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

Here is a brief introduction to my session IIS 7 for ASP.net Developers which I will be presenting at IMTC 2008 in Dublin on Friday 4th April 2008 at 11:30.

On Thursday 24th April 2008, in Birmingham, VBUG will be holding a 1 day Spring Developer Conference.  We have a great collection of speakers lined up for the day and the agenda is of a high quality with some excellent content.

Sessions and Speakers:

1. Visual Studio 2008 - Mark Quirk
2. Workflow Foundation 101 - Maurice De Beijer
3. WPF Business Apps (2 Parts) - Oliver Sturm
4. Silverlight Showcase - Richard Costall
5. Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 - Dave McMahon

The fee for the conference is £119.00 ex VAT for VBUG Members and £149.99 ex VAT for non VBUG Members - for more details and to book see http://www.vbug.com/Conference/Conference-April-2008.aspx

Dave McMahon has just sent through details of NxtGenUG's next conference, FEST 08, being held at Microsoft's Reading Offices on Thursday June 12th 2008.  More details:

NxtGenUG don't do conferences, they just have a good time and FEST08 which takes place at TVP Reading, promises to be in the normal vein of NxtGenUG events.  Great sessions, Pizza and Swag.  The theme this year is "Data Today, Data Tomorrow" and there are new sessions from Oliver Sturm on F#, Dave Sussman on ASP.NET Dynamic Data Controls and Ridgian's BI expert Dave Morrow on SQL Server Analysis Services.  There will be the keynote from Rich and Dave and a brand new gameshow called "Who's Session Is It Anyway?

As before its free to all NxtGenUG members and £49.99 to non-members.  FEST07 was a memorable event last year, FEST08 will be equally memorable. You'll learn some great stuff about Data related technologies, meet some great people, have some fun and leave with a bag load of Swag! Don't miss it!

For more info - http://www.nxtgenug.net/Fest08/default.aspx

Developer Day Scotland is another great community event, being run by the community for the community.  The events is being held in Glasgow on Saturday 10th May 2008 and best of all it's free!!.  The agenda has now been published - http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Agenda/tabid/68/Default.aspx and there are some great sessions running.  Unfortunately I am not going to be able to make it to DDS, something I'm quite disappointed about but I have other family commitments in the North East on that day.

I urge any developers who live in Scotland or the North of England who can get to Glasgow on the 10th May to register for this event and attend - I'm confident you'll find it very worthwhile.

To register - http://developerdayscotland.com/main/DelegateRegistration/tabid/69/Default.aspx