December's speaker is Alan Stevens (@alanstevens) from Knoxville. Alan's a dynamic speaker who will challenge your ideas on the way you work and code, and is one of the people responsible for CodeStock. Here's the abstract of Alan's talk:

What is expertise? How do we tell who has it? How do we gain it? Why doesn't everyone get better with experience? These are the questions we will examine in this session. Along the way, we'll discuss writing COBOL in any language, Tiger Woods, mastery, comfort zones, the Zen of fast horses and why it takes ten thousand hours to become an expert. Join us as we take a big picture view of what it takes to get from where you are to where you want to be in your technical expertise.

We're going to meet at Microsoft to provide enough room for a larger group. The Guild will be probably be helping promote the event, too.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011
6:30 PM

Microsoft - Charlotte Campus
8050 Microsoft Way
Charlotte, NC 28273 

RSVP for the event

Every software developer has a few products they install aside from their development environment. .NET development has a huge array of additional tools, some of which we've discussed in previous meetings. Here are a few examples to get you thinking:

• SpecFlow
• NUnit/TestDriven.NET
• StudioShell
• LINQPad
• JustDecompile

For a few more ideas on applications outside the mainstream that've been used by many of us, check out Scott Hanselman's list of developer tools.

The November ALT.NET Meeting will be an open spaces style event, during which each participant will be encouraged to discuss some of their favorite tools of the trade and to demonstrate usage scenarios, situations where the product helped, and so on. If you've used any non-mainstream product that saved your rear in a past experience, this is your chance to evangelize and educate your peers. We might have 2-3 products that require a slightly deeper dive and discussion, or we might just sit around and throw out product names. Whatever the case may be, you don't want to miss this discussion, because some of the best tools in the .NET world are free, and they can save you hundreds of hours of work when used properly.

TEKSystems will be sponsoring this month's event and will have the first few minutes of the meeting to tell our members about some exciting opportunities, so if you've got any friends in the market, bring them along.

RSVP to this Event

Our October 4 meeting will again be hosted by Morehead Associates. We're going to have two topics on October 4, as well as a few topic introductions and snacks at the beginning of the meeting. 

6:00-6:30
Snacks, sponsor introduction (none yet, wink wink), introduction to GiveCamp projects and plans. GiveCamp is coming up soon and Chris Dix has the details on some projects that need your contribution. 

6:30-7:15
An Introduction to SubSonic by Nick Spiers from WebStation. Nick will walk us through the use of SubSonic as an ORM and will present some real-world examples from which you can get up and running in no time with SubSonic. Nick will also have some comparisons to other popular ORM approaches. 

7:15-8:00
WCF Web API by Matt Duffield. Microsoft likes big stacks! Look at Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or, better yet, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). With either of these "foundations", you start out a noob and you come out the other side a freak'in Ph.D in Quantum Physics. It doesn't have to be that hard! I know I have criticized third-party vendors for sometimes over-engineering their products, Infragistics but there has to be a better way.

Well, Microsoft is trying to make things better and they took their MEF champpion, or should I say "pusher", Glenn Block, and have him and team working on a new WCF Web API. From what I see, it is awesome. Just when you thought DLL hell was over you had Web.config hell with WCF. Those days are over and you will be surprised at how nice the new stack is. We will take a look at the new API and some of the features as well discuss the new drop announced at the Build conference.

8:00-end
Schwag giveaway, open discussion

Presenter Mike Linnen will show you how to satisfy your inner geek need to connect devices in your home to other devices or services outside your home. We will take a look at connecting a Lawn Sprinkler device to a phone and a weather service without poking any holes in your firewall. This sprinkler is smart enough to conserve water when there is rain in the forecast. This will be a fully functional demo (without water) and we will be looking at some of the challenges around connecting devices and services. We will be covering: · Netduino Overview · Developing Netduino applications that are testable · Hardware design and tips · Azure Service Bus to connect devices and services · Windows Phone 7 as a Remote Control You will walk away from this presentation knowing just how easy it is for a .NET developer to get started in Home Automation and build something that makes your home the talk of the block. Food and drinks will be provided. Please RSVP: http://bit.ly/ouEAjd

Behavior Driven Development draws some inspiration from Test Driven Development. Given some recent tooling contributed both by corporations and open source developers, BDD has gained ground as a viable methodology and is fast becoming one of the more promising approaches in the Agile toolbox. This presentation will take a look at some of these tools and techniques, and will provide some guidance in the form of a few pragmatic examples in how BDD can simplify your development process, especially when it is rich with unit testing adoption. SpecsFor, an open-source BDD framework, will be demonstrated as an augment to your unit testing methodology. To see a commercial option for BDD-based testing, SpecPlus will also be introduced and demonstrated. NDecision, a BDD business rule processor that makes use of PostSharp's AOP functionality, will be demonstrated as a means of applying BDD principles during application execution. At the close of the presentation, developers will have a variety of options - and hopefully some inspiration - to take back to their desk and use right away. Food and drinks will be provided. Please RSVP - http://anyvite.com/events/home/z4gkewqbjx

Presenter, Matt Duffield, will create a simple Doodle (drawing) like application using Silverlight and Reactive Framework (Rx).

The Reactive Framework (Rx) is pretty exciting and has a lot of promise. Sometimes the hardest thing with new technology is not understanding but seeing where you can put it to good use. Come out and take a look as we build a simple Doodle application and leverage the power of Rx as we go.

From MSDN:
"Rx is a superset of LINQ’s standard query operators that exposes asynchronous and event-based computations as push-based, observable collections via the new IObservable<T> interface in .NET 4. This interface is analogous to the familiar IEnumerable<T> interface used for pull-based, enumerable collections."

Food and drinks will provided, and we will have some prizes to raffle.
Please RSVP here.
See invite for updated location.

Date: Wednesday April 27th, 2011 Location: Microsoft Charlotte Campus This month we explore the Rock, Paper, Azure! Challenge with Microsoft Developer Evangalist Brian Hitney. Summary: In this presentation and hands on event, we'll take a technical look at the Rock, Paper, Azure (RPA) project.  In the first half, we'll look at the technical details - starting from the project origin to taking the original git codebase and migrating it to working Azure solution.  Then, we'll dive into the specific problem areas of the project: scalability and security - while simple to say, these were both perhaps the most time consuming parts of the project. In the last half, we'll play a round - bring your laptop! Outline: -          Overview of the project -          Migrating to Azure - proof of concept o   What works and does not work in Azure. -          Issue #1: Scalability o   Original app had limited scale o   Needed to identify and re-engineer for performance -          Issue #2: Security o   Original code was surprisingly resilient o   We discovered a few vectors o   Needed to protect against unfriendly code *  P/Invoke, Reflection, Diagnostics/Process, etc. o   Security of website and PII *  Strong legal requirements -          Issue #3: Legal review  (optional) -          Time to play the game. Reminder: This meeting will be on a Wednesday, not Thursday, and we will be back at the Microsoft Charlotte Campus location. Food and drinks will be provided. Please RSVP here: http://anyvite.com/events/home/6aytkypeau

Presentation: This presentation will provide a basic introduction to Amazon EC2. It will be more of a discussion based Q&A but introducing the following things: - The pricing model and the types of servers you can run - The tools that are available for using EC2 and how you can generally manage your infrastructure - Review some options for hosting ASP.NET Websites with a SQL Backend - Introduce CloudWatch Monitoring and the autoscaling capabilities. I’m going to try to put to together a live demo so we can launch an ASP.NET website with in an auto-scale group and force the group to scale up and down. Our Sponsor: Connexion Services Group is a professional executive search, recruiting and staffing company based in Charlotte, NC. We are focused on providing our clients with the highest quality of resources in today's marketplace. We believe building strong relationships and making the right connections is the cornerstone of our success and what we do best. Bobbi Overby Curtis is the managing partner and founder of Connexion Services Group. She has been focused in the technology services industry in North Carolina and South Carolina for the past 17 years. She is a creative thinker who thrives on a "make it happen" philosophy for her consultants and clients. We are pleased to have Bobbi sponsor our meeting and encourage each of you to get to know her. Time: 6:30 PM Location: Morehead Associates 700 East Morehead St. Suite 200 (2nd Floor) Charlotte, NC Parking: Located at the corner of Euclid Ave and Morehead Street. You enter the parking area of the building from Euclid Ave directly behind the building. Parking is free and you can park on any level of the deck. Food and Drinks will be provided. Please RSVP here: http://anyvite.com/events/home/v9fgcb35sp