Chris Bowen's Blog

Tech & Developer Events in the Northeast – May/June 2013

Chris Bowen — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:18:21 GMT

Here’s the latest roundup of tech- and developer-focused events here in the northeastern US (and several online). Most are free, but the exceptions are noted with [$].

If you know of other free (or nearly free) developer-focused events, please let me know.

-Chris

[Last updated 5/23/2013]

Online

Now Through June 20
Windows 8 Hands-On Labs Online
Live presentation and work on lab exercises, with experts offering assistance (by chatting with you one-on-one or by virtually taking control of your lab)

May 22
LIDNUG & Wintellect
“Performing Asynchronous I/O Bound Operations” – Jeff Richter

June 5
Microsoft Webcast: Windows 8 App Mashup Webcast Series
”Exploring the Mashery APIs”
Microsoft Technical Evangelists walk you through creating a Windows 8 app using Starter Kits based on APIs from Yelp, StackOverflow, Mashery, Facebook, Twitter, Meetup, and more.

June 12
Microsoft Webcast: Windows 8 App Mashup Webcast Series
”Exploring Social Networking APIs”
Microsoft Technical Evangelists walk you through creating a Windows 8 app using Starter Kits based on APIs from Yelp, StackOverflow, Mashery, Facebook, Twitter, Meetup, and more.

June 12
LIDNUG & Developmentor
“Building Rich Input Forms in ASP.NET MVC” – Michael Kennedy

June 19
Microsoft Webcast: Windows 8 App Mashup Webcast Series
”Exploring the Yelp API”
Microsoft Technical Evangelists walk you through creating a Windows 8 app using Starter Kits based on APIs from Yelp, StackOverflow, Mashery, Facebook, Twitter, Meetup, and more.

June 25
Microsoft Webcast: Windows 8 App Mashup Webcast Series
”Exploring the Bing Maps API”
Microsoft Technical Evangelists walk you through creating a Windows 8 app using Starter Kits based on APIs from Yelp, StackOverflow, Mashery, Facebook, Twitter, Meetup, and more.

July 1
Developmentor Webcast
Client-Side Data Binding with Knockout.js - Brock Allen

Connecticut

Each Friday
Startup Café – Hartford, CT
”Friday Mornings at Tisane Café – ‘CountMeIn! Hartford”

May 20
Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT
“Development Lifecycle with SQL Server Data Tools” – John Flannery

May 20
Software Startups – Farmington, CT
Monthly Meeting

June 1
MSDN Event – Game Development for Beginners – Farmington, CT
Join Microsoft’s Chris Bowen to build a game with Construct 2, even if you’ve never programmed before. You’ll get assistance from getting started through publishing your game to the Windows Store! (Repeats on 6/15 & 29, so join whichever works best for you, or more than one if you’d like!)

June 8
MSDN Event – Windows 8 Mashup Series – Farmington, CT
Join Microsoft to learn about tapping into the world of APIs to create your own Windows Store app. This event is part-lecture, and part hands-on, so bring a laptop with Windows 8 and get ready to code! (This workshop repeats, but with a different API, on 6/22, so join whichever works best for you, or more than one if you’d like!)

June 11
ByteArray CT – TBD
”Learn jQuery / jQuery Mobile Fundamentals”

June 12
New Haven Design & Technology Meetup – New Haven, CT
”Monthly Networking Event”

June 13
Startup Café – Farmington, CT
“Xcellr8 Innovation Cell”

June 15
MSDN Event – Game Development for Beginners – Farmington, CT
Join Microsoft’s Chris Bowen to build a game with Construct 2, even if you’ve never programmed before. You’ll get assistance from getting started through publishing your game to the Windows Store! (This workshop repeats on 6/29, so join whichever works best for you, or more than one if you’d like!)

June 17
Software Startups – Farmington, CT
Monthly Meeting

June 19
ByteArray CT – Storrs, CT
”One Developer’s Experience with Windows Phone” – Tim Laubacher

June 22
MSDN Event – Windows 8 Mashup Series – Farmington, CT
Join Microsoft’s Chris Bowen to learn about tapping into the world of APIs to create your own Windows Store app. This event is part-lecture, and part hands-on, so bring a laptop with Windows 8 and get ready to code!

June 29
MSDN Event – Game Development for Beginners – Farmington, CT
Join Microsoft to build a game with Construct 2, even if you’ve never programmed before. You’ll get assistance from getting started through publishing your game to the Windows Store!

Schedule TBA
Agile Connecticut - Farmington, CT
Connecticut .NET Developers Group – Farmington, CT
Connecticut Access Users Group – Farmington, CT
Connecticut SharePoint User Group – Farmington, CT
Connecticut Web Innovators – Hartford, CT
Fairfield County SharePoint User Group – Fairfield, CT
Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT
Hartford Area Build Guild – Hartford, CT
Hartford Tech Meetup – Hartford, CT
HartfordJS – Wethersfield, CT
Proto Greater Hartford ACM Chapter – East Hartford, CT

Maine

May 28
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME

June 19
Django Maine – Portland, ME
”How to Build a REST API with Django” – Hugh Morgenbesser

June 20
Southern Maine Microsoft User Group – Portland, ME
”Microsoft Exchange 2013”

June 25
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME

Schedule TBA
Maine Agile User Group – Portland, ME
Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME
Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME
Portland Maine Startup – Portland, ME
SharePoint Maine User Group – Portland, ME

Massachusetts

Every Tuesday
Microsoft Office Hours (11:30 AM – 1:30 PM) – Cambridge, MA
Get help with your Windows 8 or Windows Phone app/game idea or project. Test devices available as well. No appointment necessary, just show up (at our 1 Cambridge Center office).

May 20
Boston Indies - Boston, MA
All about independent game development

May 21
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
“May Presentation Night” – Kenneth Reitz

May 21
intelligent.ly – Boston, MA
”Legal Land Mines: What to Know When Starting Your Startup” – Mick Bain & Janene Asgeirsson

May 22
Boston Windows Game Developers – Cambridge, MA

May 22
Boston Front End Developers – Boston, MA
”Data Visualization in the Browser” – Rob Larsen

May 22
Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“Show n’ Tell & Code as Well”

May 22
Agile Boston User Group (Waltham) - Waltham, MA

May 23
Agile Boston User Group (Boston) – Boston, MA

May 23
Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA
“Interactive Web Visualization - Project, Networking, and Startup Night”

May 23
Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA
“Using LESS or SASS to Improve Your CSS Workflow”

May 23
Boston New Technology Meetup – Allston, MA
“May 2013 Boston New Technology Meetup #bnt29”

May 23
*New Group!*
Cape Cod Startup – Centerville, MA
“Meet, eat and get to know others in the startup community”

May 23
*New Group!*
Cloud Centric Boston – Andover, MA
“Score the Cloud!”

May 24
Northampton Web Developers – Northampton, MA
”Northampton Web Dive – After Dark”

May 27
Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA
WordPress 10th Anniversary Party

May 28
Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA
“Importing Content Into WP Using WP-CLI [Dev] and TBA [Beg]”

May 28
Cascade BOS – Boston, MA
“What Are Designers Thinking?”

May 28
App Development Meetup – Hingham, MA
”Coffee + Chat + Networking (South Shore)”

May 29
HTML5 Boston – Boston, MA
“Lightning Talks on JS Frameworks”

May 30
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA
”Matthew Grace Has an Azure Framework”

May 30
Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“Continuous Deployment: Better Software, Faster”

May 30
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA
”Matthew Grace Has an Azure Framework”

May 30
OpenHack Boston – Boston, MA

June 1
MSDN Event – Windows 8 Mashup Series – Cambridge, MA
Join Microsoft to learn about tapping into the world of APIs to create your own Windows Store app. This event is part-lecture, and part hands-on, so bring a laptop with Windows 8 and get ready to code! (This workshop repeats, but with a different API, on June 15th, so join whichever works best for your schedule, or more than one if you’d like!)

June 1
Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA
“Boston WP + Toolbox Beginner WordPress Workshop” &
“Boston WP + Toolbox Intermediate WordPress Workshop”

June 4
Northampton Web Developers – Northampton, MA
”Northampton Web Dive”

June 5
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
“June Project Night”

June 6
Microsoft DevBoston – Cambridge, MA
“RESTful Service Design with the Web API” – Rob Daigneau

June 6
New England Microsoft Professionals - Waltham, MA
“New Features of Azure”

June 6
Boston Mobile C# Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA
“Using Xamarin with Visual Studio”

June 10
Mobile Monday Boston – Boston, MA
Tablet Commerce

June 10
*New Group!*
Boston Cloud Computing 2.0 – Burlington, MA
Boston Cloud Computing 2.0 Kickoff

June 10
*New Group!*
Enterprise Web Library Developers’ Group – Framingham, MA

June 10
[$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA
”Wrangling HTML (2-class series)”

June 11
Boston Windows 8 Meetup – Cambridge, MA
”Big Windows 8 App Development Meeting!”

June 11
New England Artificial Intelligence – Cambridge, MA
“AI, Pizza, & Beer”

June 12
Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA

June 13
New England SQL Server User Group – Cambridge, MA
“Database Design with CA and SoftMart”

June 15
MSDN Event – Windows 8 Mashup Series – Cambridge, MA
Join Microsoft to learn about tapping into the world of APIs to create your own Windows Store app. This event is part-lecture, and part hands-on, so bring a laptop with Windows 8 and get ready to code!

June 18
Hacks / Hackers Boston – Cambridge, MA
“From Blogger.com to Kim Dotcom: Legal Considerations of Digital Publishing” – Amy Mugherini & Larry Stanley

June 18
App Development Meetup – Cambridge, MA
”App Development: What’s Hot, What’s Next?”

June 19
Boston Area SharePoint Users Group – Cambridge, MA
“Build, Customize of Buy?” – Richard Harbridge

June 19
Tech in Motion - Cambridge, MA
“Building Cross-Platform Native Mobile Apps in C# Using Xamarin 2.0” – Talbott Crowell

June 19
HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
“HTML5 Game Development Monthly Meetup”

June 20
Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA
“Twitter Bootstrap: Simple HTML, CSS, and JS for User Interfaces”

June 22
MSDN Event: Game Development for Beginners – Cambridge, MA
Join Microsoft to build a game with Construct 2, even if you’ve never programmed before. You’ll get assistance from getting started through publishing your game to the Windows Store!

June 24
*New Group!*
Greater Boston Software Testing Interest Group – TBD
Inaugural Meeting – “The Value of Software Testing” - Keith Klain

June 10
*New Group!*
Enterprise Web Library Developers’ Group – Framingham, MA

June 24
[$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA
”CSS Basics (2-class series)”

June 24
Web Innovators Group – Cambridge, MA

June 25
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
“June Presentation Night”

June 25
Cascade BOS – Boston, MA
“Leveraging the Cascade”

June 26
Boston Windows Game Developers – Cambridge, MA

June 27
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA
”Cloud Storage (Azure Blob Storage and Amazon S3)”

June 27
Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA

New Hampshire

May 22
Web Dev Meetup – Portsmouth, NH
”Web Dev Lightning Talks”

May 30
NH PHP – Manchester, NH
“Reboot – With Guest Speaker Alan Forbes”

June 5
Seacoast NH WordPress Developers – Portsmouth, NH

June 6
*New Group!*
Seacoast Drupal User Group – Portsmouth, NH

June 12
*New Group!*
Seacoast Mobile Group – Portsmouth, NH

June 20
*New Group!*
Granite State Windows Phone Users Group – Salem, NH

June 21
Seacoast SQL Server Users Group – Portsmouth, NH
“Adam Machanic & Windowing Functions!”

Schedule TBA
eBrew – Portsmouth, NH
Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH
Joomla NH User Group – Durham, NH
Nashua CLOUD .NET User Group – Nashua, NH
NH .NET User Group, Concord – Concord, NH
NH .NET User Group, Seacoast – Portsmouth, NH
NH Database Meetup – Manchester, NH
Portsmouth Startup Meetup – Portsmouth, NH
Systems Engineering and Administration Technical User Group – Portsmouth, NH

New York (Upstate)

May 21
Tech Valley .NET Users Group – Albany, NY
“App Product Development Concepts” – Richard Nalezynski

May 21
Ithaca Web People – Ithaca, NY
”Third Tuesday”

May 21
Syracuse Innovators Guild – Syracuse, NY
”All About LabVIEW”

May 30
Syracuse Innovators Guild – Syracuse, NY
”Arduino 201”

May 31
Tech Meetup – Syracuse, NY
”Rounded Presents Doug Crescenzi”

June 4
AppRochester – Rochester, NY
“Exploring Photoshop for Pixel Art”

June 4
Ithaca Web People – Ithaca, NY
”Beer and Code”

June 5
Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY
“Blend for Visual Studio: Creating Windows Store Apps” – Andy Beaulieu

June 5
Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

June 6
Rochester Tech Startups – Rochester, NY
”Startup Drinks”

June 11
Buffalo PHP – Buffalo, NY

June 18
Ithaca Web People – Ithaca, NY
”Third Tuesday”

June 19
Microsoft Developers of Western NY – Buffalo, NY
“Advanced PowerShell Scripting”

June 20
Rochester Ruby Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

Schedule TBA
Build Guild – Troy, NY
Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY
IA/UX Rochester (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY
OpenHack Rochester – Rochester, NY
OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Rochester, NY
Refresh Rochester – Rochester, NY
Rochester SharePoint User Group – Rochester, NY
Syracuse Game Makers – Syracuse, NY
Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group – Rochester, NY
Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY
Western New York Back Office Technology User Group – Blasdell, NY
Western NY SQL Server PASS – Amherst, NY

Rhode Island

May 28
Providence UX Meetup – Providence, RI
”Designers with Drinks”

May 30
Prov.JS – Providence, RI
“Create Cross Platform Apps with Appcelerator Titanium” – Michael Tracy

June 5
Rhode Island SharePoint User Group – Providence, RI

June 12
Southern New England SQL Server Users Group – East Greenwich, RI
“Using File Partitioning and Data Compression for an Effective Data Warehouse Solution” – John Miner

June 13
Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
”Freeform discussion of all things web”

June 19
Providence Geeks – Providence, RI

June 25
Providence UX Meetup – Providence, RI
”Designers with Drinks”

June 27
Prov.JS – Providence, RI
“Testing with Node, Mocha, and jsdom” – Sam Saccone

Schedule TBA
MoDevRI (Mobile Developers & Entrepreneurs) – Providence, RI
Providence Functional Programmers – Providence, RI
Providence PHP Meetup – Providence, RI
WordPress Providence Meetup – Providence, RI

Vermont

May 22
Burlington Web Application Group (BTVWAG) – Burlington, VT
“Tools of the Trade”

May 28
Northern Vermont SharePoint Users Group – Essex Junction, VT
“Sustainable SharePoint 2010 Customizations” – Bill Keys

June 3
[$] Girl Develop It Burlington – Burlington, VT
”Intro to HTML/CSS”

June 10
Vermont .NET User Group – Winooski, VT
“Using the Decorator Design Pattern to Address Cross-Cutting Concerns”

June 20
Girl Develop It Burlington – Burlington, VT
”Code & Coffee”

Schedule TBA
Burlington JavaScript – Burlington, VT
Burlington PHP Users Group – Burlington, VT

Game Development with Construct 2 – Templates for Windows 8

Chris Bowen — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:50:50 GMT

As you consider your Windows 8 game development options, have a look at Construct 2 by Scirra. It helps you create games quickly, providing a visual, no-coding-required experience supporting a number of platforms, including the Windows Store and Windows Phone. (And behind the scenes, games are based on JavaScript and HTML5!)

Getting Started with Construct 2

There’s a free version of Construct 2 available (just read the terms so you know what’s supported) and plenty of resources to help you learn:

Construct 2 Tutorials – Absolutely worth your time. Start here.
Construct 2 Manual – A handy reference to complement the tutorials
Scirra Forums – Ridiculously helpful for beginner through advanced topics

Game Templates

When you create a new project, you’ll see many helpful options, from simple examples to full games with walkthroughs. Nine of these (named “Template: …”) are game starters, including platformer, driving, turret defense, and other types of games. You should try each of them and look through them to see how they work.

Construct 2 supports publishing Windows Store games, but you need to support a few things, so I’ve extended the nine included game templates with features like the Windows 8 object, a “Pause" layer, snapped view support (with game pause), touch support, and some project property updates.

Game Templates for Windows 8

With thanks to Scirra, here are the 9 templates, available on GitHub:

https://github.com/ChrisBowen/Construct-2

Download all templates as a ZIP, or get individual templates below, just click the link and choose “View Raw”, which will let you save the template.

Game	Description	Screenshot
Auto-Runner (click “View Raw” and save)	Side-scroller with player constantly running, having to jump between platforms.
Driving Game (click “View Raw” and save)	Top-down driving around a track with bordering objects.
Infinite Jumping (click “View Raw” and save)	Vertical game where player automatically jumps and must reach new platforms.
Physics Catapult (click “View Raw” and save)	Fire catapult at structures with physics behaviors for impact/gravity.
Physics Puzzle (click “View Raw” and save)	Click/touch objects to remove to clear puzzle.
Platformer (click “View Raw” and save)	Jump between a variety of platforms (static, moving, one-way).
Top-Down Shooter (click “View Raw” and save)	Top-down view, move player and fire at targets.
Turret Defense (click “View Raw” and save)	Add turrets to maze to fire on targets as they pathfind to their goal.
Vertical Shooter (click “View Raw” and save)	Vertically-scrolling game player and targets both moving and firing.

Publishing Your Game

After you select a template, you’ll want to customize the game to your liking with new images, mechanics, sounds… whatever you can imagine! When you’re ready to publish to the Windows Store, just follow these steps.

And with each game you publish, you can earn money with the Keep the Cash offer through June 30, 2013!

Enjoy! And drop me a line if you find these useful or have any recommendations to make them more helpful.

-Chris

Tech & Developer Events in the Northeast – April 2013

Chris Bowen — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:57:36 GMT

Here’s the latest roundup of tech- and developer-focused events here in the northeastern US (and several online). Most are free, but the exceptions are noted with [$].

If you know of other free (or nearly free) developer-focused events, please let me know.

-Chris

[Last updated 4/12/2013]

Online

Now Through April 30
Windows 8 Hands-On Labs Online
Live presentation and work on lab exercises, with experts offering assistance (by chatting with you one-on-one or by virtually taking control of your lab)

April 4
LIDNUG & Wintellect
“IntelliTrace – The Key to Better Day-to-Day Debugging” – John Robbins

April 9
Windows Game Development with Unity
Live stream on Channel 9 (from the in-person event, running April 8-10 in Mountain View, CA)

Connecticut

April 1
Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT
“Test Driven Development: Blueprint Toolbox and Master Craft” – Stephen Ritchie

April 2
Agile Connecticut - Farmington, CT
“Planning for User Story Gold” – Damon Poole

April 3, 10, 17, 24
Startup Café – Hartford, CT
”Informal Hartford Co-Working”

April 4, 11, 18, 25, & May 1
ByteArray CT – Storrs, CT
”HTML Course” (5 parts) – Mark Lassof

April 9
Connecticut .NET Developers Group – Farmington, CT
“Introduction to Microsoft TypeScript” – Allan Da Costa Pinto

April 9
Hartford Area Build Guild – Hartford, CT
“Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”

April 9
*New Group!*
Proto Greater Hartford ACM Chapter – East Hartford, CT
”Can You Be a Little Bit Agile?” – Sue Burk

April 10
Connecticut Access Users Group – Farmington, CT

April 10
New Haven Design & Technology Meetup – New Haven, CT
”Monthly Networking Event”

April 12
Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT
“T-SQL Enhancements in SQL Server 2012” – Lenni Lobel

April 15
CTDEVSTARTUP (CT Software Developer Startups) – Farmington, CT
”The Lean Startup Process for Mobile Apps” – Bob Familiar
”Mobile Healthcare Startup – Applivate” – John Fitzpatrick

April 18
*New Group!*
HartfordJS – Wethersfield, CT
Fist meeting & lightning talks

April 27
ByteArray CT – Storrs, CT
”HTML5 Mobile App Development with PhoneGap” – Mark Lassof

May 8
New Haven Design & Technology Meetup – New Haven, CT
”Monthly Networking Event”

May 18
Hartford Code Camp 6 – Bloomfield, CT

Schedule TBA
Connecticut SharePoint User Group – Farmington, CT
Connecticut Web Innovators – Hartford, CT
Fairfield County SharePoint User Group – Fairfield, CT
Hartford Tech Meetup – Hartford, CT

Maine

April 4
Southern Maine Microsoft User Group – Portland, ME
”SQL Server – SSIS 2012 and Data Quality Services”

April 5
Maine Agile Gathering – Portland, ME

April 9
SharePoint Maine User Group – Portland, ME
Chris McNulty

April 16
Maine Agile User Group – Portland, ME
Mobile Agile development with Alex Bakman

April 23
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME

May 14
SharePoint Maine User Group – Portland, ME
Chris McNulty

May 16
Southern Maine Microsoft User Group – Portland, ME
”SQL Server Performance Monitoring”

May 28
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME

Schedule TBA
Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME
Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME

Massachusetts

April 2
Drinks on Tap – Boston, MA
“Demos, Drinks and Discussions About Mobile Development (21+)”

April 2
intelligent.ly – Boston, MA
”Building a Modern Web Application: Full Stack JavaScript” – Jamie Davidson & Roberto Fuentes

April 2
Northampton Web Developers – Northampton, MA
”Northampton Web Dive”

April 2, 9, 16, 23, 30
Windows 8 Office Hours (11:30 AM – 1:30 PM) – Cambridge, MA
Get help with your Windows 8 app/game idea or project. Test devices available as well. No appointment necessary, just show up (at our 1 Cambridge Center office).

April 2
Boston Software Engineering Meetup – Boston, MA
“Cloud Data Night Sponsored by NUODB”

April 4
Microsoft DevBoston – Cambridge, MA
“SignalR – Real Time Web Apps in ASP.NET” – Phil Denoncourt

April 4
New England Microsoft Professionals - Waltham, MA
“Windows 8 Phone Development” – Lance McCarthy (Nokia)

April 4
Boston JavaScript Meetup – Boston, MA
“The Future of JS Modules and Dependency Management” – John Hann

April 6
SQL Saturday Boston – Cambridge, MA

April 7
Northampton Web Developers – Northampton, MA
”JavaScript: Help!”

April 8
Mobile Monday Boston – Boston, MA
Mobile Healthcare

April 9
Boston Windows 8 Meetup – Cambridge, MA
”Windows 8 Games & Social Apps Event” – Bob Familiar & Michael Cummings (Microsoft)
Note this group is meeting at Microsoft’s One Cambridge Center office (not NERD)

April 9
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
“April Project Night”

April 9
Build Guild Salem – Salem, MA
Build Guild Cape Cod - Sandwich, MA
“Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”

April 9
New England Artificial Intelligence – Cambridge, MA
“AI, Pizza, & Beer”

April 10
Boston Area SharePoint Users Group – Cambridge, MA
“Overview of the Top 10 Ways that SharePoint Will Help Drive End User Adoption” – Chris Bortlik

April 11
Boston Web Performance Group – Boston, MA
“Waterfall Anti-Patterns” – Rick Viscomi

April 11
New England SQL Server User Group – Cambridge, MA
“Deciding Between Relational Databases and Storage Tables in the Cloud” – Michael Stiefel

April 11
[$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA
”Wrangling HTML (2-class series)”

April 11
[$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA
”Get Started with iOS (2-class series)”

April 11
Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA
“High Performance Agile Teams”

April 13
Boston d3.js User Group – Cambridge, MA
“Open Discussion – Hackday”

April 13 & 14
The Boston Hackathon – Cambridge, MA
Learn to write great Windows Phone apps with Lance McCarthy of Nokia & Telerik.

April 15
Boston Indies - Boston, MA
All about independent game development

April 16
Boston Unity Group – Cambridge, MA
“Applifier and EveryPlay”

April 16
Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA
“Interactive Web Visualizations”

April 16
Refresh Boston – Cambridge, MA
“Design is Common Ground: Creating Community Through Design” – Sam Aquillano & Derek Cascio (Design Museum Boston)

April 17
HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
“HTML5 Game Development Monthly Meetup”

April 17
Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“Solution Design: The Hidden Side of UX” – Joe Baz

April 17
Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA

April 17
Node.js in the Wild – Boston, MA
”Debugging Node.js Applications”

April 17
Hacks / Hackers Boston – Cambridge, MA
“Fighting the Bar Chart: Workshop at MIT”

April 17
Hacks / Hackers Boston – Cambridge, MA
“LinkedIn for Professionals”

April 20
Boston Arduino Users Group – Somerville, MA
“Hardware Freedom Day”

April 22
Boston WordPress – Cambridge, MA

April 23
Boston New Technology Meetup – Allston, MA
“April 2013 Boston New Technology Meetup #bnt28”

April 23
[$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA
”Web Applications: PHP (4-class series)”

April 24
Boston Windows Game Developers – Cambridge, MA

April 24
Boston Front End Developers – Boston, MA
”Introduction to Ember with Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale of Tilde”

April 24
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
“April Presentation Night”

April 24
Hacks / Hackers Boston – Cambridge, MA
“Dave Winer: Using HTML5 as a Platform”

April 24
Agile Boston User Group (Waltham) - Waltham, MA

April 25
Agile Boston User Group (Boston) – Boston, MA

April 25
[$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA
”CSS Basics (2-class series)”

April 25
Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA

April 26-28
New England GiveCamp 2013 – Cambridge, MA
”GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals – including designers, developers and database administrators as well as marketers and web strategists – donate their time and unique talents to provide software solutions for local charities and other non-profit organizations”

April 27
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA
”Global Windows Azure Bootcamp”

April 30
Tech in Motion - Cambridge, MA
“Clash of the Clouds: Azure vs. Open Source Cloud Services”

May 1
Boston JavaScript Meetup – Boston, MA
“May Project Night”

May 2
Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA
“Web API” – Adam Santaniello

May 6
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
“May Project Night”

May 7
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA
”PowerShell on Azure: Turbocharging Azure Automation” – Aleksandar Nikolic

May 13
Drinks on Tap – Boston, MA
“Demos, Drinks and Discussions About Mobile Development (21+)”

May 15
HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
“HTML5 Game Development Monthly Meetup”

May 15
Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA

May 18
[$] Security B-Sides – Cambridge, MA
”Launched in mid-2009, Security BSides is a community-driven framework for building events for and by information security community members.”

May 21
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
“May Presentation Night” – Kenneth Reitz

May 22
Boston Windows Game Developers – Cambridge, MA

May 22
Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“Universal Analytics: The Future of Digital Measurement” – Justin Cutroni

May 23
Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA
“Project, Networking, and Startup Night”

May 23
Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA
“Using LESS or SASS to Improve Your CSS Workflow”

May 30
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA
”Matthew Grace Has an Azure Framework”

May 30
Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA

New Hampshire

April 2
NH .NET User Group, Concord – Concord, NH
“JavaScript Games for Windows 8 with CreateJS” – Chris Bowen

April 3
Seacoast NH WordPress Developers – Portsmouth, NH

April 9
NH .NET User Group, Concord – Concord, NH
“Win 8 Apps Boot Camp Series: MonoGame” – Michael Cummings

April 10
Portsmouth Startup Meetup – Portsmouth, NH
“Startup Meetup – Beer and Pizza”

April 11
Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH
”Automating Business Processes with SharePoint: InfoPath, Workflows, MS Access – 2010, 2013” – Marcel Meth

April 17
Nashua CLOUD .NET User Group – Nashua, NH
”Basic Windows Phone 8 Application Development with XAML & C#” – John Garland

April 24
Web Dev Meetup – Portsmouth, NH
”Web Dev Lightning Talks”

May 16
*New Group!*
Granite State Windows Phone Users Group – Salem, NH

Schedule TBA
eBrew – Portsmouth, NH
Joomla NH User Group – Durham, NH
NH .NET User Group, Seacoast – Portsmouth, NH
NH Database Meetup – Manchester, NH
NH PHP – Manchester, NH
Seacoast SQL Server Users Group – Portsmouth, NH
Systems Engineering and Administration Technical User Group – Portsmouth, NH

New York (Upstate)

April 2
AppRochester – Rochester, NY

April 2
Ithaca Web People – Ithaca, NY
”Beer and Code”

April 3
Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

April 4
Rochester Tech Startups – Rochester, NY
”Startup Drinks”

April 5
Refresh Rochester – Rochester, NY
“How to Stay Authentic in a Self-Marketing World” - Andrea Levendusky

April 6 & 7
Hack Upstate – Syracuse, NY

April 8
Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY
Alex Silverstein

April 9
Microsoft Developers of Western NY – Buffalo, NY
“Bridging the Gap Between Business Administration and Development

April 9
Buffalo PHP – Cheektowaga, NY

April 9
Tech Valley .NET Users Group – Albany, NY
“LightSwitch” – Michael Phipps

April 17
Rochester Tech Startups – Rochester, NY
”Lessons Learned at SoftLock.com” – Jon Schull

April 18
Rochester Ruby Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

April 20
BarCamp Rochester – Rochester, NY

April 23
Syracuse Innovators Guild – Syracuse, NY
”An Introduction to Knockout.js Framework”

April 24
OpenHack Rochester – Rochester, NY

May 1
Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

May 2
Rochester Tech Startups – Rochester, NY
”Startup Drinks”

May 7
Ithaca Web People – Ithaca, NY
”Beer and Code”

May 11
SQL Saturday Rochester – Rochester, NY

May 14
Buffalo PHP – Cheektowaga, NY

May 15
Rochester Tech Startups – Rochester, NY
”Quick Pitch Night”

May 16
Rochester Ruby Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

Schedule TBA
Build Guild – Troy, NY
Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY
IA/UX Rochester (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY
OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Rochester, NY
Rochester SharePoint User Group – Rochester, NY
Syracuse Game Makers – Syracuse, NY
Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group – Rochester, NY
Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY
Western New York Back Office Technology User Group – Blasdell, NY
Western NY SQL Server PASS – Amherst, NY

Rhode Island

April 3
Rhode Island SharePoint User Group – Providence, RI
”SharePoint 2013 – IT Pro Overview” – Jason Himmelstein

April 10
Southern New England SQL Server Users Group – East Greenwich, RI
“SSIS Best Practices, Tips and Techniques” – Bryan Cafferky

April 11
Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
”Freeform discussion of all things web”

April 16
WordPress Providence Meetup – Providence, RI
“Mobile Ready Responsive Sliders and Slideshows” – Michael Tracy

April 17
Providence Geeks – Providence, RI

April 23
Providence UX Meetup – Providence, RI
”Designers with Drinks”

May 9
Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI
”Freeform discussion of all things web”

May 15
Providence Geeks – Providence, RI

May 28
Providence UX Meetup – Providence, RI
”Designers with Drinks”

Schedule TBA
MoDevRI (Mobile Developers & Entrepreneurs) – Providence, RI
Prov.JS – Providence, RI
Providence Functional Programmers – Providence, RI
Providence PHP Meetup – Providence, RI

Vermont

April 10
*New Group!*
Burlington JavaScript – Burlington, VT
”Lighting up with Ember.js” – Peter Brown
“Paper.js” – Ian Metcalf

April 13
[$] Girl Develop It Burlington – Burlington, VT
”Intro to HTML/CSS”

April 15
Vermont .NET User Group – Winooski, VT

April 29
Northern Vermont SharePoint Users Group – Essex Junction, VT
“SharePoint 2013: What’s New in Social” – Erica Toelle

May 13
Vermont .NET User Group – Winooski, VT

Schedule TBA
Burlington PHP Users Group – Burlington, VT
Burlington Web Application Group (BTVWAG) – Burlington, VT

Building Windows Games with Unity - Online & In-Person Event

Chris Bowen — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:45:29 GMT

Have you used Unity for game development? As announced by Unity, you’ll be able to put your work to even more use with coming support for Windows 8 / Windows Store games:

Unity Blog: "Unity 4 Early Access for Windows Store apps"

To help Unity developers learn how to create or reuse projects to reach the Windows Store, Unity is teaming with Microsoft to run a free event in Mountain View, CA from April 8-10:

April 8 – Pre-event day for developers new to Unity (In-person only)
April 9 – Main conference
April 10 – Hackathon (In-person only)

Can’t make it in person? Not a problem. The main conference day (April 9th) will be streamed live via Channel 9:

Live Stream: Building Windows Games with Unity (No registration necessary)
April 9, 9 AM – 4:30 PM PDT / 12 PM – 7:30 PM EDT

Introduction to the Windows 8 platform and the Windows Store
End-to-End: Develop, debug and deploy a Unity game for the Windows Store
Deep dive: Tips & tricks for porting games from other platforms to Windows 8
Differentiate: Integrate your game with Windows 8 platform features (such as contracts, notifications, and live tiles)
Sharing code: Learn how to reuse all this new knowledge on the Windows Phone platform
Partner sessions: Hear the lessons learned from those that have already done it
Discussions and Q&A with Microsoft and Unity engineering and product specialists

For fellow Boston-area devs, a quick pointer to the Boston Unity Group, meeting monthly to network and share game development goodness.

-Chris

Boston Code Camp 19 – March 9, 2012

Chris Bowen — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 19:14:18 GMT

Boston Code Camp, formerly New England Code Camp, is a community-driven day for hundreds of developers, returning on March 9th for its 19th event!

Registration (always free) has just opened! The Call for Speakers is also open, but closing soon (more below).

    Boston Code Camp 19
    Saturday, March 9, 2013
     8:00 AM – 6:00 PM
     Microsoft, 1 Memorial Dr., Cambridge, MA
     www.bostoncodecamp.com
     #boscc

Code Camps are free events, held outside of regular work hours, organized by and for the developer community, offering a chance to learn, share, and network. They started here in New England in 2004 and have spread worldwide.

This will be the second time that Camp will be held in Cambridge, MA (after the first 17 events in Waltham, MA) again at the Microsoft New England Research & Development (aka NERD) Center. First time visiting NERD? Here are directions and parking details.

What kind of stuff might you see? Anything for tech pros and developers is fair game, and specific topics vary camp to camp, but take a look at the previous camp’s schedule to get an idea of how things work.

Call for Speakers (Through 2/22)

From first-time presenters to veterans of national conferences, Code Camps are made great because we hear from many perspectives – including yours. Have something to share? The community wants to hear from you!

How? Just create an account on the BCC site, then log in to submit as many session abstracts as you like. Proposals can be for any technology topic and sessions will likely be 70 minutes long.

However, don’t wait. The Call for Speakers will close on February 22nd.

Support Boston Code Camp

Contributors (aka sponsors) are an important part of each Code Camp, providing the fuel for a day-long Code Camp experience.

Consider becoming a contributor, and if you have any questions or want to help, please contact the organizers.

Thanks!

Thanks to the organizing team: Robert Goodearl, Patrick Hynds, Chris Pels, and John Zablocki for the hours of planning and the care & feeding of this event.

Thanks also to the supporting companies and of course to the many speakers who volunteer their time and expertise.

See you all at Boston Code Camp 19!

-Chris

Tech & Developer Events in the Northeast – December 2012 Edition

Chris Bowen — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:21:02 GMT

Here’s the latest roundup of tech- and developer-focused events here in the northeastern US (and several online). Most are free, but the exceptions are noted with [$].

If you know of other free (or nearly free) developer-focused events, please let me know.

-Chris

[Last updated 12/5/2012]

Online

Now Through January 11
Windows 8 Hands-On Labs Online
Live presentation and work on lab exercises, with experts offering assistance (by chatting with you one-on-one or by virtually taking control of your lab)

December 6
LIDNUG & Wintellect
“Pixel Shaders, Custom HLSL Supercharge your XAML” – Walt Ritsher

December 12 & 13
Windows Store App Development for iOS Developers
Live stream at http://channel9.msdn.com (from in-person event in Mountain View, CA)

January 9
LIDNUG
“Scott Guthrie XV Open Q&A”

Connecticut

December 3
Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT
“Smackdown: Metro Style Apps vs. Websites” – Ben Dewey

December 5, 12, 19, 26
Startup Café – Hartford, CT
”Informal Hartford Co-Working”

December 11
Hartford Area Build Guild – Hartford, CT
“Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”

December 11
Connecticut SharePoint User Group – Farmington, CT
“Leveraging the Power of SharePoint 2013 Search” – Reddy Kadasani & Mike Gerety

December 12
Fairfield County SharePoint User Group – Fairfield, CT

December 12
Connecticut Access Users Group – Farmington, CT

January 2, 9, 16, 23, 30
Startup Café – Hartford, CT
”Informal Hartford Co-Working”

Schedule TBA
Agile Connecticut - Farmington, CT
Connecticut .NET Developers Group – Farmington, CT
Connecticut Web Innovators – Hartford, CT
Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT
Hartford Tech Meetup – Hartford, CT

Maine

December 11
SharePoint Maine User Group – Portland, ME
“The Ribbon UI and Custom Actions in SharePoint 2010”

Schedule TBA
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
Maine Agile User Group – Portland, ME
Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME
Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME

Massachusetts

December 3
Web Innovators Group & Mobile Monday Boston – Cambridge, MA
Special Joint Event - http://webinnomobile.eventbrite.com

December 4
Boston Business Intelligence – Waltham, MA
”Test Data Generation for SQL Server Using Visual Studio” – Slava Kokaev

December 4
[$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA
”Practical & Realistic SEO”

December 4
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
“December Project Night”

December 5 (1-5 PM)
Windows 8 Office Hours – Cambridge, MA
Get help with your Windows 8 app/game idea or project. Test devices available as well. No appointment necessary, just show up (at our 1 Cambridge Center office).

December 5
HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
“Project Night!”

December 6
Microsoft DevBoston – Cambridge, MA
“Hacker vs. Hacker” – Patrick Hynds & Duane Laflotte

December 6
New England Microsoft Professionals (formerly NE VB Professionals)- Waltham, MA
“MVC vs. WebForms – Why Would You Use MVC?” – Carl Bergenhem

December 6
New England Mobile C# Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA
“Nokia DVLUP for Windows Phone Developers” – Lance McCarthy

December 6
Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA
“KnockoutJS: Simplify JavaScript UIs with the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Pattern”

December 6
[$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA
”Project Night”

December 11
Boston Windows 8 Meetup – Cambridge, MA
”Top Windows 8 App Experts & Tips: Free Pizza & Prizes! Welcome W8, iOS & Android”. Note this group is meeting in our new One Cambridge Center office (not NERD)

December 11
Build Guild Salem – Salem, MA
“Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”

December 11
Build Guild Cape Cod - Sandwich, MA
“Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”

December 11
Boston Web Performance Group – Boston, MA
“Environmental Design on the Web” – Tim Wright

December 12 (1-5 PM)
Windows 8 Office Hours – Cambridge, MA
Get help with your Windows 8 app/game idea or project. Test devices available as well. No appointment necessary, just show up (at our 1 Cambridge Center office).

December 12
Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“How to Become a Web Developer” & “Celebrate 10 Years of Boston PHP” – Larry Ullman

December 12
Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA

December 13
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA
”WazOps – DevOps on Windows Azure” – Todd Mancini

December 13
New England SQL Server User Group – Cambridge, MA
“Lightning Talks”

December 14
HPC & GPU Supercomputing Group of Boston – Cambridge, MA
”2012 Wrap-up”

December 17
New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA
“M-Brace – F# in the Cloud” – George Stavroulakis

December 17
Boston Indies - Boston, MA

December 18
Boston Windows 8 Meetup – Cambridge, MA
”Windows Phone 8 Apps – Everything You Need to Know. Meet the Experts”. Note this group is meeting in our new One Cambridge Center office (not NERD)

December 18
Boston Unity Group – Cambridge, MA

December 18
Boston New Technology Meetup – Boston, MA
Tech products and startup community

December 18
Boston BizSpark Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“Funded Founders Panel and Networking”

December 19
HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA
”Windows 8 HTML5 Game Development” – Chris Bowen

December 19
Boston XNA Developers Group – Cambridge, MA

December 19
Node.js in the Wild – Boston, MA
”Node.js in an Embedded Environment” – David Alexander & Matt Walters

January 3
New England Microsoft Professionals (formerly NE VB Professionals)- Waltham, MA
“Building Windows Store Applications” – Kevin Ford

January 7
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
“December Project Night”

January 8
New England Artificial Intelligence – Cambridge, MA
“AI, Pizza, & Beer”

January 10
New England SQL Server User Group – Cambridge, MA
“Big Data and Cloud at Microsoft” – Mark Souza

January 10
* New Group *
Boston Area Pluralsight Study Group – Cambridge, MA
”SharePoint Developer Ramp-Up Part 1”

January 16
HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA

January 16
Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“Usability Speed Dating with Steve Krug!”

January 17
New England Mobile C# Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA
“Data Visualization with MonoTouch Using NucliOS” – Brent Schooley

January 17
Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA
“Mobile App Creation: Dojo Mobile + Maqetta, Sencha Touch + Sencha Complete”

January 21
Boston Indies - Boston, MA

January 23
Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA

January 23
Boston Front End Developers – Boston, MA
”Forget Frameworks: Create Your Own Flexbile Grid System”

January 31
Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA

Schedule TBA

New Hampshire

December 5
Seacoast WordPress Developers – Portsmouth, NH

December 12
Joomla NH User Group – Durham, NH

December 13
Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH

December 19
NH .NET User Group, Nashua – Nashua, NH

January 10
Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH
Bob German

January 16
NH .NET User Group, Nashua – Nashua, NH

Schedule TBA
eBrew – Portsmouth, NH
Nashua Scrum Club – Nashua, NH
NH .NET User Group, Concord – Concord, NH
NH .NET User Group, Seacoast – Portsmouth, NH
NH Database Meetup – Manchester, NH
NH PHP – Manchester, NH
Portsmouth Startup Meetup – Portsmouth, NH
Seacoast SQL Server Users Group – Portsmouth, NH
Systems Engineering and Administration Technical User Group – Portsmouth, NH
Web Dev Meetup – Portsmouth, NH

New York (Upstate)

December 4
AppRochester – Rochester, NY
Paul Solt

December 4
Ithaca Web People – Ithaca, NY
”Beer and Code”

December 5
Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

December 6
Rochester Tech Startups – Rochester, NY
”Startup Drinks”

December 7
Syracuse Innovators Guild – Syracuse, NY
”Pentesting Network Vulnerabilities and Web Applications”

December 11
Build Guild – Troy, NY
”A monthly gathering of web folks that enjoy chatting over drinks”

December 12
IA/UX Rochester (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

December 13
Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group – Rochester, NY
“December Script Club”

December 18
Ithaca Web People – Ithaca, NY
”Third Tuesday”

December 19
Rochester Tech Startups – Rochester, NY
”Year in Review”

December 20
Rochester Ruby Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

January 2
Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

January 8
Tech Valley .NET Users Group – Albany, NY
Kosta Bidoshi

January 8
Buffalo PHP – Cheektowaga, NY

January 9
IA/UX Rochester (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

January 14
Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY

December 18
Ithaca Web People – Ithaca, NY
”Third Tuesday”

January 17
Rochester Ruby Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

Schedule TBA
Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY
Microsoft Developers of Western NY – Buffalo, NY
OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Rochester, NY
Refresh Rochester – Rochester, NY
Rochester SharePoint User Group – Rochester, NY
Syracuse Game Makers – Syracuse, NY
Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY
Western New York Back Office Technology User Group – Blasdell, NY
Western NY SQL Server PASS – Amherst, NY

Rhode Island

December 4
Prov.JS – Providence, RI
”JavaScript and CSS Performance Tips and Tricks”

December 4
Providence PHP Meetup – Providence, RI

December 4
WordPress Providence Meetup – Providence, RI
Tom Conte on SEO

December 5
Rhode Island SharePoint User Group – Providence, RI
”Meeting and SharePint”

December 12
Southern New England SQL Server Users Group – East Greenwich, RI
“Lightning Talks” – various speakers

December 12
Providence Geeks – Providence, RI

December 13
Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI

January 2
Rhode Island SharePoint User Group – Providence, RI
”Meeting and SharePint”

January 10
Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI

January 22
Providence UX Meetup – Providence, RI
”Designers with Drinks”

January 28
* New Group *
Providence Functional Programmers – Providence, RI

February 2
DowncityJS – Providence
A 24-hour JavaScript Hackathon

Schedule TBA
MoDevRI (Mobile Developers & Entrepreneurs) – Providence, RI

Vermont

December 11
Vermont .NET User Group – Winooski, VT
Special Guest & Special Night: Beth Massi on LightSwitch

January 14
Vermont .NET User Group – Winooski, VT
“TypeScript” – Steve Levy

Schedule TBA
Burlington PHP Users Group – Burlington, VT
Burlington Web Application Group (BTVWAG) – Burlington, VT
Northern Vermont SharePoint Users Group – Essex Junction, VT
Vermont SQL Server User Group - Burlington, VT

Microsoft 2012 Launch Event Series – Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012, and More

Chris Bowen — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:39:05 GMT

A major series of free, full-day product launch events for Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012, Windows Server, and more begins on October 30th:

Attend a FREE one-day event and be part of the biggest product launch in our history. You’ll discover how the latest Microsoft technologies are transforming the way people work—from developers and managers to executives in the C-suite. The New Era of Work is here.

Each city will feature one or more of the following tracks of content: Developer, Developer Manager, IT Professional, IT Executive, and Business Executive.

Here’s the full list of “The New Era of Work” cities and dates:

10/30 Hollywood, CA

10/30 Waltham, MA

11/5 Houston, TX

11/5 New York, NY

11/7 Bloomington, MN

11/8 Bellevue, WA

11/13 Dallas, TX

11/13 Syracuse, NY

11/14 San Francisco, CA

11/14 Brookfield, WI

11/14 Irvine, CA

11/14 Orlando, FL

11/15 Miami Beach, FL

11/15 Reston, VA

11/15 Baton Rouge, LA

11/27 Columbus, OH

11/27 St. Louis, MO

11/28 Atlanta, GA

11/28 Chicago, IL

11/28 Denver, CO

11/28 Detroit, MI

11/28 Iselin, NJ

11/28 Kansas City, MO

11/29 Salt Lake City, UT

11/29 Charlotte, NC

12/4 Portland, OR

12/5 Oklahoma City, OK

12/6 Indianapolis, IN

12/6 Philadelphia, PA

12/7 Richmond, VA

12/12 Brentwood, TN

12/13 Pittsburgh, PA

Tech & Developer Events in the Northeast – October 2012 Edition

Chris Bowen — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 16:38:43 GMT

Here’s the latest roundup of tech- and developer-focused events here in the northeastern US (and several online). Most are free, but the exceptions are noted with [$].

If you know of other free (or nearly free) developer-focused events, please let me know.

-Chris

[Last updated 10/9/2012]

Online

Now Through October 25
Windows 8 Hands-On Labs Online
”Hands-on Labs Online (HOLOs) are online events where you listen to a live presentation and work on lab exercises. As you work on your labs, Microsoft experts can assist and provide guidance by chatting with you one-on-one or by virtually taking control of your lab.”

October 11
LIDNUG & Wintellect
“.NET Performance Tuning” – John Robbins

November 8
LIDNUG & Wintellect
“Practical Patterns with JS, MVC4, HTML5” – Mitch Harpur

November 15
LIDNUG & Wintellect
“Building Single Page Apps” – John Papa

Connecticut

October 1
Fairfield/Westchester .NET User Group – Stamford, CT
“Entity Framework for Real Web Applications” – Adam Tuliper

October 9
Connecticut .NET Developers Group – Farmington, CT
“Cloud Architecture Patterns for Building Cloud-Native Applications” – Bill Wilder

October 9
Hartford Area Build Guild – Hartford, CT
“Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”

Schedule TBA

Agile Connecticut - Farmington, CT
Connecticut Access Users Group – Farmington, CT
Connecticut DotNetNuke User Group - Bethany, CT
Connecticut SharePoint User Group – Farmington, CT
Connecticut Web Innovators – Hartford, CT
Fairfield County SharePoint User Group – Fairfield, CT
Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server UG - Stamford, CT
Hartford Tech Meetup – Hartford, CT

Maine

October 11
Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME
Visual Studio 2012 Community Launch

October 23
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME

November 15
Maine Bytes User Group - Portland, ME
Chris Bowen on Windows 8

November 27
Bangor Area .Net Developers (BAND) - Bangor, ME
Windows 8 with Chris Bowen

Schedule TBA
Maine Agile User Group – Portland, ME
Maine Developer Network - Augusta, ME
SharePoint Maine User Group – Portland, ME

Massachusetts

October 1
Mobile Monday Boston – Boston, MA
Mobile Demo Night

October 1
Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA
”Predictive Analytics World: Lightning Talks”

October 2
Boston Business Intelligence – Waltham, MA
”Building BI Semantic Model with SQL Server Data Tools in VS 2012” – Slava Kokaev

October 2
Hacks / Hackers Boston – Dorchester, MA
“Top 5 SEO Tips for Journalists & Media Websites / Using Social Media Platforms”

October 3
Windows App Development Office Hours – Microsoft, Cambridge, MA
(No appointment necessary.) Drop by with your questions or to test your apps.

October 3
Boston Predictive Analytics – Cambridge, MA
”RapidMiner Predictive Analytics Software: Social Media & Segmentation Analysis”

October 4
New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA
“PowerPivot: PivotTable on Steroids” – Sunil Kadimdiwan

October 5 & 6
AT&T Mobile App Hackathon – Cambridge, MA

October 8
New England F# User Group – Cambridge, MA

October 8
SQL in the City Boston 2012 – Cambridge, MA

October 9
*New Group*
Boston Windows 8 Meetup – Cambridge, MA
Several speakers on Windows 8: Chris Bowen, Tushneem Dharmagadda, David Davis. The new group is meeting in our new One Cambridge Center office.

October 9
Build Guild Salem – Salem, MA
“Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”

October 9
Build Guild Cape Cod - Sandwich, MA
“Web People + Adult Beverages + High Fives”

October 9
New England Artificial Intelligence – Cambridge, MA
“AI, Pizza, & Beer”

October 10
Windows App Development Office Hours – Microsoft, Cambridge, MA
(No appointment necessary.) Drop by with your questions or to test your apps.

October 10
Boston Area SharePoint Users Group – Cambridge, MA
”Demystifying SharePoint 2012 – From Dependencies to Licensing” – Gina Montgomery

October 11
Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“Show & Tell & Code as Well”

October 13
OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Cambridge, MA
OWASP Boston Application Security Conference 2012

October 15
Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA

October 16
Microsoft DevBoston – Cambridge, MA
“Windows Identify Foundation in .NET 4.5” – Brock Allen

October 16
Boston New Technology Meetup – Boston, MA
Tech products and startup community

October 16
Boston BizSpark Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“Funded Founders Panel and Networking”

October 17-19
[$] MonkeySpace 2012 – Cambridge, MA
Formerly MonoSpace, the official cross platform and open-source .NET conference

October 17
The .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip! – Cambridge, MA
Join Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell and guests as they tour North America. Colocated with the MonkeySpace 2012 conference.

October 17
HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA

October 17
Boston Orchard CMS User Group – Cambridge, MA

October 18
*New Group*
MetroWest Web Developers – Maynard, MA
”Add Sanity to Packaging and Organization with Require.js and Aura.js”

October 18
Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA
“Using HTML5 Canvas and jQuery to Create Images, Graphs and a Coloring Book”

October 18
New England SQL Server User Group – Cambridge, MA
“Data Quality Services (DQS) – End to End” – Matt Masson

October 18
Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA

October 20
Boston Code Camp 18 – Cambridge, MA
A free, full day event, by and for the developer community. After 17 events in Waltham, MA, this is the first in its new home at NERD in Cambridge, MA

October 22
Tech in Motion - Cambridge, MA
“Windows 8: Opportunity Knocks” – Jim O’Neil

October 24
Boston Front End Developers – Cambridge, MA
”Environmental Design on the Web” – Tim Wright

October 24
Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA

October 24
Agile Boston User Group (Waltham) - Waltham, MA

October 25
Windows 8 Apps & SQL Server 2012 Book Launch – Microsoft Store, Boston, MA
Tallan authors launch the books: "Getting Started with Windows 8 Apps” and "Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2012”

October 25
Agile Boston User Group (Boston) – Boston, MA

October 25
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA
”How EVault is Using Windows Azure” – David Langdon

October 29
Boston WordPress – Boston, MA

October 29
HTML5 Boston – Boston, MA
”Anatomy of a Virtual Self-Study Group” & “Essentials of HTML5 for Desktop & Mobile”

October 29
Refresh Boston – Cambridge, MA
”Designing Design Teams” – Martin Ringlein, Twitter

October 30
Microsoft 2012 Launch Event – Waltham, MA
Part of “The New Era of Work” launch event series, a full day with 5 tracks of content on Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012, Office, Windows Server and more.

October 30
Beantown ALT.NET Group – Cambridge, MA
”Windows 8, XNA and MonoGame – How to Get Your Game into the Windows 8 Store” – Bob Familiar

October 30
Boston Software Engineering Meetup – Boston, MA
“The Future of Communications with Nuance and Microsoft”

November 1
New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA

November 1
[$] Web Start Women Boston – Cambridge, MA
”Project Night”

November 4
Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“jQuery jAM, Season 2”

November 7
New England Mobile .NET Developers’ Group – Cambridge, MA
”Introduction to MonoTouch and Collection Views in iOS6”

November 8
Microsoft DevBoston – Cambridge, MA

November 8
Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA
“Twitter Bootstrap: Simple HTML, CSS, and JS for User Interfaces”

November 8 & 9
[$] Web Unleashed 2012 – Waltham, MA
Front end developer conference

November 9
[$] Startup Weekend: The Battle for the Charles – Cambridge, MA

November 12
Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA

November 12
Cloudy Mondays – Newton Center, MA
“Open Source in the Cloud”

November 13
Boston Windows 8 Meetup – Cambridge, MA
”Innovations in Windows 8 App Development”

November 13
DotNetNuke Boston Meetup – Cambridge (TBD), MA
Mandeep Singh

November 14
Boston Software Engineering Meetup – Boston, MA
“The Future is Real Time with IBT Technologies”

November 15
New England SQL Server User Group – Cambridge, MA
“Big Data and Cloud at Microsoft” – Mark Souza

November 15
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA

November 16
[$] MassTLC Innovation 2012 Unconference – Boston, MA

November 17
Boston Software Engineering Meetup – Boston, MA
“Realtime Web Workshop”

November 17 & 18
[$] AngelHack Hackathon Fall 2012 Boston – Boston, MA

November 19
Boston Orchard CMS User Group – Cambridge, MA
”Inside Module Development”

November 21
HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA

November 26
Boston WordPress – Boston, MA

November 27
*New Group*
Boston CSS Meetup – Jamaica Plain, MA

November 28
Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA

November 29
Lean Startup Circle Meetup – Cambridge, MA

December 6
Microsoft DevBoston – Cambridge, MA
“Hacker vs. Hacker” – Patricks Hynds & Duane Laflotte

December 6
New England Visual Basic Professionals - Waltham, MA

December 6
Worcester Web Technology – Worcester, MA
“KnockoutJS: Simplify JavaScript UIs with the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Pattern”

December 11
Boston Windows 8 Meetup – Cambridge, MA
”Everything You Need to Know About Windows 8 Style App Development”

December 12
Boston PHP Meetup – Cambridge, MA
“How to Become a Web Developer” – Larry Ullman

December 12
Boston Accessibility Roundtable – Cambridge, MA

December 13
Boston Azure Cloud User Group – Cambridge, MA
”AAD/Authentication and/or AAL” – Brock Allen

December 19
HTML5 Game Development Meetup – Boston, MA

December 26
Boston XNA Developers Group - Waltham, MA

Schedule TBA

Boston .NET Architecture Study Group - Waltham, MA
Boston Arduino Users Group – Cambridge, MA
Boston Artists + Coders – Boston, MA
Boston Cloud Services – Waltham, MA
Boston JavaScript Meetup – Boston, MA
Boston Node.js Meetup – Boston, MA
Boston Python User Group – Cambridge, MA
Boston Software Craftsmanship – Cambridge, MA
Boston Unity Group – Cambridge, MA
Boston Web Design Meetup – Cambridge, MA
Boston Web Performance Group – Boston, MA
Boston WebsiteSpark Group – Cambridge, MA
Cape Cod .NET – Plymouth, MA
Drinks on Tap – Cambridge, MA
Emerging Business Tech – Cambridge, MA
Game Dev Night – Boston, MA
HPC & GPU Supercomputing Group of Boston – Cambridge, MA
jQuery Boston Meetup – Boston, MA
Kinect Boston Users Group – Cambridge, MA
New England Game Dev Meetup – Cambridge, MA
New England Windows Phone User and Developer Group - Waltham, MA
North Shore .NET User Group - Ipswich, MA
North Shore Web Geeks – Newburyport, MA
UX Book Club, Boston – Cambridge, MA
Western Mass Developers’ Group – Hadley, MA
Western Mass Microsoft Technology Users Group - Agawam, MA

New Hampshire

October 3
Seacoast Wordpress Developers – Portsmouth, NH

October 4
PixelMEDIA Hosts Josh Clark! – Portsmouth, NH

October 10
Joomla NH User Group – Durham, NH
“An Exclusive Look at Joomla 3.0”

October 11
Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH

October 17
NH .NET User Group, Nashua – Nashua, NH

October 20
SQL Saturday Nashua – Nashua, NH

October 24
Web Dev Meetup – Portsmouth, NH
“Hoopla Party – Halloween Style”

November 8
Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH
Bob German

December 13
Granite State SharePoint User Group – Nashua, NH

Schedule TBA
eBrew – Portsmouth, NH
Nashua Scrum Club – Nashua, NH
NH .NET User Group, Concord – Concord, NH
NH .NET User Group, Seacoast – Portsmouth, NH
NH Database Meetup – Manchester, NH
Portsmouth Startup Meetup – Portsmouth, NH
Seacoast SQL Server Users Group – Portsmouth, NH
Systems Engineering and Administration Technical User Group – Portsmouth, NH

New York (Upstate)

October 2
AppRochester – Rochester, NY
“iOS6, iPhone 5, and In App Purchases”

October 3
Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

October 3
Microsoft Developers of Western NY – Buffalo, NY
“Product Development Concepts for Windows Store Apps”

October 9
Tech Valley .NET Users Group – Albany, NY
“Building Your First Windows 8 Application” – Jim O’Neil

October 10
IA/UX Rochester (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

October 15
The .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip! – Rochester (TBD), NY
Join Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell and guests as they tour North America.

October 18
Rochester Ruby Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

November 7
Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

November 13
Microsoft 2012 Launch Event – Syracuse, NY
Part of “The New Era of Work” launch event series, a full day with 5 tracks of content on Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012, Office, Windows Server and more.

November 14
IA/UX Rochester (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

December 5
Rochester JavaScript Meetup (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

December 12
IA/UX Rochester (Coworking Rochester) – Rochester, NY

Schedule TBA
Build Guild – Troy, NY
Capital Area SQL Server Users Group – Albany, NY
Central New York .NET Developer Group - East Syracuse, NY
OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) – Rochester, NY
Refresh Rochester – Rochester, NY
Rochester SharePoint User Group – Rochester, NY
Upstate NY PowerShell Users Group – Rochester, NY
VDUNY - Visual Developers of Upstate NY - Rochester, NY
Western New York Back Office Technology User Group – Blasdell, NY
Western NY SQL Server PASS – Amherst, NY

Rhode Island

October 3
Rhode Island SharePoint User Group – Providence, RI
“How to Improve Your SharePoint Governance” – Chris Bortlik

October 5-7
[$] Providence Startup Weekend – Providence, RI
Startup Weekends are about idea exchange, team forming, and startups.

October 11
Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI

October 16
WordPress Providence Meetup – Providence (TBD), RI

October 18
Prov.JS – Providence, RI
”YUI Live Coding Presentation” – Simon Højberg

October 23
Providence UX Meetup – Providence, RI
”Designers and Code”

October 26
*New Group*
Providence Functional Programmers – Providence, RI

October 27
WordCamp Providence 2012 – Providence, RI

November 7
Rhode Island SharePoint User Group – Providence, RI

November 8
Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI

December 5
Rhode Island SharePoint User Group – Providence, RI

December 13
Providence Web Development Lunch Hour – Providence, RI

November 27
Providence UX Meetup – Providence, RI
”Designers and Code”

Schedule TBA
MoDevRI (Mobile Developers & Entrepreneurs) – Providence, RI
Providence Geeks – Providence, RI
Southern New England SQL Server Users Group – East Greenwich, RI

Vermont

October 15
Vermont .NET User Group – Winooski, VT
“SQL Azure vs. Azure Table Storage: A Real World Comparison”

November 12
Vermont .NET User Group – Winooski, VT
“Load Testing” – Mike Jones

December 11
Vermont .NET User Group – Winooski, VT
“LightSwitch” – Beth Massi

Schedule TBA
Vermont SQL Server User Group - Burlington, VT
Burlington PHP Users Group – Burlington, VT
Northern Vermont SharePoint Users Group – Essex Junction, VT

Boston Code Camp 18 Approaches! - October 20, 2012

Chris Bowen — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:13:32 GMT

Boston Code Camp, formerly New England Code Camp, a community-driven day for hundreds of developers, returns for its 18th event, this time in its new home in Cambridge, MA!

Attendee registration is open (and free!) and the Call for Speakers is open as well (more below).

   Boston Code Camp 18
    Saturday, October 20, 2012
     8:00 AM – 6:30 PM
     Microsoft, 1 Memorial Dr., Cambridge, MA
     www.bostoncodecamp.com
     #boscc

After 17 Code Camps in Waltham, MA, this will be the first one in Cambridge, MA at the Microsoft New England Research & Development (aka NERD) Center. First time visiting NERD? Here are directions and parking details.

What kind of stuff might you see? Anything for tech pros and developers is fair game, and specific topics vary camp to camp, but take a look at the previous camp’s schedule to get an idea of how things work.

Call for Speakers

How? Just create an account on the BCC site, then log in to submit as many session abstracts as you like. Proposals can be for any technology topic and sessions will likely be 70 minutes long. See Jim O’Neil’s helpful Call for Speakers guide for more.

The Call for Speakers will close on October 12th.

Support Boston Code Camp

Contributors (aka sponsors) are an important part of each Code Camp, providing the fuel for a day-long Code Camp experience.

Consider becoming a contributor, and if you have any questions or want to help, please contact the organizers.

Thanks!

Thanks to the organizing team: Robert Goodearl, Patrick Hynds, Chris Pels, and (destined to be last in 95% of alphabetical lists) John Zablocki for the hours of planning and the care & feeding of this event. Thanks also to the supporting companies and of course to the many speakers who volunteer their time and expertise.

See you all at Boston Code Camp 18!

-Chris

Office Hours for Boston Area Windows 8 App Developers

Chris Bowen — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:40:15 GMT

Are you working on a Windows 8 app or game, or want to get started but have some questions?

Drop by to chat/code/test with us at our new One Cambridge Center offices where we’ll have open time to answer your questions and discuss your apps.

We’ll be there each Wednesday starting tomorrow, 9/26, and for at least the next couple of weeks:

September 26 – 1-5 PM
October 3 – 1-5 PM
October 10 – 1-5 PM
October 17 – 1-5 PM
October 24 – 1-5 PM
December 5 – 1-5 PM *new*
December 12 – 1-5 PM *new*

Drop by 1 Cambridge Center whenever you’d like – no appointment needed.

Microsoft at One Cambridge Center

You may already be familiar with our New England Research & Development (aka “NERD”) center at 1 Memorial Drive in Cambridge, MA.

We very recently opened more offices nearby (I’d call it a “stone’s throw” away, but you’d need a really good arm) at One Cambridge Center. The office has space for sales, marketing, and services, meeting rooms, and a Microsoft Technology Center.

Here’s the view of the building if you’re facing west (though it now has a shiny new “Microsoft” sign at the top):

If you’re looking at the building from this view, there’s a large, glassed-in entrance near one of the the MBTA Kendall (red line) stairways. Just head in and take the elevator to the 2nd floor (the only option) and check in at the reception. They’ll guide you from there.

There are some directions and parking details here.

See these announcements for some background on the new offices:

See you there!
-Chris