Perth .NET Community of Practice

December DevJam Community Event

Administrator — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:28:00 GMT

For December's meeting of the Perth .NET User Group (Thursday, 3rd December), we are running another DevJam community event, where anyone can give a short talk about anything .NET software development related.

DATE: Thursday, Dec 3rd, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

You can talk about any development topic but it must be between 5 – 10 minutes long.

· Anything you’ve done.

· Any new technology you’ve investigated.

· Any tips and tricks, or tools that aid developers

· Basically anything .NET software development related!

How do I enter? You must register by sending an email to mitch.wheat at gmail.com, no later than 23rd November, with the word 'DevJam’ in the subject, stating your talk topic in the body. Let me know whether you will be bringing your own laptop (preferable). Presenter places are limited, so it's first come, first served.

There are prizes for the three highest, audience voted talks (with the organisers’ decision as final in case of a tie break), including a first prize of a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Pro with MSDN Premium, worth approx. $18,000 (courtesy of Mitch Denny). There will several other prizes which will be announced shortly.

There will be pizza and refreshments provided. If you have any questions, please send Mitch an email.

What's new in C# 4.0 with Joe Albahari

Administrator — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:13:00 GMT

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group, Thurs November 5th to hear Joe Albahari present on some of the new C# 4.0. features. C# 4.0 is just around the corner, and it introduces a number of much-requested features including optional parameters, named arguments and (horror) dynamic typing! We're going to demo all of C# 4.0's new features, discuss best practices, show off dynamic Office and Python interop, and explore some novel uses for dynamic typing that may not have crossed your mind. In particular, we'll examine a surprising pattern whereby a little quacking can make large classes much more manageable. VB programmers may attend - but please, no smirking!

TOPIC: What's new in C# 4.0 - Joe Albahari

DATE: Thursday, Nov 5th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

Joe Albahari is author of C# 3.0 in a Nutshell and the upcoming C# 4.0 in a Nutshell.

There will be a door prize of a LINQPad 10-user team license donated by Joe, and a choice of license from JetBrains (one of ReSharper , TeamCity Build Agent, dotTrace Profiler, RubyMine, or IntelliJ IDEA).

Introduction to the SQL Server 2008 Data Collector - Brad McGehee

Administrator — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:26:00 GMT

We are fortunate to have Brad McGehee present two sessions while he is in Perth. The second session is "Introduction to the SQL Server 2008 Data Collector". In previous versions of SQL Server, performance tuning was often difficult because the available tools weren't always easy to use or interpret. In SQL Server 2008, Microsoft is introducing the Performance Data Collector. This comprehensive new toolset has been designed to integrate the collection, analysis, troubleshooting, and persistence of SQL Server diagnostic information, making the jobs of DBAs much easier. In this session, you will learn:

· What the Performance Data Collector Can Do

· How to Implement the Performance Data Collector

· Performance Data Collector Best Practices

TOPIC: Introduction to the SQL Server 2008 Data Collector - Brad McGehee
DATE: Friday, Oct 2nd, 5:30pm - 7:00pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

Brad McGehee is a MCSE+I, MCSD, and MCT (former) with a Bachelors’ degree in Economics and a Masters in Business Administration. Currently the Director of DBA Education for Red Gate Software, Brad is an accomplished Microsoft SQL Server MVP with over 14 years’ SQL Server experience, over 6 years’ training experience, and has been involved in the industry since 1982. He is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, European PASS, SQL Connections, SQLTeach, SQLBits, SQL Saturdays, TechFests, Code Camps, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars.

RedGate have generously donated a license to their excellent SQL Compare Pro.

Try to arrive early if you want a seat!

How to Interpret Graphical Execution Plans - Brad McGehee

Administrator — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:18:00 GMT

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group in October for two talks with a SQL Server focus, aimed at both Developers and DBAs. We are fortunate to have RedGate's Brad McGehee present two sessions while he is in Perth. Brad is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world.

The first talk is Thurs October 1st, where Brad will present on "How to Interpret Graphical Execution Plans". One of the SQL Server black arts is how to read and interpret graphical Query Execution Plans. This is a key thing to understand as Execution Plans provide valuable clues as to why a particular query may be running slowly. In this session, you will learn how to read an Execution Plan, and learn what to do with the information you have gained from reading it.

TOPIC: How to Interpret Graphical Execution Plans - Brad McGehee
DATE: Thursday, Oct 1st, 5:30pm - 7:00pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

We will have pizza at this session courtesy of INETA.

RedGate have generously donated a license to their excellent ANTS Memory Profiler Pro. There is also a door prize of a choice of license from JetBrains (one of ReSharper , TeamCity Build Agent, dotTrace Profiler, RubyMine, IntelliJ IDEA).

Try to arrive early if you want a seat!

Continuous Integration: Improving Quality and Reducing Cost Through Constructive Laziness

Administrator — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:40:00 GMT

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group, Thurs September 3rd to hear Colin Scott talk about Continuous Integration and why you should be doing it. Merging the work of multiple developers and producing reliable, deployable systems is a time consuming and tedious process that wastes developer effort that could be better spent on creating software. Continuous Integration (CI) allows us to automate these tasks and include automated testing and code analysis. This results in higher quality outputs at a lower cost. This presentation shows how to set up simple CI for .NET projects using readily available tools.

TOPIC: Continuous Integration: Improving Quality and Reducing Cost - Colin Scott
DATE: Thursday, Sept 3rd, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

Colin Scott is a Senior Consultant with CSG Solutions working in Perth, WA and has been a professional developer for 10 years. He has a variety of interests including development tooling, design patterns and practices, Service Oriented Architecture and ALT.NET. His blog is available at http://www.abstractcode.com/.

There will be a door prize of a choice of license from JetBrains (ReSharper , TeamCity Build Agent, dotTrace Profiler, RubyMine, IntelliJ IDEA)

Try to arrive early if you want a seat! (Please Note: The Excom doors automatically lock at 5:30pm. If the door is locked, call 0422 971 731 to be let in).

Pex: Automated White Box Testing

Administrator — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:09:00 GMT

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group, Thurs August 6th to see Rhys Campbell demonstrate Pex, a tool being developed by Microsoft Research which has the potential to dramatically improve the quality of software testing while requiring minimal effort on the part of the developer. Pex can automatically generate a set of inputs for a parameterized unit test which can effectively exercise most, if not all, possible code paths.

TOPIC: Pex: Automated White Box Testing - Rhys Campbell

DATE: Thursday, August 6th, 5:30pm

VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth

COST: Free. All welcome

Rhys Campbell is a software developer currently contracting in Perth, WA. He recently returned from London, where he has been active in the .NET community, attending and speaking at the 2008 Seattle and London Alt.NET Open Spaces. Rhys is interested in design, architecture, patterns and bringing best practices from other communities to .NET. Rhys is a director of ArtemisWest.

There will be a door prize of a choice of license from JetBrains (one of ReSharper, TeamCity Build Agent, dotTrace Profiler, RubyMine, or IntelliJ IDEA)

Try to arrive early if you want a seat! (Please Note: The Excom doors automatically lock at 5:30pm. If the door is locked, call 0422 971 731 to be let in).

When should ASP.NET Developers leverage the SharePoint Platform?

Administrator — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:53:00 GMT

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Thurs July 2nd to hear Jeremy Thake answer a common question: Is SharePoint is the correct choice as a base platform for a solution? Jeremy Thake will present the advantages (and disadvantages) of leveraging the SharePoint Platform. Some lines in the sand will be drawn to make it easier to make the decision early on the project based on real world experience gathered by Jeremy from the SharePoint community.

TOPIC: When should ASP.NET Developers leverage the SharePoint Platform?

DATE: Thursday, July 2nd, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

Jeremy Thake has been in the Microsoft web development space since 1999. He has specialised in SharePoint since the beta release of SharePoint 2007. He facilitates the SharePointDevWIki.com which has become a open source resource for all things SharePoint Development. His blog focuses on SharePoint and Enterprise Content Management and is supplemented by his Tweet stream at @jthake. Jeremy has worked for Readify, a Technical Readiness company, since August 2008 and has implemented various SharePoint projects and trained both locally in Perth and the rest of Australia.

There will be a door prize of a ReSharper license (courtesy of JetBrains).

Try to arrive early if you want a seat!

.NET Micro-ISV (or Get Rich Working from Home!)

Administrator — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:41:00 GMT

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Thurs June 4th to hear Joe Albahari present on using your .NET skills to write a program to sell over the Internet. Sound hard? It's easier than you think! This presentation will cover what Joe learned in setting up a successful Micro-ISV (Independent Software Vendor), including:

· Idea incubation - what works and what doesn't

· Marketing strategies, bootstrapping and how to get free advertising, including a simple trick to increase your sales 30%

· Traps in dealing with domain experts & business partners

· How programming best practices differ for Micro-ISVs

· A rarely-used but easy deployment mechanism to maximize downloads

· Handling automated payments

· Designing a licensing system that works

· Web site design and search engine optimization

· Monetization options & establishing a price, and why a micro-ISV does well in a recession

TOPIC: .NET Micro-ISV

DATE: Thursday, June 4th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

Joe Albahari is author of C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, and inventor of LINQPad - the popular querying utility. He's been programming for 20 years in a variety of industries and has been involved in two startups. His web site is www.albahari.com.

There will be door prizes of a 10-user team license for LINQPad Autocompletion (courtesy of Joe) and a ReSharper license (courtesy of JetBrains).

Try to arrive early if you want a seat!

DevJam Community Event

Administrator — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:55:00 GMT

We have a great lineup for May’s DevJam community event of the Perth .NET User Group:

Tiang Cheng: Developing Software as a Service with the Google API

Graeme Foster: 'Dude, where's my memory?': Finding managed memory leaks using Windbg

Andy Dent: WPF layer-cake: C#, C++/CLI and C

Dave Gardner: NDepend

Rhys Campbell: Introduction to ASP.Net MVC

Adrian McGrath: Measuring .NET Application Performance - Application Instrumentation

Jeremy Thake: ‘What's this ReSharper all about then?’

Hadley Willan: Partial classes with LINQ-SQL

DATE: Thursday, May 7th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

There are prizes for the presenters of the highest, audience voted talks (with the organisers’ decision as final in case of a tie break):

First Prize: Visual Studio 2008 Pro with MSDN Premium, worth approx. $3,500 (courtesy of Microsoft), plus a license for NDepend (courtesy of Patrick Smacchia).

Second Prize: a Resharper License (courtesy of JetBrains), plus a copy of C# in a Nutshell (courtesy of Joe Albahari)

Third Prize: a copy of Code Craft (courtesy of O’Reilly), plus a LINQPad auto-completion license (courtesy of Joe Albahari).

Audience Door Prizes: a Resharper License (courtesy of JetBrains), and a copy of Professional Visual Studio 2008 (courtesy of Dave Gardner).

In addition, the top 3 voted talks will each receive a copy of Professional Visual Studio 2008 (courtesy of Dave Gardner).

There will be pizza and refreshments provided.

DevJam in May

Administrator — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:13:00 GMT

For May’s meeting of the Perth .NET User Group (Thursday, 7^th May), we are running another DevJam community event, where anyone can give a short talk about anything .NET software development related.

DATE: Thursday, May 7th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

You can talk about any development topic but it must be between 5 – 10 minutes long.

· Anything you’ve done.

· Any new technology you’ve investigated.

· Any tips and tricks, or tools that aid developers

· Basically anything .NET software development related!

How do I enter? You must register by sending an email to mitch.wheat at gmail.com, no later than 25^thApril, with the words ‘May DevJam’ in the subject, stating your talk topic in the body. Let me know whether you will be bringing your own laptop (preferable).

There are prizes for the presenters of the highest, audience voted talks (with the organisers’ decision as final in case of a tie break):

First Prize: Visual Studio 2008 Pro with MSDN Premium, worth approx. $3,500 (courtesy of Microsoft)

Second Prize: a Resharper License (courtesy of JetBrains), plus a copy of C# in a Nutshell (courtesy of Joe Albahari).

Third Prize: a copy of Code Craft (courtesy of O’Reilly), plus a LINQPad auto-completion license (courtesy of Joe Albahari).

Audience Door Prizes: a Resharper License (courtesy of JetBrains), and a copy of Professional Visual Studio 2008 (courtesy of Dave Gardner).

In addition, the top 3 voted talks will each receive a copy of Professional Visual Studio 2008 (courtesy of Dave Gardner).

There will be pizza and refreshments provided. If you have any questions, please send Mitch an email.

Flexible UI Composition with WPF

Administrator — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:13:00 GMT

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Thurs April 2nd to hear James Miles present on how Inversion of Control (IoC) and separated presentation principles can be used to build rich WPF applications, while keeping memory consumption low and minimising object lifetimes. James will demonstrate how the careful introduction of an IoC Container can increase the flexibility of your UI architecture, facilitating agile software development.

TOPIC:    WPF Flexible UI Composition with James Miles
DATE:     Thursday, April 2nd, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

James is an independent software contractor and has been developing rich client applications in .NET for more than 5 years. He specializes in C# 3.0, LINQ & WPF, bringing the latest technologies to line of business. James is currently working on the Phoenix Project at Racing & Wagering WA.

There will be door prizes of a ReSharper license (courtesy of JetBrains), a .NET Memory Profiler license (courtesy of SciTech), a copy of “Programming WPF” (courtesy of O’Reilly) and T-Shirts (courtesy of RedGate).

If the last meeting’s record attendance was anything to go by, try to arrive early if you want a seat!

Real World Test Driven Development: Unit Testing Enterprise Solutions

Administrator — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:12:00 GMT

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Thursday March 5th to hear Rhys Campbell present on the essentials of TDD and how it encourages good software design as opposed to just having tests. Rhys will cover the differences between unit, acceptance and integration tests, why conventional unit test examples often do not work in the real world, what to test and what to mock, automating your tests, coding examples of how to use Mocks, Stubs, Fakes, Dummies and Spies... what are they and how do they help me.

TOPIC:    Real World TDD with Rhys Campbell
DATE:     Thursday, March 5th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

There will be door prizes of a ReSharper license (courtesy of JetBrains) and T-Shirts (courtesy of Redgate).

Silverlight: what is it and what is it not!

Administrator — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:37:00 GMT

Join us at the Perth .NET Community of Practice, Thursday February 5th to hear Stephen Price and Ola Karlsson present an introductionto to Silverlight as a concept, a technology and to some of the tools used for Silverlight development. We will look at what Silverlight is and is not, whether it is ready for ‘real’ application development, reasons to use it and how not to use it and make a brief comparison with other rich internet applications. The presentation will include a section showing how to host Silverlight on a budget. Utilising a LAMP web host, you can host your Silverlight application and make it talk to PHP on the back end. This makes for a low cost, web application that looks great. All this can be done with the free Visual Studio Express Web edition.

TOPIC:    SilverLight with Ola Karlsson and Stephen Price
DATE:     Thursday, February 5th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST:     Free. All welcome

Ola Karlsson

Having spent his teens dabbling with web development and BBS's all around Sweden, Ola worked his way around the globe as a scuba diving instructor. Later, after resuming studying web development, the .com crash hit and he moved to Perth, graduating University in early 2005. Since then he's been working in the IT industry and lately as an ASP.NET developer for a medium sized Microsoft Gold Partner in Perth. Ola has been following Silverlight since version 1.1 Alpha, and has a keen interest in most things web. You can visit Ola’s blog at at http://weblogs.asp.net/olakarlsson/.

Stephen Price

Stephen has been interested in computers for most of his life, and has been working in the IT industry for 14 years, the last 5 as a .NET developer. In his spare time he is a cartoonist. This puts him close to the middle of the Designer - Developer curve, being able to develop and do artistic things such as user interfaces. This is one of the reasons he enjoys working with Silverlight so much as it gives him the opportunity to code AND make great looking web applications all in one box.

DevJam Lineup

Administrator — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 12:01:00 GMT

The line up for this week’s DevJam meeting (Thursday, 11^th Dec) has been finalised:

Hadley Willan - Implementing IDisposable

Tiang Cheng - Visual Studio Testing Techniques

Adrian McGrath - Configuration Management Introduction

Michael Minutillo - Test-Driven Philosophy

Jeremy Thake - Azure

James Miles - LINQ->WPF

Dave Gardner - Preventing XSS

Alastair Waddell - WCF Syndication Feeds

DATE: Thursday, December 11th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

The presenter of the best talk will win a Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 with 1 year MSDN Premium subscription (courtesy of Mitch Denny). The second prize is a Resharper license and 3 books; third prize is 2 books. There will also be an audience draw for a Resharper license.

December DevJam

Administrator — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:13:00 GMT

For December’s meeting of the Perth .NET User Group (Thursday, 11^th Dec), we are running a DevJam style event, where anyone can give a short talk about anything .NET software development related.

You can talk about any development topic but it must be between 5 – 10 minutes long.

· Anything you’ve done.

· Any new technology you’ve investigated.

· Any tips and tricks.

· Basically anything .NET software development related!

Please register by sending an email to mitch.wheat at gmail.com, no later than 4^th Dec, with the word DevJam in the subject, stating your talk topic. Let me know whether you will be bringing your own laptop.

DATE: Thursday, December 11th, 5:30pm
VENUE: Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
COST: Free. All welcome

What can you win? Well, we have a Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 with 1 year MSDN Premium subscription (courtesy of Mitch Denny), to award the presenter of the best, audience voted talk (with the organisers’ decision as final in case of a tie break). This is a great prize worth lots of $$$! (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718661.aspx) The second prize is a Resharper license and 3 books; third prize is 2 books. There will also be an audience draw for a Resharper license.

If you have any questions, please send Mitch an email.