 – 10 minutes long.

·         Anything you’ve done.

·         Any new technology you’ve investigated.

·         Any tips and tricks, or tools that aid developers

·         Basically anything .NET software development related!

How do I enter? You must register by sending an email to mitch.wheat at gmail.com, no later than 23rd November, with the word  'DevJam’ in the subject, stating your talk topic in the body. Let me know whether you will be bringing your own laptop (preferable). Presenter places are limited, so it's first come, first served.

There are prizes for the three highest, audience voted talks (with the organisers’ decision as final in case of a tie break), including a first prize of a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Pro with MSDN Premium, worth approx. $18,000 (courtesy of Mitch Denny). There will several other prizes which will be announced shortly.

There will be pizza and refreshments provided. If you have any questions, please send Mitch an email.

What's new in C# 4.0 with Joe Albahari

Introduction to the SQL Server 2008 Data Collector - Brad McGehee

We are fortunate to have Brad McGehee present two sessions while he is in Perth. The second session is "Introduction to the SQL Server 2008 Data Collector". In previous versions of SQL Server, performance tuning was often difficult because the available tools weren't always easy to use or interpret. In SQL Server 2008, Microsoft is introducing the Performance Data Collector. This comprehensive new toolset has been designed to integrate the collection, analysis, troubleshooting, and persistence of SQL Server diagnostic information, making the jobs of DBAs much easier. In this session, you will learn:

·         What the Performance Data Collector Can Do

·         How to Implement the Performance Data Collector

·         Performance Data Collector Best Practices

• TOPIC:    Introduction to the SQL Server 2008 Data Collector - Brad McGehee
• DATE:     Friday, Oct 2nd, 5:30pm - 7:00pm
• VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
• COST:     Free. All welcome

Brad McGehee is a MCSE+I, MCSD, and MCT (former) with a Bachelors’ degree in Economics and a Masters in Business Administration. Currently the Director of DBA Education for Red Gate Software, Brad is an accomplished Microsoft SQL Server MVP with over 14 years’ SQL Server experience, over 6 years’ training experience, and has been involved in the industry since 1982. He is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, European PASS, SQL Connections, SQLTeach, SQLBits, SQL Saturdays, TechFests, Code Camps, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars.

RedGate have generously donated a license to their excellent SQL Compare Pro.

Try to arrive early if you want a seat!

How to Interpret Graphical Execution Plans - Brad McGehee

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group in October for two talks with a SQL Server focus, aimed at both Developers and DBAs.  We are fortunate to have RedGate's Brad McGehee present two sessions while he is in Perth. Brad is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world.

The first talk is Thurs October 1st, where Brad will present on "How to Interpret Graphical Execution Plans".  One of the SQL Server black arts is how to read and interpret graphical Query Execution Plans. This is a key thing to understand as Execution Plans provide valuable clues as to why a particular query may be running slowly. In this session, you will learn how to read an Execution Plan, and learn what to do with the information you have gained from reading it.

• TOPIC:    How to Interpret Graphical Execution Plans - Brad McGehee
• DATE:     Thursday, Oct 1st, 5:30pm - 7:00pm
• VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
• COST:     Free. All welcome

Brad McGehee is a MCSE+I, MCSD, and MCT (former) with a Bachelors’ degree in Economics and a Masters in Business Administration. Currently the Director of DBA Education for Red Gate Software, Brad is an accomplished Microsoft SQL Server MVP with over 14 years’ SQL Server experience, over 6 years’ training experience, and has been involved in the industry since 1982. He is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, European PASS, SQL Connections, SQLTeach, SQLBits, SQL Saturdays, TechFests, Code Camps, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars.

We will have pizza at this session courtesy of INETA.

RedGate have generously donated a license to their excellent ANTS Memory Profiler Pro. There is also a door prize of a choice of license from JetBrains (one of ReSharper , TeamCity Build Agent, dotTrace Profiler, RubyMine, IntelliJ IDEA).

Try to arrive early if you want a seat!

Continuous Integration: Improving Quality and Reducing Cost Through Constructive Laziness

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group, Thurs September 3rd to hear Colin Scott talk about Continuous Integration and why you should be doing it. Merging the work of multiple developers and producing reliable, deployable systems is a time consuming and tedious process that wastes developer effort that could be better spent on creating software. Continuous Integration (CI) allows us to automate these tasks and include automated testing and code analysis. This results in higher quality outputs at a lower cost. This presentation shows how to set up simple CI for .NET projects using readily available tools.

Pex: Automated White Box Testing

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group, Thurs August 6th to see Rhys Campbell demonstrate Pex,  a tool being developed by Microsoft Research which has the potential to dramatically improve the quality of software testing while requiring minimal effort on the part of the developer. Pex can automatically generate a set of inputs for a parameterized unit test which can effectively exercise most, if not all, possible code paths.

When should ASP.NET Developers leverage the SharePoint Platform?

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Thurs July 2nd to hear  Jeremy Thake answer a common question: Is SharePoint is the correct choice as a base platform for a solution?  Jeremy Thake will present the advantages (and disadvantages) of leveraging the SharePoint Platform. Some lines in the sand will be drawn to make it easier to make the decision early on the project based on real world experience gathered by Jeremy from the SharePoint community.

TOPIC:    When should ASP.NET Developers leverage the SharePoint Platform?

DATE:     Thursday, July 2nd, 5:30pm
VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

Jeremy Thake has been in the Microsoft web development space since 1999. He has specialised in SharePoint since the beta release of SharePoint 2007. He facilitates the SharePointDevWIki.com which has become a open source resource for all things SharePoint Development. His blog focuses on SharePoint and Enterprise Content Management and is supplemented by his Tweet stream at @jthake. Jeremy has worked for Readify, a Technical Readiness company, since August 2008 and has implemented various SharePoint projects and trained both locally in Perth and the rest of Australia.

There will be a door prize of a ReSharper license (courtesy of JetBrains).

Try to arrive early if you want a seat!

.NET Micro-ISV (or Get Rich Working from Home!)

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Thurs June 4th to hear Joe Albahari present on using your .NET skills to write a program to sell over the Internet. Sound hard? It's easier than you think! This presentation will cover what Joe learned in setting up a successful Micro-ISV (Independent Software Vendor), including:

·         Idea incubation - what works and what doesn't

·         Marketing strategies, bootstrapping and how to get free advertising, including a simple trick to increase your sales 30%

·         Traps in dealing with domain experts & business partners

·         How programming best practices differ for Micro-ISVs

·         A rarely-used but easy deployment mechanism to maximize downloads

·         Handling automated payments

·         Designing a licensing system that works

·         Web site design and search engine optimization

·         Monetization options & establishing a price, and why a micro-ISV does well in a recession

TOPIC:    .NET Micro-ISV

DATE:     Thursday, June 4th, 5:30pm
VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

Joe Albahari is author of C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, and inventor of LINQPad - the popular querying utility. He's been programming for 20 years in a variety of industries and has been involved in two startups. His web site is www.albahari.com.

There will be door prizes of a 10-user team license for LINQPad Autocompletion (courtesy of Joe) and a ReSharper license (courtesy of JetBrains).

Try to arrive early if you want a seat!

DevJam Community Event

We have a great lineup for May’s DevJam community event of the Perth .NET User Group:

Tiang Cheng:              Developing Software as a Service with the Google API

Graeme Foster:          'Dude, where's my memory?': Finding managed memory leaks using Windbg

Andy Dent:                WPF layer-cake: C#, C++/CLI and C

Dave Gardner:           NDepend

Rhys Campbell:          Introduction to ASP.Net MVC

Adrian McGrath:       Measuring .NET Application Performance - Application Instrumentation

Jeremy Thake:           ‘What's this ReSharper all about then?’

Hadley Willan:           Partial classes with LINQ-SQL

DATE:     Thursday, May 7th, 5:30pm
VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

There are prizes for the presenters of the highest, audience voted talks (with the organisers’ decision as final in case of a tie break):

First Prize: Visual Studio 2008 Pro with MSDN Premium, worth approx. $3,500 (courtesy of Microsoft), plus a license for NDepend (courtesy of Patrick Smacchia).

Second Prize: a Resharper License (courtesy of JetBrains), plus a copy of C# in a Nutshell (courtesy of Joe Albahari)

Third Prize: a copy of Code Craft (courtesy of O’Reilly), plus a LINQPad auto-completion license (courtesy of Joe Albahari).

Audience Door Prizes: a Resharper License (courtesy of JetBrains), and a copy of Professional Visual Studio 2008 (courtesy of Dave Gardner).

In addition, the top 3 voted talks will each receive a copy of Professional Visual Studio 2008 (courtesy of Dave Gardner).

DevJam in May

For May’s meeting of the Perth .NET User Group (Thursday, 7^th May), we are running another DevJam community event, where anyone can give a short talk about anything .NET software development related.

DATE:     Thursday, May 7th, 5:30pm
VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

You can talk about any development topic but it must be between 5 – 10 minutes long.

·         Anything you’ve done.

·         Any new technology you’ve investigated.

·         Any tips and tricks, or tools that aid developers

·         Basically anything .NET software development related!

How do I enter? You must register by sending an email to mitch.wheat at gmail.com, no later than 25^th April, with the words ‘May DevJam’ in the subject, stating your talk topic in the body. Let me know whether you will be bringing your own laptop (preferable).

There are prizes for the presenters of the highest, audience voted talks (with the organisers’ decision as final in case of a tie break):

First Prize: Visual Studio 2008 Pro with MSDN Premium, worth approx. $3,500 (courtesy of Microsoft)

Second Prize: a Resharper License (courtesy of JetBrains), plus a copy of C# in a Nutshell (courtesy of Joe Albahari).

Third Prize: a copy of Code Craft (courtesy of O’Reilly), plus a LINQPad auto-completion license (courtesy of Joe Albahari).

Audience Door Prizes: a Resharper License (courtesy of JetBrains), and a copy of Professional Visual Studio 2008 (courtesy of Dave Gardner).

In addition, the top 3 voted talks will each receive a copy of Professional Visual Studio 2008 (courtesy of Dave Gardner).

There will be pizza and refreshments provided. If you have any questions, please send Mitch an email.

Flexible UI Composition with WPF

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Thurs April 2nd to hear James Miles present on how Inversion of Control (IoC) and separated presentation principles can be used to build rich WPF applications, while keeping memory consumption low and minimising object lifetimes. James will demonstrate how the careful introduction of an IoC Container can increase the flexibility of your UI architecture, facilitating agile software development.

TOPIC:    WPF Flexible UI Composition with James Miles
DATE:     Thursday, April 2nd, 5:30pm
VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

James is an independent software contractor and has been developing rich client applications in .NET for more than 5 years. He specializes in C# 3.0, LINQ & WPF, bringing the latest technologies to line of business. James is currently working on the Phoenix Project at Racing & Wagering WA.

There will be door prizes of a ReSharper license (courtesy of JetBrains), a .NET Memory Profiler license (courtesy of SciTech), a copy of “Programming WPF” (courtesy of O’Reilly) and T-Shirts (courtesy of RedGate).

If the last meeting’s record attendance was anything to go by, try to arrive early if you want a seat!

Real World Test Driven Development: Unit Testing Enterprise Solutions

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Thursday March 5th to hear Rhys Campbell present on the essentials of TDD and how it encourages good software design as opposed to just having tests. Rhys will cover the differences between unit, acceptance and integration tests, why conventional unit test examples often do not work in the real world, what to test and what to mock, automating your tests, coding examples of how to use Mocks, Stubs, Fakes, Dummies and Spies... what are they and how do they help me.

TOPIC:    Real World TDD with Rhys Campbell
DATE:     Thursday, March 5th, 5:30pm
VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

Rhys Campbell is a software developer currently contracting in Perth, WA. He recently returned from London, where he has been active in the .NET community, attending and speaking at the 2008 Seattle and London Alt.NET Open Spaces. Rhys is interested in design, architecture, patterns and bringing best practices from other communities to .NET. Rhys is a director of ArtemisWest.

There will be door prizes of a ReSharper license (courtesy of JetBrains) and T-Shirts (courtesy of Redgate).