Meetings

Inaugural NJDOTNET Agile Meeting

2008-06-19T06:59:00Z

As I announced at the last few weeks' NJDOTNET Study & User Group meetings, we'll be having our very first NJDOTNET Agile meeting tonight, Thursday, June 6th starting at 6:30 PM in the Infragistics auditorium in East Windsor (the same location as the regular NJDOTNET user group meetings). Here's a little bit about the group:

Taking a cue from both the growing ALT.NET movement and quite a few members of the main NJDOTNET user group, I've decided to augment the monthly meetings of our established user group to create a more interactive, discussion-based meeting. These Open Spaces meetings will occur once a month, on the weeks following the regular User Group (the third Thursday of the month). Hopefully the addition of these meetings will allow everyone to get the benefit of a different style of interaction and learning that the “Lecture-Learn” style of the main user group cannot provide.

I'll see everyone there!

ASP.NET MVC Firestarter - June 7th

2008-06-03T03:33:00Z

Are you interested in diving deep into the new ASP.NET MVC framework? If so, come check out the NYC ASP.NET MVC Firestarter!

I'm not going to duplicate too many details here, but it's Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at the Microsoft offices in NYC (1250 Ave. of Americas). Oh yeah - free food, too! :)

Check out this link for more information and to register!

May Meeting - The ASP.NET MVC Framework

2008-04-23T16:30:00Z

Jess Chadwick
Thursday, May 9th, 2008 - 6:15 PM

The Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern is one that many developers are familiar with which separates an application into three main components: the model, the view, and the controller. The ASP.NET MVC framework provides an alternative to the ASP.NET Web Forms pattern for creating MVC-based Web applications. It is a lightweight, highly testable framework that allows you to easily incorporate this pattern into your applications, helping to separate the different aspects (input logic, business logic, and UI logic) into loosely-coupled and pluggable elements.

ASP.NET MVC is an alternative to standard ASP.NET Web Forms development, not a replacement. In this presentation we'll explore the advantages that ASP.NET MVC has to offer, including:

Maintaining a clear separation of concerns
Facilitating Test-Driven Development
More control over more aspects of your applications, particularly the URLs and the HTML you emit

Speaker Bio

Jess Chadwick is the Web Lead at Infragistics, responsible for keeping all their various web properties up and running. He has over 7 years experience with .NET technologies ranging from embedded devices in startups to enterprise-scale web farms at Fortune 500s. He is actively involved with the community, acting as Leader of the NJDOTNET Central New Jersey .NET user group and actively contributing to various open source projects such as CodeCampServer. You can visit his blog at http://blog.jesschadwick.com.

First Meeting of the Spring Study Group Tonight

2008-04-17T17:42:00Z

Just like the title says, we'll be having our first meeting of the Spring '08 MS Certification Study Group tonight - 4/17/2008 starting at 6:30 PM. If you haven't already heard about it, check out the forum I've created for it for more info.

For those of you coming, it is in the some location and time slot as our regular NJDOTNET user group meetings, so you can use the directions listed on our homepage to get there if you don't already know where we meet.

Important Note: Unlike the regular user group meetings, this group is not sponsored (at least not yet), so there will be no free pizza. You'll need to get your dinner beforehand, though you can feel free to bring it with you to the group.

April Meeting - Dive into WPF: Using the Visual Tree to Create Awesome UI

2008-04-09T05:49:00Z

Pavan Podila
Thursday, April 10, 2008 - 6:15 PM

The Visual tree is one of the core concepts of the WPF framework. All things visible in a WPF application are objects from the Visual tree. In this talk I'll give a quick overview of the Visual Tree and then get into interesting ways of manipulating it. We will also look into the styling and templating aspects of visuals. The ideas presented here should be immediately useful to custom-control developers and application developers in general. The session will be very hands-on with cool demos and live coding! The techniques discussed here were used in my blog posts on ElementFlow, GlassWindow, Drag 'n' Drop with attached properties, Genie Effect, etc.

Speaker Bios
Pavan Podila has worked on a wide variety of UI technologies with current focus on WPF/Silverlight, Flash/Flex and DHTML. He has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Computer Science with specialization in Graphics and Image Processing. He has been working with .Net since 2004 and WPF since 2005. In the past he has worked with Java Swing, Eclipse plugins, AJAX UI frameworks and Trolltech Qt. His primary interests are in 2D/3D Graphics, Data Visualization, UI architecture and computational art. He blogs actively on http://blog.pixelingene.com.

March Meeting - Writing Better Code with Visual Studio 2008 Developer Edition

2008-03-11T19:42:00Z

Steve Andrews
Thursday, March 13th - 6:15 PMEver wonder what it would take to really build software that has fewer bugs, runs faster, and is still maintainable? Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers includes several tools to assist in writing quality code. In this session, we'll learn how to create and use unit tests, review code coverage across tests, and how to use the code analysis and profiling tools to ensure your code conforms to accepted industry or internal design guidelines.Speaker Bio
Steve Andrews is a Software Engineer and Architectural Guidance Team member at RDA Corporation with over 8 years of experience implementing custom Microsoft solutions in the Financial, Medical, Manufacturing and Retail industries. Lately, Steve has been focusing on architecture, process, and the Team System platform. Steve is also an MCP, ICSOO, Speaker Liaison for the Philly .NET User Group, and all around .NET fanatic. You can visit his blog at www.dotneticated.com.

February's Meeting - UI Frameworks and Patterns

2008-02-12T15:02:00Z

Please RSVP HERE at your earliest convenience to ensure enough seating and food.

UI Frameworks and Patterns - J. Ambrose Little and Todd F. Snyder

*** MEETING MOVED *** Thursday, February 21st, 2008 - 6:15 PM

CAB, WCSF, SCSF, MVP, MVC, and More

Are you confused by all of the UI frameworks and patterns out there for application development? If so, you’re not alone. In this session, we’ll cover the major .NET UI frameworks and UI patterns (and how the frameworks use the patterns). In addition to familiarizing you with the frameworks and patterns, helping you understand when to choose what, we’ll also delve into examples of some of them, including the Infragistics NetAdvantage CAB Extensibility Kit.

January's Meeting - SharePoint 101: A Developer's Introduction to SharePoint

2008-01-07T17:04:00Z

Please RSVP HERE at your earliest convenience to ensure enough seating and food.

SharePoint 101 - Todd F. Snyder

Thursday, January 10th, 2007 - 6:15 PM

This talk introduces an experience .Net developer to the key concepts of developing solutions with SharePoint 2007 Platform.

About SharePoint:

SharePoint Products and Technologies provide enterprise-scale capabilities to meet business-critical needs such as managing content and business processes, simplifying how people find and share information across boundaries, and helping to enable more informed decision-making. Using the combined collaboration features of Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server 2007, plus the design and customization capabilities of Office SharePoint Designer 2007, organizations can enable their users to create, manage, and more easily build their own SharePoint sites, and make these sites more discoverable throughout the organization.

December Meeting - WPF Data-Binding - Walt Ritscher & Visual Studio 2008 Installathon

2007-12-04T20:36:00Z

Please RSVP HERE at your earliest convenience to ensure enough seating and food.

WPF Data-Binding – Walt Ritscher
Thursday, December 13^th, 2007 - 6:15 PM

Once again Microsoft has created a new data-binding model for developers. This new binding framework permeates every corner of WPF and provides a simple and consistent way to synchronize elements and data. Any WPF element that implements a dependency property is bindable to a datasource. This means you can easily bind a 3D cylinder to an XML file or link a slider control to the current location in a media file. In WPF most of your binding can be written declaratively with XAML which greatly reduces the clutter of UI code in your code behind files. In this session you’ll learn the four cornerstones of WPF binding and how to sort, filter and group your data with CollectionViews. I’ll explain how to convert your data with native or custom type converters and explore triggers and the new binding events. Plus you’ll see how data-templates and styles simplify the creation of harmonious user interfaces. If you think you know data-binding, wait until you see what the WPF team has created for you.Speaker Bio
Walt Ritscher hopped on the .NET roller coaster after seeing the first .NET preview back in 2000. Instantly realizing that .NET is a fundamental shift in the way developers produce code he set to work to show programmers the merits of this emerging platform. Prior to his .NET enlightenment he spent six years persuading Visual Basic and COM to work together. Walt has trained thousands of corporate developers during the last ten years. His teaching schedule has taken him throughout the world providing developer training at corporations, universities and software conferences. He has collaborated on several books and videos produced for the developer market including early adopter .NET courses at Microsoft Press. He is also deeply involved in the local developer community — founding the .NET Developers Association in Redmond, WA. Walt has accumulated plenty of experience as a developer — he is fluent in database, component, and Win-Forms technologies. As a web programmer he has built numerous websites including: EPA sites and the Microsoft Community Starter Kit. Walt joined Wintellect in 2006 as a trainer and consultant and produced and teaches Wintellect’s WPF course. Before software development moved to center stage in his life, Walt enjoyed a lively career as a professional keyboard player. Once he cleared the stardust from his eyes, he realized that he loved programming as much as music except writing code was a lot more lucrative. Walt lives in Poulsbo Washington, a quaint waterfront town just a short ferry ride from Seattle. He still loves music, likes to travel with his family and is avidly planning his new dream house.Visual Studio 2008 Installathon
Just in time for the holidays, Peter Laudati (our local Developer Evangelist from Microsoft) will be coming to talk about the Visual Studio 2008 launch (RTM’d two weeks) at the beginning of the meeting. His team was able to score free licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition for the users groups in our area.Here’s the rules:· We have 35 licenses to give away. It will go to the first 35 people to come to the meeting. (We will have a sign-up sheet at the table in the back.)· Peter will come up to talk about the VS 2008 launch and a contest they’re putting on. After that, we’ll start our normal talk and you’ll be able to install VS 2008 during the meeting on your laptop. Be sure to bring your laptop!· You will receive a PIN number on the CD to register online and receive your product key which you’ll be able to use to “activate” your trial copy.· If you have a pre-release version (Beta or RC) of Visual Studio installed, you’ll want to make sure you have that uninstalled. You can see ScottGu’s blog post about “cleansing” your system.

November Meeting - Cool Tools! Improving Developer Productivity - Ed Blankenship

2007-10-29T11:53:00Z

Cool Tools - Improving Developer Productivity – Ed Blankenship
Thursday, November 15, 2007 - 6:15 PM

There are a ton of tools out in the market that aim to make developers more productive. Too many to even evaluate at times! This talk will go over the various tools available to a developer (both free and for purchase.)

Speaker Bio

Ed Blankenship is the Configuration and Process Improvement Engineer at Infragistics, Inc. and is responible for integration of source control, automated builds, testing, project management, and other software metrics; process improvement, and assisting the management team by providing release status metrics. He also serves as a WinForms/WPF Technical Evangelist as needed. He has been developing professionally for the last three years and has developed with the .NET Framework since the very beginning with the .NET 1.0 betas. Ed is a national .NET community speaker and currently blogs with his long-time professional friend at http://www.edsquared.com/. Ed is also a leader of the New Jersey .NET User’s Group. Ed’s professional blog can be found at http://blogs.infragistics.com/blogs/eblankenship.

Meeting Sponsor(s)

November’s meeting is being sponsored by Infragistics. Infragistics is the world leader in Presentation Layer Technology. We are committed to providing our customers the highest quality of reusable presentation layer development tools for Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Tablet PC, and Java environments that allow them to empower themselves and their software development teams to realize the potential of the presentation layer by accelerating development cycles and improving usability to the end-users.

October Meeting - Service-Oriented Architecture, WCF and ESB - Sam Gentile

2007-10-08T21:13:00Z

Service-Oriented Architecture, WCF and ESB – Sam Gentile
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 - 6:15 PM

The term Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has become ubiquitous in our industry. Unfortunately, that has led to massive hype that makes it difficult to understand and distinguish the real value of adapting SOA principles. The current definition also suffers from technology-centric views that are based on the technology environment in use today. The session focuses on Real-World SOA principles and patterns. The session then focuses on both WCF and ESBs as examples of technologies used to realize SOA's.

Speaker Bio
Sam Gentile is a Principal Consultant II at Neudesic, responsible for managing and operating the Connected Systems East Region Practice.Sam Gentile is internationally known and recognized for his comprehensive expert Microsoft and .NET knowledge, and has been acknowledged by Microsoft as an Solutions Architect MVP. Sam is also an INETA Speaker, having delivered .NET training to user groups and companies all over the world. Sam has delivered over ten .NET based solutions into the market as well as provided expertise for a number of companies such as Microsoft, Algorithmics, Adesso Systems, BCGI, Groove and Pacific Mindworks.

Meeting Sponsor(s)

June’s meeting is being sponsored by Infragistics. Infragistics is the world leader in Presentation Layer Technology. We are committed to providing our customers the highest quality of reusable presentation layer development tools for Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Tablet PC, and Java environments that allow them to empower themselves and their software development teams to realize the potential of the presentation layer by accelerating development cycles and improving usability to the end-users.

September Meeting - CANCELLED

2007-09-11T17:30:00Z

Our original speaker is unable to make it to the meeting this week. We were also informed that Rosh Hashanah is also on Thursday as well. Therefore, we have decided to cancel this month's meeting.

Next month, we will be having Sam Gentile, an INETA Speaker, coming to speak. More details soon...

July Meeting - NO MEETING - Summer Break

2007-06-18T19:15:00Z

There will be no meeting in July. Enjoy the summer!

June Meeting - Silverlight - Devin Rader

2007-06-06T12:00:00Z

Silverlight – Devin Rader
Thursday, June 14th, 2007 - 6:15 PM

Topic Description will be posted soon.

Speaker Bio
Bio Available Soon

Meeting Sponsor(s)

May Meeting - Composite UI Application Block (CAB) - Tom Puglisi

2007-04-13T01:00:00Z

Composite UI Application Block (CAB) – Tom Puglisi
Thursday, May 10^th, 2007 - 6:15 PMCAB is composed of a standardized architecture and component communication services which simplify the construction of smart clients. It is a framework which allows UI controls to be cleanly composed into application-specific workspaces and smart parts. The CAB also includes services that simplify workspaces and smart part communication. The power of the CAB lies within its ability to simplify UI component composition, decouple UI layer communication, and facilitate smart part reuse. 1. What is CAB and Why (00:00)2. Anatomy of CAB (00:10)a. UIElement Adapter(s)b. WorkSpacesc. Commandsd. Pub/Sub Event Wiringe. Smart Partsf. WorkItemsg. Method, Property and Class Attributes3. Overview of MVP Design Pattern (01:10)4. Automation using GAT and SCSF (01:20)5. Code Review of SCSF Generated CAB Application (01:30)6. Q & A (02:00 until whenever)

Speaker Bio
Tom Puglisi is a Technology Evangelist for Infragistics, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in Presentation Layer Components for .NET, WPF and Java. Tom also creates written and video content for the Infragistics Best Practices and Training curriculum. Prior to working at Infragistics, Tom has worked at several corporations as a Programmer Analyst to develop a multitude of various corporate Applications and Systems. Tom likes to pass his free time by working on his CarPC.

Slides and Meeting Materials
The slides for this meeting can be found in the Slides file library: May Meeting - Composite UI Application Block

Meeting Sponsor(s)

May’s meeting is being sponsored by Infragistics. Infragistics is the world leader in Presentation Layer Technology. We are committed to providing our customers the highest quality of reusable presentation layer development tools for Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Tablet PC, and Java environments that allow them to empower themselves and their software development teams to realize the potential of the presentation layer by accelerating development cycles and improving usability to the end-users.