The forthcoming SUGUK meeting in Newcastle which I mentioned in my previous post, SharePoint UserGroup Returns To Newcastle! 26/6/08 - MOSS Architecture Whiteboard Session, has now changed date to the 3rd July 2008.  Once again the registration URL and further details - http://suguk.org/forums/thread/11086.aspx

On the evening of Wednesday 2nd July 2008, I'll be presenting a session on IIS 7.0 for ASP.Net Developers at Black Marble's Community Evening in Bradford.  This event is part of a full day of sessions which Black Marble are hosting.  In the morning they're hosting a session on Overview of the current and future states of Microsoft’s Real World SOA and Business Process Automation platform and in the afternoon they are hosting a TechNet in the North session - Microsoft's Vision for Unified Communications - delivered by James O'Neill and then I will be completing the day with the community element.

The abstract for my session is as follows:

IIS7 for ASP.NET Developers

One of the biggest and best new features of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista is Internet Information Server 7.0.  IIS 7.0 is the latest and most significant release of Microsoft's Web Server. With this release comes a new extensibility model which gives developers more options than ever before, more diagnostic tools with which developers can debug and locate issues. During the session Andrew will investigate the new architecture, look at extending, configuring and developing for IIS7, take a look at its management user interface, and introduce the debugging and diagnostic facilities within IIS7.

For more information and to register for this event go to - http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Andy%20Westgarth%20on%20IIS7

The SharePoint User Group are hosting there next Newcastle meeting on Thursday 26th June 2008.  The details of the event are:

John Timney (MVP & MOSS Principle Consultant at Capgemini) and Philip Hunter, (MOSS Technical Lead from BT) will be hosting an open forum whiteboarding session on MOSS, WSS and best practice for architecting platforms using these products.

Although we cannot guarantee being able to answer every obscure question, we'll do our best! Participation is welcomed and expected from the audience, especially when the hosts get themselves in a mire and need rescuing. This is not death by powerpoint not product central, its an opportunity to ask your questions about architecture, platform sizing, backup and recovery, server virtualisation, publishing, database sizing, central admin, DNS, IRM, records management, support strategies, how best to handle Requests for Change. No topic is off the cards and we expect a healthy discussion to determine what might be a good architecture for your specific requirements, and what issue you might face in deploying MOSS or WSS either for your own compnay, or for customers.

Come along, sit yourself down and take part! 2 hours of free consultancy.

Venue:

BT Innovation Place
Delta Bank Road
Riverside Park
Innovation Place
Metro Centre, Gateshead
NE11 9DJ

Time 6.30 - 8.30 pm

http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.t4t652gvtvyw_NE11%209DJ%20(postcode)%2C%20United%20Kingdom___&encType=1

To register go to http://suguk.org/forums/thread/11086.aspx

Developer Developer Day returns to Reading on Saturday 22nd November 2008, and the call for speakers is now open, giving plenty of time for anyone who would like to submit a session, to prepare an abstract and think about what they would like to speak about.

So if you have a session, double session or grok talk you're interesting in submitting please go to http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/agenda.asp and fill in the short form.  Also as there is plenty of time before DDD7, if you would like to have some practice at delivering your session why don't you contact your local VBUG group or any of the other great Usergroups in the UK, I'm sure they'd love so have some new session for their groups to see.

Developer Day events and usergroups offer great ways for new speakers to gain experience and feedback with delivering technical presentations.  If there is a topic you're passionate about why not start off with a 10 minute Grok Talk at DDD or your local usergroup and then build up your confidence and presentation from there, before you know it you'll be delivering full hour long sessions.  Go on give it a go!!

I'm planning on submitting a couple of new sessions for DDD7 so I'm off to think about my abstracts now :-)

Here's the latest information on NextGenUG's great FEST 08 event running later this month.  Check it out!

FEST08 the annual NxtGenUG one-day event takes place at Microsoft Reading on Thursday 12th June.  As ever it's going to be an action packed day with great content from the likes of Mike Taulty ,Oliver Sturm , Dave Sussman and other top speakers.  No doubt there will be bundles of 'swag' and prizes and Pizza somewhere down the line - there always is when the NxtGenUG Boyz are around.  There seems to be a few more of them this year with the Cambridge and Southampton crews joining in the mix.

So got to http://www.nxtgenug.net/fest08/ for details and to register your place.  It's free to all NxtGenUG members and a mere £49.99 to non-members - bargain!  Oh and also if you're around the night before there is a G(r)eek dinner to toast Daniel Moth on his way to the states.  http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=140 is the link to signup to."

On Wednesday 21st May VBUG Newcastle welcomes Gary Short, who will be delivering a session on the Web Client Software factory.  Gary is a Technical Evangelist for Developer Express and he is also a C# MVP.  He also helps to run the North East Scotland .Net User Group.  We're very pleased to have Gary presenting and look forward to seeing him in Newcastle.  Gary describes his session as:

Architects and developers can use the Web Client Software Factory to quickly incorporate many of the proven practices and patterns of building Web client applications. These practices and patterns have been identified during the development of many Web client applications and their components.

The Web Client Software Factory provides an integrated set of guidance that assists architects and developers in creating composite Web applications and page flow client applications.

In this talk I will introduce you to the software factory and then I will demonstrate the power of the factory by building a line of business application in real time

We are once again at the excellent Castle Gate facility on Melbourne Street in Newcastle.  For more details and to register go to the VBUG Events page for this event - http://www.vbug.com/Events/May-2008/VBUG-Newcastle-The-Web-Client-Software-Factory-with-Gary-Short.aspx

Last Wednesday, the 30th April 2008, we held the VBUG Newcastle Heroes Happen Here Community Launch Event.  We were very pleased to have speaking for us, Richard Fennell and Rik Hepworth from Black Marble and Iain Angus from Agilisys.  The evening was full packed, information overloaded and a full compliment of swag was on hand.  Rik started first and covered Windows Server 2008,  ably followed by Iain who covered SQL Server 2008 and Richard rounded off the sessions with Visual Studio 2008.  Each had only 45 minutes to cram in as much information and very well they did it too!  Its extremely difficult to get so much information into such a short time and still manage to stress the focus on the most salient points.  Pizza was on hand to provide sustenance to the whole crowd and the evening ended with a veritable delight of swag.  On the night we gave away five launch packs (including licenses for VS08 Standard, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008), two copies of Vista Ultimate with SP1, three TechNet Pro subscriptions, and each attendee left with at least an exam voucher and a Channel 9 Guy!!  Many wondered what Channel 9 is and were duly informed!

All had a good night, saw some excellent content and left with swag.  Big thanks to our new venue hosts - The Castle Gate - this venue is held in an old Power Building from the old Newcastle Tram System and  they have some great sized rooms, including a large hall capable of seating 550 ish people.  If you're looking for a reasonably priced venue in the centre of Newcastle, check them out!  We hope to be back there soon!  

To view the slides from the event go to - http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Publications&subsection=Conference%20Papers

On Thursday 24th April 2008, VBUG held a mini conference in Birmingham, covering VS08, WPF, WF, MOSS and SilverLight.   This was a great day and delegate feedback was good.  Big thanks to our speakers - Mark Quirk, Dave McMahon, Gary Short (who stepped in at very short notice), Oliver Sturm and Richard Costall.  During the day amongst the great sessions delivered, I also delivered a very, very brief opening keynote and a lunchtime nugget on Developing Apps with Virtual Earth - all of the slides and samples from the keynote and nugget can be found on my Slides and Resources page.  Any questions please contact me and I'll do my best to answer them as quickly as possible.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to attend and speak at the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference in Dublin.  This was and enjoyable experience and further lessons were learned and experience gained in the delivery of my session. I have forwarded my slide deck and demos onto the organisers at IrishDev but if you would like to get to them now, please find them listed on my Slides and Resources Page on this blog.  There you can find the slide deck and an archive file of the extensibility example which I demoed.  One warning with the example however is that there are a couple of practices employed in the handler and module which are no longer considered best practice.  For this reason, due to feedback received in regards to the demos and in light of the fact that I was far from happy with the deliverance of my demos I do intend to screen cast this element of my session at a later date - hopefully sooner rather than later :).

I also mentioned in my session that I would be starting a page on my Blog dedicated to IIS resources - as the list of resources on my slides could have been about six slides long at a minimum.  Essentially the best resource and one stop shop will continue to be the IIS Community Site - www.iis.net but I will also be listing any articles which I feel are of particular relevance and also a listing of the blogs which I read on IIS and IIS7 in particular, this is made up of IIS Team members and MVPs.

Finally I would like to thank the delegates and organisers of IMTC 2008 for the opportunity to attend and speak at the conference, it was great to meet you all and spend some time with you.  I hope to see you at other events in the future.

Developer Event? Ah go on, go on, go on.

Check it out at http://www.DDDIreland.com