Portland Area .NET Users Group

October PADNUG Meeting - Information Overload and Managing the Flow: Effectiveness and Efficiency

Rich Claussen — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:54:45 GMT

WHAT:	October PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Wednesday 10/06/2010 (vCal Link) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~8:30 p.m. After Words at On the Border Mexican Grill
WHERE:	Intel Ronler Acres RA1 Auditorium 2501 NW 229th Avenue Hillsboro, OR 97124
WHO:	Scott Hanselman Scott Hanselman works out of his home office for Microsoft as a Principal Program Manager, aiming to spread good information about developing software, usually on the Microsoft stack. Before this he was the Chief Architect at Corillian Corporation, now a part of Checkfree, for 6 years. He was also involved in a few Microsoft things for many years like the MVP and RD programs and will speak about computers (and other passions) whenever someone will listen.
TOPIC:	Information Overload and Managing the Flow: Effectiveness and Efficiency As developers, we are asked to absorb even more information than ever before. More APIs, more documentation, more patterns, more layers of abstraction. Now Twitter and Facebook compete with Email and Texts for our attention, keeping us up-to-date on our friends dietary details and movie attendance second-by-second. Does all this information take a toll on your psyche or sharpen the saw? Is it a matter of finding the right tools to capture what you need, or do you need to unplug?

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

PADNUG Meeting - GeekRoadTrip: Testing ASP.NET MVC Apps with VS 2010 Ultimate

Rich Claussen — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:17:46 GMT

WHAT:	PADNUG Meeting - GeekRoadTrip
WHEN:	Tuesday 07/29/2010 (vCal Link) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Z-Tech Staffing) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~8:30 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Steve Andrews' GeekRoadTrip Steve Andrews is a Team System MVP and INETA speaker, and has been working as a developer for more than 9 years. During this time, he has designed and developed applications in such widely varying areas as trust accounting, medical information management, supply chain management, and retail systems. Steve is also a MCTS, ICSOO, and community fanatic.
TOPIC:	Testing ASP.NET MVC Apps with VS 2010 Ultimate Testing web applications has always been a manual and tedious process. With Performance Tests in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, automated web testing is now a reality. In this session, we'll look at created Web Tests and configuring parameters and database driven testing. We'll also look at performance testing your web applications to find and squash performance issues.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/

And, our appreciation goes out to Z-Tech Staffing for providing pizza for this additional meeeing:

Z-Tech Staffing - http://z-techstaffing.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Portland Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch

Rich Claussen — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:57:55 GMT

WHAT:	Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch
WHEN:	Thursday 06/17/2010 (vCal Link) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by PADNUG) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~8:30 p.m. After Words at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse - Imbrie Hall
WHERE:	Fiserv Cafe 3400 NW John Olsen Place Hillsboro, OR 97124
TOPIC:	Portland Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch Join us for a special Portland Area .NET User Group (PADNUG) program for the launch of Visual Studio 2010. Microsoft Regional Director Stuart Celarier and Microsoft Developer Evangelist Mithun Dhar will present highlights on what’s new in Visual Studio 2010, C# 4.0, .NET 4, as well as other products and technologies that make up the 2010 launch. This program will help you figure out what new features to dig into first, as well as make you a more effective developer. This event is free and open to the public, however registration is required as seating is limited: http://tinyurl.com/register-padnug-2010-launch. The first 200 registered people in the door will receive free, preauthorized access for Microsoft® WebsiteSpark™ which includes Visual Studio 2010 Professional and other valuable developer resources! Get excited, get the goods, and get started with Visual Studio 2010!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

April PADNUG Meeting - Post MIX10

Rich Claussen — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 06:28:04 GMT

WHAT:	April PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 04/06/2010 (vCal Link) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~8:30 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Jason Mauer Jason Mauer is Owner and Chief Architect of Mighty Code, a development shop based in Portland, Oregon focusing on software consulting, training, and development. He has over fifteen years of experience in software development, including a stint with Microsoft from 2001 to 2009 as an application development consultant and developer evangelist. Jason is active in the developer community and frequently presents on technical topics at user groups, Code Camps, and conferences such as DevConnections and OSCON. Jason’s free time is spent making music with his band No Good Jones, cycling all over the place, and enjoying life with his son Zachary. He can be found online at http://jasonmauer.com/ or on Twitter as @jasonmauer.
TOPIC:	Post MIX10 MIX10 last month had a plethora of amazing announcements for the .NET world, including Windows Phone 7 development with Silverlight and XNA, Internet Explorer 9 with support for HTML5, the Open Data Protocol (OData), new developments with Windows Azure, and more. Come check out the latest and greatest with plenty of demos!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Scott Hanselman on .NET

Rich Claussen — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:01:26 GMT

Scott Hanselman, a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, will be speaking on .NET and other technology topics.

Many of you know Scott or have heard him speak. He is always both informative and entertaining. If you don't already subscribe to his blog, you should.

WebMD is hosting this event and will be providing lunch. It would really help our planning if you could send a quick e-mail to Rob Garrison if you plan to attend. This will help us plan for lunch.

The meeting will be in the large ballroom on the first floor. Parking is available on the west side of the building. Carpooling is encouraged.

This event is being held on Tuesday, April 13 at:
Montgomery Park
2701 NW Vaughn Street
Portland Oregon 97210

General Schedule:
9:00 - start
10:00 - break
10:15 - restart
11:15 - end talk, open for questions
11:45 - break for lunch
1:00 - done and out

December PADNUG Meeting and Portland Silverlight User Group Kickoff - Silverlight in Action

Rich Claussen — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:12:54 GMT

WHAT:	December PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 12/08/2009 (vCal Link) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse Imbrie Hall
WHERE:	Fiserv Cafe 3400 NW John Olsen Place Hillsboro, OR 97124
WHO:	Scott Stanfield Scott Stanfield is the CEO of Vertigo Software, Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for eCommerce Solutions. Scott is a proud member of the MSDN Regional Director community, covering Silicon Valley, and participates in the Microsoft .NET Partner Architect Council. His company built the Windows DNA "Rosetta Stone" sample application Fitch & Mather Stocks 2000, the ASP.NET Starter Kits and IBuySpy, the Nile and Petshop benchmarks and many others. He is a frequent speaker and has delivered keynotes at Microsoft events including TechEd, PDC, DevDays and VBITs.
TOPIC:	Portland Silverlight User Group Kickoff - Silverlight in Action Interested in how Silverlight is used in some of today’s best applications (Think Olympics, Sunday Night Football, Hard Rock Cafe)? Scott’s group made them. It’s going to be a great chance to see Silverlight in action. It’s also a great night to invite designers and manager types. I think Scott’s talk is going to be a good way of introducing people Silverlight.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

November PADNUG Meeting - Examining Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM)

Rich Claussen — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:31:22 GMT

WHAT:	November PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 11/03/2009 (vCal Link) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Kelly White Kelly White is a Senior Software Engineer with MyContent.com. He previously lead the PDXUX.Net user group, and now runs the Portland Silverlight User Group with Erik Mork. He has presented at user groups and code camps throughout the northwest on both Silverlight and WPF. Find him online at http://kelly.whitepdx.com.
TOPIC:	Examining Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) MVVM is a design pattern for building rich clients in both Silverlight and WPF. Frankly, there's a lot of buzz around this idea, but why should you care about it (other than to pad your resume)? In this session I'll be making the case both for and against using MVVM. I'll go over what it is, show how you can use it, and will be including plenty of examples. I'd also like to discuss some of your concerns for why you may want to avoid it, and lastly examine some tools that make it easier to use. Even if you don't currently use WPF or Silverlight you should still attend this presentation. At the very least you'll leave with an understanding of MVVM such that you'll be able to comfortably discuss it during your next job interview.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

October PADNUG Meeting - Principles of Silverlight Animation

Rich Claussen — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:27:46 GMT

Jeff Paries, author of Foundation Silverlight 3 Animation will be sharing some great insights with us this month.

WHAT:	October PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 10/06/2009 (vCal Link) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Jeff Paries Jeff Paries is a Sr. Experience Developer for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide near Portland, Oregon. He's written a few books and a good number of magazine articles on 3D animation, and is the author of the book Foundation Silverlight 3 Animation.
TOPIC:	Principles of Silverlight Animation Come and learn the fundamentals of Silverlight animation. We’ll start at the beginning with a review of storyboards and keyframes, and then break free from storyboards and explore procedural animations. This is where the rubber meets the road and your objects come to life – vectors, frame-based animations, collisions, particle systems, and VR objects.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

September PADNUG Meeting - Using jQuery with ASP.NET

Rich Claussen — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:07:23 GMT

It must be Summer! That means Rick is in town and ready to present some of his great content!

When Rick presented on jQuery to us last year, we were still about a month away from Microsoft's announcement that they would ship it with Visual Studio. Let's catch up and expand on that presentation!

Check out his post, too.

WHAT:	September PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 09/01/2009 (vCal Link) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Rick Strahl Rick Strahl is president of West Wind Technologies on Maui, Hawaii. The company specializes in Web and distributed application development, training and tools with focus on ASP.NET and .NET in general. Rick is author of West Wind Web Connection, a powerful and widely used Web application framework, West Wind HTML Help Builder and West Wind Web Store and Business Framework for .NET and Visual FoxPro. He also collaborates with Kevin McNeish on the Mere Mortals Framework for .NET. Rick is a Microsoft C# MVP, a frequent contributor to magazines and books and speaks frequently at professional developer conferences all over the world. He is co-publisher and co-editor of CoDe magazine. In the summer months, Rick spends his time in beautiful Hood River, Oregon to play on the river, forests and mountains. Find more about Rick at http://west-wind.com/webblog/.
TOPIC:	Using jQuery with ASP.NET jQuery is a compact and powerful JavaScript library that greatly simplifies JavaScript and HTML DOM manipulation. jQuery's appeal lies in its compact implementation and flexible and elegant use of selectors to select document elements and manipulate them using jQuery's flexible and intuitive functions in a browser independent way. From AJAX functionality, to easy DOM manipulation, to simplified event handling, to simple effects, this compact library provides many ways to make client scripting much easier and… actually fun. Additionally a vast community of add-in authors have added hundreds of extremely useful, easy to use and free plug-ins that provide many common useful features to common client side tasks. In this session I'll show a quick review of jQuery's core client side features, but the main focus of this session will be on integration of ASP.NET server side functionality for AJAX callbacks. We'll look at various ways to interface with ASP.NET with jQuery via manual implementations in WebForms and MVC applications as well as using ASMX/WCF to handle callbacks. We'll also look at several examples that demonstrate how to effectively manage client side and server side operations in a maintainable way to minimize code and layout duplication by using client side templates and wrapping jQuery functionality via server side components.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

August PADNUG Meeting - Windows Workflow Foundation 4

Rich Claussen — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:46:19 GMT

As many of you know, Mr. Mauer is about to head out on his 1,300+ bicycle journey to San Diego.

Well, before we lose him to the wilds of California, he's going to share some tidbits from the new Windows Workflow Foundation 4 and related technologies.

WHAT:	August PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 08/04/2009 (vCal Link) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Jason Mauer Jason Mauer is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft covering the Pacific Northwest. He presents frequently at developer events and user groups about topics related to software development. Find him online at http://jasonmauer.com/
TOPIC:	Windows Workflow Foundation 4 What's New and What's Changed

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

July PADNUG Meeting - C# 4.0 - Microsoft's Brand New Language Lovechild

Rich Claussen — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:12:17 GMT

Just in time for the weather to cool back down, we're having a PADNUG meeting!

We have the good fortune to have Nick Muhonen visit us again to discuss some of the new bits that are coming from Microsoft for C#.Next. There are some compelling changes, but some things to watch out for, too.

WHAT:	July PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 07/07/2009 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Nick Muhonen Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.
TOPIC:	C# 4.0 - Microsoft's Brand New Language Lovechild Nick Muhonen discusses the new language features of C# 4.0 and of course, demos for the faithful!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

June Portland Nerd/Geek Dinner

Rich Claussen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:36:00 GMT

Sara Ford is in town for the Open Source Bridge conference. It'll be a great time to show her how much fun visiting Portland is!

If you don't know, among all of the cool geeky things Sara is involved in, she also helps young survivors of Hurricane Katrina with a scholarship program. You can contribute to this directly or by purchasing Sara's book. You can read more about the program here.

What: Portland ~~Nerd~~ Geek Dinner
Where: Old Town Pizza - 226 NW Davis Street
When: Wednesday, June 17, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: Because Open Source Bridge is happening and Sara Ford is in town - Uncle Jimmy Stories*! >

Be There and Be Square!

[* If you want to know what Uncle Jimmy stories are, then be there! It's worth it!]

Taking Team System to the Next Level - A VSTS 2008 Training Event

Rich Claussen — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:30:24 GMT

Taking Team System to the Next Level
A VSTS 2008 Training Event

EVENT ABSTRACT
Please join Northwest Cadence for this half-day training event on Visual Studio Team System 2008.

Successful Adoption of VSTS
Are your legacy tools no longer meeting your needs? Is VSS too small for your development team or not well suited to your geographically dispersed team? Have you already moved to TFS to scale up from VSS or another legacy version control tool, but feel like there are features that you're missing? Feel like it should do more? This session will show you have to use Team system to improve the quality of your code and better manage/monitor software development and ease communication between project stakeholders.

Regulatory Compliance: End-to-End Traceability
Some form of traceability or regulatory compliance is commonplace, as is the ever-increasing challenge of managing adherence to regulatory standards. While compliance stretches across many parts of an organization, one of the key points is the software development process. Whether it is SOX, HIPPA, or PCI compliance, regulatory standards require your software development process to provide a secure development environment with traceability from one end through the other.

Metrics for Real Process Improvement
Process improvement without good metrics is like shooting in the dark – it is impossible to aim and difficult to know if you hit your goal. This session will be framed around using a process improvement effort (either formal or informal) to ensure that your Team System implementation is helping you achieve real improvements.

Using Team System to Drive Agile Adoption
Are you struggling to adopt agile? Is there still a fundamental disconnect behind the desires of the dev team to be agile, and the business who wants "business as usual"? This session will focus on using Team System to act as a change agent for adopting agile. We'll cover the features of Team System that support agile, how to handle iterations effectively, and how to use the results of prior iterations to effectively scope future iterations. Finally, we'll specifically address the use of Scrum with Team System, and will share results from an actual implementation to show the gotchas and successes of adoption Agile.

Sneak Peek at VSTS 2010
We'll wrap up our morning with a sneak peek into VSTS 2010 to see what all of the excitement is about!

DATE
Portland, OR – July 16, 2009

TIME
8:30 AM: Registration and Welcome
9:00 AM – noon: Event

LOCATION
Microsoft Corporation
10260 SW Greenburg Rd
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

REGISTER
Register online – http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=138856
Register via email – please email: Sue.Ferguson@nwcadence.com

SQLSaturday #12 Portland 2009

Rich Claussen — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:03:59 GMT

What is SQLSaturday?

It's a free one day learning event for SQL Server professionals, loosely patterned on the well known Code Camp model, organized by the Portland SQL Server Users Group (pdxSSug).

Date and Location:

SQL Saturday Portland will be held June 6, 2009 at Mt. Hood Community College, 26000 S.E. Stark St., Gresham, Oregon 97030. The event follows the standard conference model. There are 12 sessions across 2 tracks. Most of the sessions will run 60 minutes. Check in will open at 8:00 am and sessions begin at 9:00 am. Lunch will be provided on site, and the day will close out around 5:00 pm. The after event will be held at McMenamins Edgefield, 2126 S.W. Halsey St., Troutdale, OR 97060 beginning right after the last session. Registration is at http://www.sqlsaturday.com

When will the schedule of sessions be posted?

The call for speakers is closed, and the schedule is finalized.

Can I sponsor this event?

More sponsors are needed to help subsidize the incidental costs of running the event and this is a great event to meet SQL Server professionals or to just give back to the community. If you are interested or want more information, please visit the sponsor page. You can view all of the great sponsors there and it is hoped that most of them will be at the event.

What else can you tell me about the event?

This event is free to anyone that wishes to attend. Check in for the event opens at 8 am.

Be sure to register at http://www.sqlsaturday.com

June PADNUG Meeting - ASP.NET Debugging

Rich Claussen — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:05:52 GMT

Yes, Virginia, there is a PADNUG meeting! I know last weekend's Code Camp still has many heads spinning, but we are now settling back in to the groove. Obviously, mine is!

Join us this evening for a great presentation on debugging ASP.NET applications. I know the majority of us work in ASP.NET, so this should be very useful.

WHAT:	June PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 06/02/2009 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Prashant Sinha Prashant Sinha has over more than 11 years of work experience including software development in finite element analysis, telecommunication, investment banking, Check Imaging, Remote Deposit Capture and enterprise services. He has led, consulted and trained developers in software development, performance analysis and production debugging on Microsoft technologies. He has also prepared coursewares on Advanced .NET debugging to conduct debugging workshop. His debugging blog is http://www.debuggingblog.com/
TOPIC:	ASP.NET Debugging A production environment is likely different than the developer's machine. This means that the system's load pattern and timings will be different and it makes reproduction of bugs in test difficult or impossible. Too often, bugs end up in the, "It works on my machine," unreproducable pile. The goal of this presentation is to introduce the audience to tools and techniques to determine the root cause of common production debugging issues. The techniques and tools shown in the demos are based on real production issues. We will discuss the issues and debugging steps required for ASP.NET applications hosted on IIS 6/7. We'll also discuss debugging Silverlight applications on a customer machine when no development environment or source code is available.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

May PADNUG and Rose City SPIN Meeting - Metrics for Real Process Improvement

Rich Claussen — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:10:54 GMT

We’ve combined this month’s meeting with Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN)! Many of you may already be attending the Team System Big Event on Tuesday and we are just going to continue the party for our meeting.

Rose City SPIN is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

WHAT:	May PADNUG and Rose City SPIN Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 05/05/2009 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium and Pacific NW Software Quality Conf. PNSQC) 7:00 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Steven Borg Steven Borg, co-founder of Northwest Cadence, is the Visual Studio Team System Practice Lead at Northwest Cadence. In addition to being a Visual Studio Team System MVP, Steve holds several other credentials including MCP, MCSD, MCT and Certified Scrum Master (CSM). Steven has helped hundreds of organizations, both large and small, adopt Team System successfully, improving their software development process, reducing costs, increasing quality and speeding delivery dates. Steven Borg is the Visual Studio Team System Practice Lead at Northwest Cadence, a Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Inner Circle partner focused on helping organizations improve their software development process. He has helped several organizations improve their development process, reducing costs, increasing quality and speeding delivery dates. In addition, he assists the Team System community as a Team System MVP, an author, and a speaker. Visit his blog at NWCadence.com to learn more about process improvement and Team System.
TOPIC:	Metrics for Real Process Improvement Process improvement without adequate metrics is shooting in the dark - you might hit your target, but it's impossible to aim and difficult to determine how close you were to hitting your goal. In this talk we'll look at several candidate metrics that many real world organizations have used to achieve real improvements and get an excellent return on investment in process improvement initiatives. We'll also look at how to collect the right data, including the right steps to identify process changes to collect the right data.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

April PADNUG Meeting - WCF Best Practices with Unit Testing

Rich Claussen — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:41:20 GMT

It’s been about a year and a half since Wayne last joined us to teach more about developing with Scrum management. He’s continuing to refine the Agile processes his team is using and will share some of that experience with us.

WHAT:	April PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 04/07/2009 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Stuart Celarier Stuart Celarier is Chief Software Architect of Aivea, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Connected Systems. His career spans more than two decades of development, architecture, writing, and training, with a focus on new and emerging technologies. His professional interests include the current and next generations of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), “Oslo” modeling platform, “Dublin” application server extensions, “Geneva” claims framework, .NET Framework 4.0, and Windows Azure. Stuart is co-founder of Portland Code Camp and frequently speaks at .NET user groups, conferences, and community events. He is a member of the Software Association of Oregon’s Development SIG committee. Stuart is an INETA Speaker and has volunteered with INETA since 2003, including co-chairing the community-led Birds-of-a-Feather track at Tech•Ed 2005–2009 and PDC 2005.
TOPIC:	WCF Best Practices with Unit Testing Stuart will present a simple, effective strategy for unit testing Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services — as services rather than as objects — and then use unit tests as a means for exploring several best practices programming with WCF and service-orientation. Topics include understanding the relationship of services and objects, test-driven development (TDD) for services, contract-first service development, consuming services defensively, how exceptions and faults work (or don’t), and more. If you have been using WCF to work with services, this session will help you identify areas where you might improve your practices. And if you are just getting started with WCF, this session will help jumpstart your effort.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/ Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

March PADNUG Meeting – Agile Practices: Kanban

Rich Claussen — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:16:25 GMT

WHAT:	March PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 03/03/2009 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Wayne Allen
TOPIC:	Agile Practices: Kanban Wayne will be speaking at the Group about using the using agile techniques for software development with a particular focus on using the Kanban board. He'll be covering different project management approaches to product line development that include: Reduced meetings Clear priorities Minimal multitasking No estimating You can read more at these locations: http://weblogs.asp.net/wallen/archive/2008/02/01/no-more-iterations.aspx http://www.infoq.com/articles/hiranabe-lean-agile-kanban http://www.agilemanagement.net/Articles/Weblog/KanbaninAction.html

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - >http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

January PADNUG Meeting - “Oslo”: Writing a Domain

Rich Claussen — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:06:26 GMT

*** Notice: We are back to Tuesdays now! ***

What a great way to start off 2009. We haven’t seen Chris present at PADNUG for almost five years. We will get to see some of the fruits of that time when Chris shows us the bits from Microsoft’s new model-driven platform called “Oslo”.

WHAT:	January PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 01/06/2009 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Chris Sells
TOPIC:	“Oslo”: Writing a domain In this talk, we'll see how to pull the pieces of "Oslo" together, MSchema, MGraph and MGrammar, to build an entire application end-to-end, discussing how you build a data-driven runtime that consumes the data in the Repository.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - >http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

December Portland Nerd Dinner - The Finale of 2008!

Rich Claussen — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:19:03 GMT

Here we are at the end of 2008! Another great year has passed and it's time to gather together and remember where we've been and what we've done.

Yes, it's kind of short notice, but we have some out-of-town guests that should be in attendance. Please come out and make them feel welcome!

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Food Court (Second Floor "Food Court"; typically, straight out from Sanrio)
When: Tuesday, December 30, starting around 6:00 PM (vCal link)
Why: Wrap up and recount the year of 2008.

Be There and Be Square!

December PADNUG Meeting - Post-PDC Extravaganza

Rich Claussen — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:35:00 GMT

*** Notice: We are meeting on Thursday this week because we said we would! ***

This will be the last meet of 2008. Boy did that year move too quickly.

WHAT:	December PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Thursday 12/04/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Jason Mauer
TOPIC:	Post-PDC Extravaganza Jason will provide an overview and lead discussion of the technologies introduced at PDC.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - >http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Portland Nerd Movie - James Bond: Quantum of Solace

Rich Claussen — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:45:54 GMT

It's Nerd Movie time again!

For those who saw Casino Royale, you know that the Bond franchise has really updated their style. From IMDB:

Daniel Craig reprises his role as Ian Fleming's James Bond in Quantum of Solace, the 22nd feature in the 007 film franchise. Fueled by the betrayal of Vesper, the woman he loved, Bond's determination to track down the mastermind behind the sinister organization that blackmailed her takes him to Haiti, where he finds an unlikely ally in the beautiful and feisty Camille (Olga Kurylenko). The trail quickly leads to the ruthless Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), but with the British Government and the CIA working against him, Bond must kill or be killed on his mission to uncover the truth.

As usual, we'll do this at Cinetopia. The movie starts at 3:15PM. If you are under 21, there are showings at 2:00PM and 4:45PM in the Grand Theater, too, though. If this is right for you and you would like to see your fellow nerds, let us know and we can meet up before or after.

Speaking of meeting up, Vinotopia - the restaurant at the theater - is great to bring your special someone to. Consider making that a part of your afternoon/evening.

Consider buying your tickets and arriving early. I'd imagine that there will be a pretty good turnout for this movie.

What: Portland Nerd ~~Dinner~~ Movie
Where: Cinetopia Theaters - 11700 SE 7th St, Vancouver, Washington
When: Sunday, November 16, 2008, 3:15PM Showing in Cinetopia's Living Room Theater
Why: Bond is Back!

Let any and everyone that might be interested know. And of course...

...Be There and Be Square!

PDXUX - Silverlight 2 Launch Party

Rich Claussen — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:23:19 GMT

November PADNUG Meeting - F# - Functional Fun for Everyone!

Rich Claussen — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:41:01 GMT

*** Notice: We are meeting on Thursday this week to avoid election conflicts! ***

No typo this time :-).

This is a presentation I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. F# is a fascinating demonstration of what can be built on top of the .NET platform and has now left the Microsoft Research labs to join the mainstream world of .NET programming languages.

WHAT:	November PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Thursday 11/06/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Nick Muhonan Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.
TOPIC:	F# - Functional Fun for Everyone! "A succinct, type-inferred, expressive, efficient functional and object-oriented language for the .NET platform." Nick Muhonen discusses Microsoft’s CAML based language F# including its language and its interactive environment. And of course- demos for the faithful!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - >http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

October PADNUG Meeting – Dynamic Data

Rich Claussen — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:36:35 GMT

We finally got Andrew to come speak to us! Of course, it helps when you ask nicely ;-).

WHAT:	October PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 10/07/2008 (vCal) 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Andrew Hay Andrew Hay is a developer, speaker and author with 15 years of industry experience. Andrew started his career programming in Assembly language on a IBM OS/360 Mainframe computer in Chicago and leapt into the online experience in the late 90’s. Over the past five years at Pop Art, Inc, Andrew has been a champion of adding visibility into complex business processes. As Director of Software Development, he specializes in ASP.Net and its adjacent technologies including AJAX and Silverlight. Andrew earned a B.S. in Computer Science from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.
TOPIC:	Dynamic Data ASP.Net Dynamic Data is a new feature in the Microsoft .Net 3.5 SP1 release. Dynamic Data extends the data models expressed through LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework into a template-based website in seconds. In this presentation, I'll start at File, New Project and cruise into how the System.Web.Routing namespace works. The Routing stack has crossed the boundary of the .Net MVC Framework and is finding niches in other technologies like Dynamic Data. From there, I'll tour the data driven site using standard display and edit controls for a variety of data types. Finally, I'll show how to implement specific behaviors, business logic and 3rd party controls that adhere to DRY principle.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

September PADNUG Meeting - Asynchronous fun with PLINQ

Rich Claussen — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:32:53 GMT

It's back-to-school time! Or, as kids nowadays say "bk2skl" (is that right? I'm such a fuddy-duddy). This works as a perfect time to have Nick come teach us more about PLINQ and how it can help us build applications better served by our multi-core processors.

WHAT:	September PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 09/02/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Nick Muhonan Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.
TOPIC:	Asynchronous fun with PLINQ This presentation will discuss the growing importance of the asynchronous programming, particularly focusing on Microsoft’s PLINQ Technology - and of course, demos for the faithful.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
* SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/ * New Sponsor
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - >http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

August PADNUG Meeting - Using jQuery with ASP.NET

Rich Claussen — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:18:51 GMT

I was worried that we wouldn’t get to hear from Rick this year since he was not spending his regular, lengthy summer here in the Portland area. Fortunately, the Universe cares about us much more than that and timed his visit perfectly for the August meeting!

WHAT:	August PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 08/05/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Rick Strahl
TOPIC:	Using jQuery with ASP.NET jQuery is a compact and powerful JavaScript library that is quickly becoming one of the most popular client-side libraries. jQuery’s appeal lies in its compact implementation and flexible and elegant use of selectors to pick up document elements that can then be manipulated using jQuery’s flexible set of useful functions in a browser-independent way. From AJAX functionality, to easy browser independent DOM manipulation, to simple effects, this compact library provides many ways to make client scripting much easier. Additionally, a vast community of add-in authors have added hundreds of extremely useful and easy to use plug-ins that provide many useful features to common client-side tasks. In this session, I’ll demonstrate a host of features of jQuery as well as demonstrate how you can integrate this powerful client-side library with ASP.NET on the server. We’ll look at how to provide JSON services through ASP.NET in a couple of ways as well as looking into ways that you can integrate existing components and plug-ins as ASP.NET server controls with a little bit of work to provide ASP.NET-style interaction with jQuery.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

July PDXUX.Net Meeting

Rich Claussen — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:30:07 GMT

Posted by Kelly White:

WHAT: July PDXUX.Net Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 07/15/2008
6:30 p.m. Pizza
7:00 p.m. Presentation
WHERE: Robert Half Technology
KOIN Center (Map)
222 SW Columbia Street
Portland, OR 97201

WHO: Erik Mork
Erik Mork is a speaker, consultant and Silverlight enthusiast in the Portland area. He specializes in Smart Client/RIA application development with Silverlight, ASP.NET AJAX, and other technologies. He's focused on making the web V.Next, and his consulting company can be found at http://www.silverbaylabs.org/.

TOPIC: What's new in Silverlight 2 - Beta 2
What's the big deal with Silverlight 2? What's the story with the latest beta release? Is it ready for primetime? Erik tackles these questions by reviewing what Silverlight 2 is and where it's going. If you're new to Silverlight, this is an opportunity to understand it, and if you've already played with Silverlight, it's a chance to further learn about the platform. Applications will be presented for 1) fighting corporate greed and 2) mindhacking with Silverlight. Erik will have the mindhacking source code available for all attendees.

July PADNUG Meeting - WF - Why, What, and How?

Rich Claussen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:39:47 GMT

I know you are all probably thinking about the upcoming weekend; I know I am. But with these crazy temperatures lately, what a great time to hide in the air conditioned spaces of the Tigard Microsoft office?

WHAT:	July PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 07/01/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Stuart Celarier Stuart is a Microsoft MVP on Connected Systems (WCF, WF, and CardSpace) and a software architect at Fiserv. He is active in the professional software community including volunteering with the Software Association of Oregon and INETA. Stuart blogs at http://visualstuart.net.
TOPIC:	WF - Why, What, and How? You’ve probably read about Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) somewhere and thought, “Why would I want one of those?” WF represents very powerful concepts in the way we put software together and run it. You probably already deal with workflow concepts all the time, and haven’t separated that part out. WF allows you to organize software that has complex interactions, like compensations, and may execute for a long time, perhaps days or months. Microsoft continues to invest in WF -- this is a key technology to understand and track as the .NET platform evolves. Come wrap your head around what WF really does, and how it does it.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

June Portland SharePoint User Group (PSUG) Meeting

Rich Claussen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:56:30 GMT

Via Ben Hickman at Microsoft:

The monthly Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group meeting will be held on Wednesday June 25th in the Microsoft Office. We have a great speaker, topic, and give-away this month. Details are below.

We are doing away with registration, but will still be providing lunch. Also, be sure to bring your business card to register for our great give-away this month.

We now have a user group web site: www.portlandsharepoint.com kindly created and hosted by Netropole (www.netropole.com).

For June we have a great presentation from James Curry, an instructor with Mindsharp (www.mindsharp.com). We also have a fantastic give-away this month. Mindsharp has generously donated a $3,000 voucher for admission to their upcoming training event in Portland! The training event is from July 28 – August 1 and includes the following sessions:

5-day WSS 3.0 Developer (syllabus)

5-day 2007 SharePoint Designer (syllabus)

3-day 2007 SharePoint Power User (syllabus)

Mindsharp is also offering a 15% discount to this upcoming training event.

WHAT: June Portland SharePoint User Group (PSUG) Meeting

WHEN: Wednesday 06/25/2008
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

WHERE:
Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:
James Curry
James is a respected computer scientist and consultant with over 15 years of programming experience. In his role as a Mindsharp instructor, James uses his knowledge of Microsoft products to provide students with a dynamic, hands-on classroom experience.

James is a contributing author of a SharePoint products and technologies book. He has been invited to speak at user groups on subjects such as Customizing SharePoint 2007.

As a computer scientist with InfoPro Corporation in Huntsville, Alabama, James developed information management solutions for organizations of all sizes. Prior to joining Mindsharp, James focused on developing Web applications for a large governmental organization. James currently resides in Huntsville, Alabama.

TOPIC:
Field Types and Field Controls
James Curry from Mindsharp will discuss Field Types and Field Controls. Fields are the underlying data types for SharePoint list columns and site columns. SharePoint provides a number of fields, such as Number, Counter, Multi-Choice, Boolean, and URL. Custom fields can be created to allow custom validation of data and presentation beyond what is possible with the native SharePoint fields. Field controls are Server Controls or User Controls that can be used to provide custom presentation of data stored in a given field type. Server controls allow information stored in SharePoint lists to be presented in a very rich manner. As an example, a single line of text that contains an address could be presented using a field control as push pin on a map. Field Controls provide a far superior method of custom presentation than using the options natively available in a Field Type.

June PAXNAUG Meeting

Rich Claussen — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:05:22 GMT

From George Clingerman:

We've had our third meeting of PAXNAUG and it went really well. We had an interesting discussion on sprite movement and the presentation and demonstration went swimmingly. We had quite a lot of snacks and refreshments as well. We had the room reserved, the signs posted and even put up reminders on the PAXNAUG site.

We did have one slight issue though. Small turnout.

It's ok. We know you were busy. But we did miss you just a little.

We want to start bringing in speakers from great faraway lands. Other XNA MVPS, book writers and community evangelists. Maybe even some of the legendary XNA team themselves! But we want to have just a few more people consistently coming to give them a decently sized audience.

It's our fault I know. We're pretty new at running a user group. We're getting better though. We swear! And we're making an even greater effort this time to spread the word about the next meeting. We're planning on contacting some of the local college campuses, getting in touch with the .NET user group and there's also a local game development group that we can get in touch with.

If you're reading this, help us out a little and spread the word yourself.

Here's the details.

WHAT: XNA MVP George Clingerman (that's me!) will be speaking on "An introductory look at creating games for the Zune"

WHEN: Wednesday June 25, 2008
6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

WHERE:
River East Center (next to OMSI) in Portland Oregon

WHO:
Portland XNA User Group (PAXNAUG)

Hope to see you there!

June SQL SIG Meeting - Visual Studio Reporting

Rich Claussen — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:27:56 GMT

The Code Trip is near its end at the MVP summit. Join us Thursday at the Corillian Cafe to cheer the team on through the final leg of their journey.

WHAT:	June PADNUG SQL SIG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 06/17/2008 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~8:30 p.m. After Words at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse?
WHERE:	Corillian Cafe, now part of CheckFree, now a part of FiServ 3400 NW John Olsen Place Hillsboro, OR 97124
WHO:	William R. Vaughn Bill retired from Microsoft (in 2000) after 14 years to focus on mentoring, speaking, and writing. His specialty is data access application design especially when connecting to SQL Server. Bill has worked in the computer industry since 1972. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Mary Hardin-Baylor and a Master's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Texas. He's also been awarded an Honorary PhD. from the University of Advancing Computer Technology in Tempe Arizona. Bill spent his early years working in the mainframe data processing industry and transitioned to the personal computer side in the late 70s. Along the way, he worked for the Texas DPS Narcotics Service, EDS (where he was recruited by and worked for Ross Perot), at Mostek/United Technologies, Challenge Systems, Digital Research, and CPT Corporation. After having surfed the PC industry for many years, he began his Microsoft years in 1986 working for the Windows developer liaison team at Microsoft in 1986. For the next 14 years, he worked in various divisions at Microsoft including Microsoft University, the Visual Basic documentation and Visual Studio marketing and Internal Technical Education teams before retiring in 2000 to form his own company, Beta V Corporation. Bill has written seven editions of the popular Hitchhiker's Guide (the 4th, 5th and 6th published by Microsoft Press) and books for APress, including the bestseller ADO and ADO.NET Examples and Best Practices. Peter Blackburn and Bill also coauthored the Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services (Addison- Wesley). His latest work is Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server Everywhere-his first e-Book. He writes lead articles for SQL Server Magazine where he is a contributing editor, MSDN, and others. Bill also writes a bi-weekly editorial for Processor.COM magazine. Bill is a top-rated speaker at conferences worldwide, including keynotes and sessions at TechEd, DevWeek, Dev Connections, SQL Connections, VBUG, and many others - where his wit and no-holds-barred technical insights win him rave reviews. Bill is a Microsoft MVP.
TOPIC:	Visual Studio Reporting The inside scoop on how to get the most out of the new ReportViewer control and how it's evolved in Visual Studio 2008. This discusses how to leverage your Reporting Services skills and RDL reports to create application-based reports and how to manage the myriad of issues that come up when trying to emulate Reporting Services functionality like parameters, connections, pick-list population and much more. This session previews the SQL Server Reporting Services technology coming with SQL Server 2008.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

June PADNUG Meeting - Smart Device Programming with Visual Studio 2008

Rich Claussen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:50:43 GMT

Late announcement as I've been a bit distracted this last week or so.

With such beautiful weather (!), it seems a great evening to come learn about mobile and related development with PADNUG.

WHAT:	June PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 06/03/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Steven Gray
TOPIC:	Smart Device Programming with Visual Studio 2008 Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 brings a host of new features and improvements for smart device developers with an updated emulator, new version of the .NET Compact Framework, on-device unit testing, and more. As a software architect and Microsoft certified trainer, as well as SoftSource's subject matter expert on mobile device application development, Steven Gray will walk through the practical steps for building smart device applications quickly as well as how to leverage existing investments by bridging those mobile applications to your current web service architectures. Time and interest permitting, Steven will also contrast invoking web services from other mobile platforms besides Windows CE-based devices as well.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Portland Nerd Movie - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Rich Claussen — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:59:34 GMT

It's Nerd Movie time again already!

Of course, it's driven by the movie that is playing. After almost twenty years, Indiana Jones is back in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. How can any self respecting nerd pass this one up?

As usual, we'll do this at Cinetopia. The movie starts at 3:30PM. If you are under 21, there is a showing at 4:15PM in the Grand Theater, too, though. If this is right for you and you would like to see your fellow nerds, let us know and we can meet up before or after.

Speaking of that, Vinotopia - the restaurant at the theater - is great to bring your special someone to. Consider making that a part of your afternoon/evening.

Consider buying your tickets early. I'd imagine that there will be a pretty good turnout for this movie.

What: Portland Nerd ~~Dinner~~ Movie
Where: Cinetopia Theaters - 11700 SE 7th St, Vancouver, Washington
When: Monday, May 26, 2008, 3:30PM Showing in Living Room Theaters
Why: Indiana Jones is Back!

Let any and everyone that might be interested know. And of course...

...Be There and Be Square!

May PDXUX.NET Meeting - Using WPF Now: the Why and the How

Rich Claussen — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:54:13 GMT

Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) was released in November of 2006, yet very few developers that I talk to are using it. Learning WPF can be a daunting task, and really who wants to subject themselves to learning this when it is unclear what the reasons and benefits are for moving to this platform.

This presentation will briefly explain the Whys and then show how you can start learning and developing for what has become the new standard for Windows Client Development.

WHAT:	May PDXUX.NET Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 05/20/2008 6:30 p.m. Pizza (by White Horse) 7:00 p.m. Presentation
WHERE:	Robert Half Technology KOIN Center 222 SW Columbia Street Portland, OR 97201
WHO:	Nick Muhonen Nick, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.
TOPIC:	Using WPF Now - the Why and the How Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) was released in November of 2006, yet very few developers that I talk to are using it. Learning WPF can be a daunting task, and really who wants to subject themselves to learning this when it is unclear what the reasons and benefits are for moving to this platform. This presentation will briefly explain the Whys and then show how you can start learning and developing for what has become the new standard for Windows Client Development.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

White Horse - http://www.whitehorse.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/store/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group - Developing Master Pages with SharePoint Designer

Rich Claussen — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:28:39 GMT

PADNUGers are invited... [via Ben Hickman]

The monthly Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group meeting will be held on Wednesday May 28th from 11:45am - 1:00pm in the Microsoft office:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower

10260 SW Greenburg Rd.

Lincoln Tower, Suite 600

Portland, OR 97223

I am very happy to announce that we will have Jason Noble from Neudesic presenting on Master Page development. I saw Jason’s presentation earlier this year at the Office Developer’s Conference and it was excellent. Don’t miss this one.

Developing Master Pages with SharePoint Designer
The Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies stack provides amazing out-of-the-box capabilities for enterprise and web content management, search, and business intelligence solutions. These capabilities can be further extended using custom .NET solutions developed in Visual Studio or using the no-code approach offered by Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007. In this discussion we will put forth a predictable process for creating master pages using SharePoint Designer. This will include the creation of wire frames, and provide clear direction on the various content regions available in SharePoint.

About Jason Noble
With over fourteen years of experience in building complex, mission critical applications, Jason Noble brings extensive knowledge in advanced enterprise applications, specializing in web, database and portal application development using SharePoint. Moreover, Jason has spent a number of years working with C# and ASP.NET, creating a variety of business applications, and has been actively involved with Microsoft’s .NET environment since it was introduced at the Professional Developer’s Conference in 2000. Lunch will be provided and begin promptly at 11:45AM. The presentation will be from 12:00PM to 1:00PM. A meeting invite is attached.

We will have a drawing for some give aways immediately following the meeting, so bring your Business cards to participate in the drawings!

Please register so we get an accurate head count for lunch. Click here to register. Please specify in the mail if you have any special dietary needs.

For questions or comments please contact Ben Hickman, SharePoint Technology Specialist, Microsoft NorthWest District.

Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group
Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group is dedicated to helping customers design, develop, deploy, and administrate applications on Microsoft SharePoint platform technologies.

Almost a PADNUG Meeting - Patrick Cauldwell Presents at SPIN

Rich Claussen — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:50:29 GMT

Call this a Public Service Announcement. On the heels of publishing his new book, Code Leader, Patrick Cauldwell will be presenting at the monthly SPIN seminar at OGI.

You must sign up - so visit http://www.cpd.ogi.edu/course.asp?n=08-SPIN-0612 and register. It may seem like it is asking you to pay, but in the end, there is no cost for the event.

Details are as follows and posted on the site .

There is a lot more to delivering a software project on time and within budget than just writing code. In fact, in many modern software development efforts, the code is the least challenging part. The hard part is setting up a build, test and deployment infrastructure that allows developers to work together effectively and efficiently.
Working efficiently with your source control system, and establishing a Continuous Integration process can go a long way toward achieving those goals. We'll look at how to organize your team and use the right tools to make the development process as efficient and effective as possible.

May PADNUG Meeting: CodeIt.Right the First Time

Rich Claussen — Sat, 03 May 2008 03:59:38 GMT

Tuesday may be a busy day for some of us. Microsoft is launching the new Windows 2008 and SQL Server 2008 at the Convention Center and then we will be rushing back to the west side for a fabulous PADNUG presentation.

Serge has been kind enough to provide us with licenses for CodeIt.Right for several months. Now, he's willing to travel down from Seattle to tell us more about code analysis and why it is worth the effort.

We've heard Scott Hanselman and Patrick Cauldwell talk about tools like Serge's many times. Now we'll see how it comes about.

WHAT:	May PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Thursday 05/06/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Serge Baranovsky
TOPIC:	CodeIt.Right the First Time Use Code Analysis and Refactoring to produce quality code, enforce coding guidelines, find code pitfalls, performance issues and save your time.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

May Portland Nerd Movie: Iron Man

Rich Claussen — Sat, 03 May 2008 03:34:51 GMT

What a wonderful Spring that is upon us!

Let's have a Nerd Event.

Last time we did a movie (Portland Nerd MOVIE- Beowulf in 3D!), we had to go to the "Grand Theater" to enjoy the 3D view. This time, we return to the Living Room theaters!

The movie starts at 4:00PM. If you are under 21, there is a showing at 4:30PM in the Grand Theater, too, though. If this is right for you and you would like to see your fellow nerds, let us know and we can meet up before or after.

Speaking of that, Vinotopia - the restaurant at the theater - is great to bring your special someone to. Consider making that a part of your afternoon/evening.

Consider buying your tickets early. I'd imagine that there will be a pretty good turnout for this movie.

What: Portland Nerd ~~Dinner~~ Movie
Where: Cinetopia Theaters - 11700 SE 7th St, Vancouver, Washington
When: Sunday, May 04, 2007, 4:00PM Showing in Living Room Theaters
Why: Because Iron Man will Rock!

Let any and everyone that might be interested know. And of course...

...Be There and Be Square!

April PADNUG Meeting - Mix-a-Lot

Rich Claussen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:58:45 GMT

The Code Trip is near its end at the MVP summit. Join us Thursday at the Corillian Cafe to cheer the team on through the final leg of their journey.

WHAT:	April PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Thursday 04/10/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. After Words at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse
WHERE:	Corillian Cafe, now part of CheckFree 3400 NW John Olsen Place Hillsboro, OR 97124
WHO:	The Code Trip Team
TOPIC:	Mix-a-Lot Join us at the Portland Area .NET User Group (PADNUG) where we run through the newest technologies to emerge from MIX08, including Silverlight 2 Beta 1, Internet Explorer 8, SQL Server Data Services, Windows Live, and more.

Also, don't forget to register for the PDX Webfoot event on Saturday! It should be a great event and it looks like it will be a fabulous day to bring the family out to an event. We're using Yahoo!'s Upcoming for registration at: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/468242/. There'll be food and lot's of give-aways.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

PDX Webfoot Event with The Code Trip

Rich Claussen — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:03:56 GMT

You know it's been coming...

It's almost here...

PDX Webfoot is coming April 12 at the OGI School of Science and Engineering. For the latest information, go to the PDX Webfoot Website.

Some of the topics and people already on the agenda (subject to change at this point):

Topics:

Safe Internet Browsing
Silverlight 2
Internet Explorer 8
XNA
Adobe Flex/Air

People:

Scott Hanselman
Adam Kinney
Tim Heuer
Jason Mauer
Ryan Miller
Kelly White
Erik Mork

There will be good food (not just pizza) and there will be games and activities for spouses and kids (think Rockband and Mindstorms, though we can't guarantee either of those yet).

You Are Invited to Attend InnoTech

Rich Claussen — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:58:01 GMT

InnoTech: Oregon’s Largest Technology Event

InnoTech – The Business & Technology Innovation Conference & Expo
Presented by Easystreet Online Services & Software Association of Oregon
April 16 & 17, Oregon Convention Center

The InnoTech folks have come through again to help our members attend the show. This year, you have two options: a discount for the full package or free access to the general admission portion.

Check out the Developers Track and the new Open Source Summit at InnoTech on April 17.
Information and registration at www.innotechoregon.com.

Option 1: Discounted InnoTech Oregon Conference & Exhibits Pass includes Breakfast Presentation with Don Tapscott, Author, WIKINOMICS, at the reduced rate of $45.00 per person ($60.00 per person standard price.) Click to select INNOTECH GENERAL REGISTRATION and enter Discount Code ES345 to confirm your place at the breakfast.

Option 2: Complimentary InnoTech Oregon Conference & Exhibits Pass does not include breakfast presentation with Don Tapscott. Click to select INNOTECH GENERAL REGISTRATION and enter Discount Code ES303.

This year includes an impressive line up of national and local sponsors and supporters (all posted on the www.innotechoregon.com web site...check it out!)

Here are a few of the InnoTech conference tracks & special events (ALL great reasons to take part in InnoTech):

Green IT/Clean Technology – April 16
Open Source Summit – (five distinct presentations about open source and the business of software)
Virtualization, data storage, cloud computing, security and much more
InnoTech Happy 45-Minutes (the perfect place to mingle over complimentary beverages, appetizers, live music and exhibits)
Developers Track – (Ruby, Agile, LINQ and more)
And more!

March PDXUX Meeting - Overview of Silverlight 2

Rich Claussen — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:39:20 GMT

Next week Adam Kinney will be coming down from Microsoft to present an "Overview of Silverlight 2" and answer questions about other content presented at this year's MIX conference. This is a meeting you'll want to be sure to attend. Details are included below and can also be found at http://pdxux.net/.

WHAT:	March PDXUX Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 03/18/2008 6:30 p.m. Pizza (by White Horse) 7:00 p.m. Presentation ~8:30 p.m. Drinks and continued discussion
WHERE:	Corillian Cafe, now part of CheckFree 3400 NW John Olsen Place Hillsboro, OR 97124
WHO:	Adam Kinney Adam works for Microsoft as "a guy who loves UI platforms like Silverlight, WPF and Microsoft Surface." He often talks about these technologies from a developer and designer prespective.
TOPIC:	Overview of Silverlight 2 Adam will be presenting an overview of Silverlight 2 and answering questions about other stuff from MIX. I'm not one to speak for Adam, but I'm betting you'll be seeing Deep Zoom related content, and maybe even something about what the Olympics are doing with Silverlight.

Be sure to join us afterwards at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse for drinks and continued discussion.

February Bonus PADNUG Meeting - SQL Server 2008 Intro Part 1

Rich Claussen — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:22:08 GMT

Arnie is one of the top SQL Server people in the area. He is going to give us a look ahead at the coming release of SQL Server 2008.

WHAT:	February Bonus PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 02/19/2008 6:00 p.m. Sandwiches 6:30 p.m. Presentation
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Arnie Rowland
TOPIC:	SQL Server 2008 Intro Part 1 Come see what's new in SQL Server 2008. This is part one of two meetings we'll hold.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

February PADNUG Meeting - WCF and LINQ in the Wild

Rich Claussen — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:47:55 GMT

When I heard Matt on Hanselminutes, I knew we had to get him to come speak at PADNUG. It had been long enough since I'd seen him, I didn't realize that he was still right here in the Portland Metro area - Perfect!

Matt and Earth Class Mail are definitely ahead of the curve on using the .NET 3.5 Framework. Not only that, but they came to the platform from LAMP.

WHAT:	February PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 02/05/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Matt Davis
TOPIC:	WCF and LINQ in the Wild Come out and here first hand war stories and tips & tricks on .NET 3.5 from Matt Davis, Architect at Earth Class Mail. ECM recently converted their bread and butter application to .NET from PHP on Linux, and went live on .NET 3.5 Beta2. Matt will share real world stories and demos about what works and what doesn't, using WCF 3.5's new Web Programming model, LINQ, Compact Framework 3.5, and others recent Microsoft technologies.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

January PADNUG Meeting - Should I Fear MVC for ASP.NET?

Rich Claussen — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:27:30 GMT

The answer, according to Scott, is:

No, it's pretty harmless. If you look in the Object Browser in Visual Studio you'll see that one assembly you already have has had some additions and its version rev'ed....

I wouldn't go slapping it on a production machine unless you're living on the razor's edge, but it should be fine on a development machine if you know how to pay attention to what versions your projects reference.

So, for those who got their appetite whetted with Scott's introductory presentation at the InstallFest or for those of you that haven't seen what the new extensions are all about, this will be a great chance to find out more.

WHAT:	January PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 01/08/2008 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Scott Hanselman
TOPIC:	Should I Fear MVC for ASP.NET? ASP.NET MVC provides model-view-controller (MVC) support to the existing ASP.NET 3.5 runtime, which enables developers to more easily take advantage of this design pattern. Benefits include the ability to achieve and maintain a clear separation of concerns, as well as facilitate test driven development (TDD). The ASP.NET MVC Toolkit provides HTML rendering helpers and dynamic data support for MVC. If you would like to get a jump on things, download the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions from <here>.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

December PADNUG Meeting: Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest

Rich Claussen — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:28:24 GMT

We're having a PARTY!!!

Microsoft is running an InstallFest for Visual Studio 2008 and you are invited! Everyone that attends will have a chance to get a licensed copy of Visual Studio 2008 Pro for their very own.

We're meeting at Corillian for this one since they have more space. Also, note that we are starting the fun a bit early; this will give you a chance to install the trial copy of VS2008 and ask some questions before we begin.

Note that you must sign up for this event. The sign-up page is at
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032361177&Culture=en-US

WHAT:	December PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 12/04/2007 5:00 p.m. Food (by Microsoft) 6:00 p.m. Presentation
WHERE:	Corillian Cafe 3400 NW John Olson Place Hillsboro, OR 97124
WHO:	Jason Mauer, et al
TOPIC:	Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest ATTENTION DEVELOPERS! Are you ready to be one of the first to get their hands on Visual Studio 2008? Join Microsoft and the Portland Area .NET Users Group (PADNUG) for a Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest and Holiday Party on December 4th, 2007 at Corillian in Hillsboro. Visual Studio 2008 is HERE and this event is your opportunity to get your hands on the released version before anyone else. Every person that installs Visual Studio 2008 on their computer at the event will receive a FREE fully licensed copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional in the mail shortly after public release. Don’t miss out on a great evening of food, fun, and your very own copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional! Space is limited so register today.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

November PADNUG Meeting - Introduction to Scrum

Rich Claussen — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:26:32 GMT

Notice I'm calling it as it is now: November. One might look down the list of meeting announcements and think, "Gosh, there really wasn't an October meeting?!?" That's one way to look at it. On the other hand, we've had twelve meetings this year. So maybe we added a month, eh?

I've been looking for a chance to bring Wayne in to do an Agile presentation for a long time. Many of you may know Wayne from his time at Corillian. He's now working with Integrated Services, Inc.

WHAT:	November PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 11/06/2007 6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium) 6:30 p.m. Presentation
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	Wayne Allen
TOPIC:	Introduction to Scrum Agile software development processes such as Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Feature Driven Development (FDD) and Crystal have become mainstream in many organizations. Come find out more about Scrum and some of the .NET tools that makes agile software development fun!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

PDXUX.Net Meeting - November 13th

Rich Claussen — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:38:24 GMT

It hasn't been that long since the last PDXUX.Net meeting, but I wanted to get the word out early on this one. A couple things to note up front:

This meeting will be held at Corillian in Hillsboro
The meeting will be on the 2nd Tuesday instead of the 3rd to avoid Turkey-Day conflicts.

WHAT:	November PDXUX.Net Meeting
WHEN:	Tuesday 11/13/2007 6:30 p.m. Socializing & Pizza (by White Horse) 7:00 p.m. Presentation
WHERE:	Corillian Cafe 3400 NW John Olson Place Hillsboro, OR 97124
WHO:	Scott Vandehey Scott is a web developer and CSS Ninja working at Pop Art who has been making websites for over ten years. He lives in NE Portland with his wife and baby daughter, and is probably not a Cylon.
TOPIC:	Introducing sIFR Scott will be introducing sIFR 2.0, a method of inserting rich typography into web pages without sacrificing accessibility, search engine friendliness, or markup semantics. sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash. It is this technology which provides the nice looking custom type headlines you see on sites like Nike, ABCNews, Aston Martin, and others.

Look forward to seeing everyone there!

Master Chief Joins the Fight Against Diabetes

Rich Claussen — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 05:26:24 GMT

Just in case you've missed it, we're going to have a bit of an event this week.

Halo 3 on the REALLY big screen.

Thursday, October 11 from 7PM to Midnight (vCal reminder), we are gathering at the finest of movie theaters - Cinetopia Theaters - in Vancouver for an evening of fun and function. All proceeds from the $25 admittance to this event will be given to the American Diabetes Association.

Cinetopia has come through with two theaters for us. This means we will be able to pit two networked teams against one another and enjoy the show on their huge, Digital Super Hi-Def projectors.

Popcorn and a soda will be available, but don't limit yourself; the theater hosts a fabulous concession stand and Best of Citysearch Audience Winner Vinotopia Restaurant and Wine Bar, too.

Thanks to the efforts and contributions of Aivea, Robert Half Technology, Microsoft, PADNUG, SAO and others, we will be able to contribute thousands to the ADA in the Fight Against Diabetes, too. This is a big deal, folks.

Space is limited. Sign up now at http://iammasterchief.com with the RSVP code of "FIGHTDIABETES". Feel free to ignore the text mentioning the 'prelaunch' party; we're using the same site as was used for that event.

Scott is making it possible to prepay, too. You are welcome to visit his ADA site at http://www.hanselman.com/fightdiabetes/donate (takes you to the diabetes.org site) and make your contribution there. Print the receipt page and bring it with you to the event as your admission. All contributions made after October 2 will qualify. Otherwise, bring your contribution (feel free to bring more than $25 :-)) to the event.

Join us. You will have a great time!

WHAT:	June Portland SharePoint User Group (PSUG) Meeting
WHEN:	Wednesday 06/25/2008 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
WHERE:	Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower 10260 SW Greenburg Road Suite 600 Portland, OR 97223
WHO:	James Curry James is a respected computer scientist and consultant with over 15 years of programming experience. In his role as a Mindsharp instructor, James uses his knowledge of Microsoft products to provide students with a dynamic, hands-on classroom experience. James is a contributing author of a SharePoint products and technologies book. He has been invited to speak at user groups on subjects such as Customizing SharePoint 2007. As a computer scientist with InfoPro Corporation in Huntsville, Alabama, James developed information management solutions for organizations of all sizes. Prior to joining Mindsharp, James focused on developing Web applications for a large governmental organization. James currently resides in Huntsville, Alabama.
TOPIC:	Field Types and Field Controls James Curry from Mindsharp will discuss Field Types and Field Controls. Fields are the underlying data types for SharePoint list columns and site columns. SharePoint provides a number of fields, such as Number, Counter, Multi-Choice, Boolean, and URL. Custom fields can be created to allow custom validation of data and presentation beyond what is possible with the native SharePoint fields. Field controls are Server Controls or User Controls that can be used to provide custom presentation of data stored in a given field type. Server controls allow information stored in SharePoint lists to be presented in a very rich manner. As an example, a single line of text that contains an address could be presented using a field control as push pin on a map. Field Controls provide a far superior method of custom presentation than using the options natively available in a Field Type.

WHAT:	XNA MVP George Clingerman (that's me!) will be speaking on "An introductory look at creating games for the Zune"
WHEN:	Wednesday June 25, 2008 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
WHERE:	River East Center (next to OMSI) in Portland Oregon
WHO:	Portland XNA User Group (PAXNAUG)

Portland Area .NET Users Group

October PADNUG Meeting - Information Overload and Managing the Flow: Effectiveness and Efficiency

PADNUG Meeting - GeekRoadTrip: Testing ASP.NET MVC Apps with VS 2010 Ultimate

Portland Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch

April PADNUG Meeting - Post MIX10

Scott Hanselman on .NET

December PADNUG Meeting and Portland Silverlight User Group Kickoff - Silverlight in Action

November PADNUG Meeting - Examining Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM)

October PADNUG Meeting - Principles of Silverlight Animation

September PADNUG Meeting - Using jQuery with ASP.NET

August PADNUG Meeting - Windows Workflow Foundation 4

July PADNUG Meeting - C# 4.0 - Microsoft's Brand New Language Lovechild

June Portland Nerd/Geek Dinner

Taking Team System to the Next Level - A VSTS 2008 Training Event

SQLSaturday #12 Portland 2009

June PADNUG Meeting - ASP.NET Debugging

May PADNUG and Rose City SPIN Meeting - Metrics for Real Process Improvement

April PADNUG Meeting - WCF Best Practices with Unit Testing

March PADNUG Meeting – Agile Practices: Kanban

January PADNUG Meeting - “Oslo”: Writing a Domain

December Portland Nerd Dinner - The Finale of 2008!

December PADNUG Meeting - Post-PDC Extravaganza

Portland Nerd Movie - James Bond: Quantum of Solace

PDXUX - Silverlight 2 Launch Party

Sponsored by

November PADNUG Meeting - F# - Functional Fun for Everyone!

October PADNUG Meeting – Dynamic Data

September PADNUG Meeting - Asynchronous fun with PLINQ

August PADNUG Meeting - Using jQuery with ASP.NET

July PDXUX.Net Meeting

July PADNUG Meeting - WF - Why, What, and How?

June Portland SharePoint User Group (PSUG) Meeting

June PAXNAUG Meeting

June SQL SIG Meeting - Visual Studio Reporting

June PADNUG Meeting - Smart Device Programming with Visual Studio 2008

Portland Nerd Movie - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

May PDXUX.NET Meeting - Using WPF Now: the Why and the How

Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group - Developing Master Pages with SharePoint Designer

Almost a PADNUG Meeting - Patrick Cauldwell Presents at SPIN

May PADNUG Meeting: CodeIt.Right the First Time

May Portland Nerd Movie: Iron Man

April PADNUG Meeting - Mix-a-Lot

PDX Webfoot Event with The Code Trip

You Are Invited to Attend InnoTech

March PDXUX Meeting - Overview of Silverlight 2

February Bonus PADNUG Meeting - SQL Server 2008 Intro Part 1

February PADNUG Meeting - WCF and LINQ in the Wild

January PADNUG Meeting - Should I Fear MVC for ASP.NET?

December PADNUG Meeting: Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest

November PADNUG Meeting - Introduction to Scrum

PDXUX.Net Meeting - November 13th

Master Chief Joins the Fight Against Diabetes