Wrapping it up
by admin on Jan.18, 2012, under News
Hey folks, it has been a good run. I’d like to thank all of our sponsors, speakers, and especially everybody who came to the meetings.
Essentially we just don’t have the spare time to run the group any more so we are going to close up shop.
There are many other good user groups in the Twin Cities so I would highly suggest y’all head over to tech.mn . Not only do they have great local tech news, but they keep a very good list of current user groups in the area.
Again thanks for your support.
Paul
News and No December Meeting
by admin on Dec.01, 2011, under Past Events
First off, to save some sanity during the holidays, we won’t have a December meeting. But we will be back in January 2012!
Leading to our next bit of news… We will no longer be meeting at Benchmark Learning in 2012. They are still one of our major sponsors and we appreciate all of their support. So, we are looking for new digs! We have a couple feelers out there but if y’all have any suggestions feel free to drop us a line!
Thanks and see you in 2012!
Getting Dirty with Windows Phone 7
by admin on Nov.03, 2011, under Upcoming Events
On Tuesday Nov 8 our topic will be presented by Brent Edwards from Magenic –
You’ve downloaded all the tools and know how to publish an app for Windows Phone 7. The IDE is ready to go and you have a killer idea. Now what? In this session, we will talk about many of the key concepts you will need to understand to develop good applications for Windows Phone 7. This will be a code-heavy session where we will be getting our hands dirty to illustrate these foundational concepts in action.
Brent Edwards
Brent is a Senior Consultant for Magenic, a Microsoft Gold Partner consulting company. He is an accomplished software developer, architect, mentor and speaker with over 7 years of experience in developing innovative solutions with Microsoft technologies. Brent has worked on projects ranging from ASP.NET MVC with C# and jQuery to WPF with VB.NET. He is also the author of MVVM Fabric (http://mvvmfabric.com/), a free MVVM framework for WPF. In his spare time, Brent develops applications for the Android platform. His apps have over two million downloads and he was selected by Google as a Top Android Developer for their Device Seeding Program. When not cranking out code, you can find him hanging out with his wife and four kids or riding his wakeboard, snowboard or mountain bike. Check out his blog at http://brentedwards.net.
As always our meeting will be held at Benchmark Learning in Edina. Starts at 6:00 PM. We will have swag and of course pizza!
September Meeting – Using C#, .NET, and Mono to Build Cross-platform Mobile Apps
by admin on Sep.09, 2011, under Past Events
On Tuesday Sep. 13 our topic will be presented by Scott Olson from ITR Mobility –
The introduction of the iPhone, iPad, and Android has changed the mobile computing landscape, and the impact these devices are making on corporate IT is no less significant. The mobile revolution is all about the apps, and expectations of both device capabilities and user experience have profoundly changed. Consumer owned devices are entering the workplace at an unprecedented level, and rather than the IT department dictating device choice the average worker is driving adoption. This seismic shift in the power structure of enterprise IT is creating a huge demand for cross-platform development solutions. CEO’s and CIO’s across industries have made significant investments in C# and .NET technologies. Now you can use the technologies you already know to deliver cross-platform solutions to the enterprise.
Scott Olson
@vagabondrev
Scott Olson has spent the past 18 years building software and advising clients on the potential of software and mobility. He is a contributing writer for iPhone Life magazine, technical editor of iPad in the Enterprise: Developing and Deploying Business Applications, and his forthcoming book is tentatively titled Cross-Platform Mobile Development for the Enterprise. He leads the development team at ITR Mobility, and throughout his career has worked with many of the Fortune 500 companies including Best Buy, Target Corporation, Medtronic, and Prudential Financial. He believes that what is happening in the mobile software industry today will change the way people write and use software.
As always our meeting will be held at Benchmark Learning in Edina.
Accelerate Silverlight Business App Development with WCF RIA Services
by admin on Jul.15, 2011, under Past Events
Short summer break… There will be a meeting in August!
We are happy to have Brian Noyes both a MS Regional Director and Silverlight MVP speaking on Aug 9th.
WCF RIA Services can add a lot of productivity for building data-intensive Silverlight business applications. It makes querying and updating simple, provides rich validation support, simple declarative security for the services and client, and rich error handling. In this session, you will get a quick intro into how to build Silverlight clients and services with RIA Services and see how quickly you can leverage these features so that you can just focus on the logic and appearance of your application instead of the plumbing. You’ll see how to define domain services, query and update data, and apply declarative and imperative validation rules in the data pipeline. WCF RIA Services is no silver bullet, so you’ll also learn about the limitations of the technology and where its sweet spot is for balancing productivity, performance, and scale.
Our speaker is Brian Noyes –
Brian Noyes is Chief Architect of IDesign, a Microsoft Regional Director,
and a Silverlight MVP. He is a frequent top rated speaker at conferences
worldwide including Microsoft TechEd, DevConnections, DevTeach, and
others. He is the author of Developers Guide to Microsoft Prism 4,
Developing Applications with Windows Workflow Foundation, Smart Client
Deployment with ClickOnce, and Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0. Brian
got started programming as a hobby while flying F-14 Tomcats in the U.S.
Navy, later turning his passion for code into his current career. You can
contact Brian through his blog at http://briannoyes.net or on twitter
@briannoyes.
Securing and storing data with hashing and encryption.
by admin on Jun.13, 2011, under Past Events
The June meeting is upon us!
Having an application developed and delivered on time is usually a key winner to showing the success of a software development effort. Security usually comes in second. In this meeting, I will demonstrate the efforts that one can take in developing software that protects data. In this meeting, I will show a SQL injection and cross site scripting attack so that the emphasis of protecting data can be fully understood. In addition, I will demonstrate a best practice to storing and saving passwords with a one-way hash algorithm with salt and how public and private key encryption can be used as well. Diffie-Hellman and data dictionary attacks will be recognized as well.
Bio:
Michael has been in the IT industry for nearly 20 years and is currently a Sr. Web developer for Benchmark Learning. The first 10 years of Michael’s career has been in IT consulting where he has helped large organizations within Chicago and Minneapolis implement and use SQL Server to collect and manage data. Michael has worked onsite with companies such as Chicago HMO, Waste Management, Kraft, Thermo King, Medtronic and other organizations as a consultant. The next 10 years of Michael’s career and prior to joining Benchmark Learning he had worked at General Mills as a software developer using .NET, Oracle, Unix and SQL Server to develop applications for supply and demand chain divisions. Michael has an undergraduate degree in computer science/information systems and Master of Science in Software Engineering.
May Meeting – Designing Mockups in Expression Blend Sketchflow
by admin on May.05, 2011, under Upcoming Events
This month’s meeting will be hosted by Brian and Paul (say hello to Brian our new co-chair!)
Brian will present how to get started working with Sketchflow. Brian will also invite Alisha Natvig, User Experience Specialist, in to speak about her current project and discuss her real world exposure to Sketchflow.
Frequently we need to be reminded that we are not only a designer or a developer but always both. Sometimes we get stuck diving into code or diving into TDD when what really needs to happen is define quality prototypes. Whether you are a crappy designer or a crappy developer you still need a common toolset and skillset. We are always accomplishing the same goal and that is to deliver an effective product that meets the business needs.
We need too:
- Quickly experiment and explore different ideas
Keep clients focused on the end goal
Make a prototype as real as a project demands
Enable effective client review and feedback
About Brian Lockwood
Brian is an all-around talented Educator with a wide variety of skill sets primarily focusing on web-related technologies and trends. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, Brian has moved through the roles in the programming world from UI Designer to Architect. He is continually customizing his training to the goals and abilities of his students. In 2009, he was named one of the Top 10 instructors in the world by our previous franchisor, which consists of over 240 centers worldwide.Brian has a focus on development and is the lead .NET instructor at Benchmark Learning. Among his many qualifications, he has achieved his Microsoft Certified Professional Developer certification. In 2011, he was voted by members of an IT Consortium to deliver cloud computing courses in North and South America.
Blog: http://www.brianlockwood.info
Register at:
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1652660151
Location:
Benchmark Learning
4510 West 77th Street
Edina, MN 55435
March Meeting Topic: WCF – Architecting the Global Enterprise
by admin on Mar.04, 2011, under Past Events
This months meeting will be hosted by Donn and Paul (as usual) and will feature speaker Nazmul Siddiqui who will be talking about WCF.
- Service development
- Service hosting
- Consuming service
- End to end communication
- Communication security
Presentation material, references, and sample code will be made available.
Bio
Nazmul is a seasoned consultant with over 15 years of software development experience primarily on Microsoft platform. He began his career writing client applications and switched between client and web application development. His interests lie in object and relational modeling as well as developing design patterns and raising code security, performance, maintainability, and scalability. He’s currently the CEO of Naz-Tek, and regularly blogs on technology matters and runs the local WCF user group, hosting monthly (1st Wednesday of the month at noon) knowledge share meetings at Bloomington Microsoft. His main focus is to bring efficiency and quantitative measures into the software development industry and reorient the general concept of information technology as an investment center rather than a cost center.
April Meeting Topic: Static Analysis in .NET
by admin on Mar.03, 2011, under Past Events
Need to double check that code before code check-in? Need to ensure no one is doing X, Y or Z? Good, because Jason Bock is about to school all of us on Static Analysis in .NET.
Aprils talk will cover a whole bunch of .NET goodness. Like what you ask?
Feb. 8th: Getting Dirty with Android
by admin on Nov.09, 2010, under Past Events
You’ve learned how to get set up to develop for the Android platform and how to publish an app. Eclipse is all ready to go and you’ve got a killer idea. Now what? In this session, we will talk about many of the key concepts you will need to understand to develop good applications for the Android platform. We will discuss concepts such as layout, styling, asynchronous tasks, life cycle management, menus and dialogs. This will be a code-heavy session where we will be getting our hands dirty to illustrate these concepts in action.
Brent Edwards is a Senior Consultant for Magenic, a Microsoft Gold Partner consulting company. Brent has been knocking around the .NET world for over five years, working on projects ranging from ASP.NET MVC with C# and jQuery to WPF with VB.NET. In his spare time, Brent develops applications for the Android platform. His apps have over one million downloads and he was selected by Google as a Top Android Developer for their Device Seeding Program. When not cranking out code, you can find him hanging out with his wife and three kids or riding his wakeboard, snowboard or mountain bike.
