| Last night was Vermont.NET’s 6th Anniversary. Our first meeting was Feb 2002 with Russ Fustino starting us off to an unknown future. So now it’s been 6 years and we have had a meeting almost every single month in those 6 years. More importantly, we have built a great community of developers who have become old friends. We have a few thank you’s to distribute for last night’s meeting. First of course, thanks to Sarah Cameron, a VSTS expert who through her company, InCycleSoftware.com, works with clients to handle enormous deployments of and training on VSTS at companies with development teams in the thousands. Now that the Unit Testing feature from VSTS is in the Pro version of VS2008, she came to show us how it works. She is extremely knowledgeable and very impressive in handling the many challenging questions asked throughout the presentation. Sarah drove down from Montreal (a 3 hour drive) so after the meeting, she stayed overnight at our house and I got to spend a bunch of time with her. She wasn’t even daunted by the -7 fahrenheit temperature in the morning. It’s a heat wave compared to Montreal in January! Thanks, as always to VTC for letting us have our meetings there, even if they understandably have to charge us a nominal fee. Thanks to CONIX.com for sponsoring this meeting in a big way. They provided the pizza and soda and even the birthday cake. They also paid the room fee. Tom Cooley, a long time VTdotNET member and employee of CONIX went out of his way to not only order, pick up and deliver all of the goodies. but when we realized that we hadn’t co-ordinated on plates and cups, he went back to the pizza joint to pick them up. The sad part of the story is that unbeknownst to me, Tom was not feeling well, so after he dropped off everything, he went home. Isn’t that really sad? 🙁 Thanks also to Goodrich Corp (Vergennes Vermont location) whose long time attendee, Bret Griswold, arrived with a gift for the user group. He presented us with a check to cover the cost of our meeting space for a whole year! This is huge for us and means that I won’t have to go begging for a while to cover that. (We still manage not to have to charge dues.) So thanks to Goodrich. It’s a drop in the bucket for such a big company, but it means a lot to Vermont.NET. What’s a user group meeting without swag? Thanks to Infragistics and JetBrains for providing licenses to raffle off, to Codezone for some great swag and great MSPress books and to telerik for sending a small pile of my FAVORITE t-shirt in the world so that I could give one to Sarah and a few of the other gals who attended the meeting! Last time I had some of those shirts, they were snagged by many guys to give to their wives/girlfriends/daughters. And thanks to everyone who continues to be part of the Vermont.NET community. Every speaker who has come to our group from elsewhere has commented on what a friendly and fun group you all are. |
Category Archives: VTdotNetFeed
Visual Studio 2008 Pro Unit Testing at VTdotNET on Monday
Now that the Team System’s Unit Testing tools are built in to VS2008 Pro, many of us will finally get a chance to take a look at it.
Luckily I know some VSTS experts who aren’t too far away and we have Sarah Cameron coming down from Montreal to teach us all about how to use the built-in Unit Testing in VS2008 on Monday. We have a bunch of NUnit users in the group and they are also curious about how the Microsoft version stacks up. Interestingly this session is drawing out a lot of people who have never been to a VTdotNET meeting before! Go Sarah!
Read more at www.vtdotnet.org!
Speaker: Sarah Cameron (InCycle Software ) — Location: VT Tech, Williston Campus Topic: Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2008 VS2008 Pro now includes the Unit Testing features that were previously only available in the VSTS sku. Sarah Cameron, a Visual Studio Team System expert from InCycle Software (www.incyclesoftware.com), will demonstrate how to use and really benefit from Unit Testing in VS2008 using this built in tool.. Speaker Bio: Sarah Cameron is a consultant specializing in Visual Studio Team System, with experience on projects from inception to delivery following well-defined software processes. Sarah has been working as a consultant for Incycle Software (www.incyclesoftware.com) a Montreal based firm specializing in Team System consulting services. She has been assisting ISVs and larger corporations successfully plan and deploy Visual Studio Team System. She may be contacted at [email protected] |
Official VS2008 & SQL Server 2008 Launch events: Boston and Albany, local events through the user groups
Burlington geeks from the itty bitty little market that can get 120 peope to who up at an MSDN event :-), will have to plan a road trip if they want to attend an official Launch event for VS2008, SQL SErver 2008 and Windows 2008 Server. There will be one in Boston on March 18 and one in Albany on May 23.
However, we will have two INETA/Microsoft/PASS sponsored launch events through the VTdotNET and VTSQL. VTSQL will have a “SQL Sever 2008 launch party” meeting on April 7th and VTdotNET’s VS2008 Launch will be on April 14th. While we can’t promise a copy of all three products to every attendee, hopefully we’ll have licenses to give away. Fortunately, in December we were extremely lucky to have a VS2008 Install Fest where over 40 licenses to VS2008 Pro were given away to Vermont.NET User Group members, thanks to Chris Bowen.
New England Code Camp NINE! April 5-6
The date’s been picked for the next New England Code Camp!
More details to come – watch Chris Bowen’s blog!
Seven Days focus issue on High Tech in Vermont (and Career Jam)
This weeks Seven Days features Vermont’s Tech businesses and the Vermont 3.0 Tech/Creative Career Jam that is happening on Saturday (Jan 26) in Burlington. There are 50 companies that are registered as exhibitors for the career portion of this – most of them are looking for some type of technical workers – engineers, programmers and more. There was only space for 50 and there’s a long list of companies that are begging to get in as well.
The issue talks to a number of these companies and also surveys the state of the industry and career opportunities.
So if you aren’t local and can’t pick up Seven Days in print, you can read all of these articles in the paper.
Seven Days TechBiz Issue starting point
Jeff McWherter on ASP.NET Performance & Optimization at VTdotNET tonight
Jeff McWherter and his very cool wife (what a lucky geek he is!) have come from Lansing, Michigan to Vermont with hopes of ice climbing and so that Jeff can speak at the VTdotNET group. Unfortunately we lost all of our snow in the last week (though it’s finally snowing again) and the good ice for climbing is a little hard to find right now. Our neighbor, a rock climber, made some calls last night and hooked them up with some good insider info on where there’s some good ice. I told Jeff he can’t do that until AFTER he has spoken to the user group. Not that I want him to whack that brainy skull of his in half AFTER the user gruop presentation either!
When I spoke in Michigan this summer, Jeff came to my presentation both nights. It was the same talk , well at least the same title: Intro to Entity Framework, two nights in a row. He witnessed that the two talks were completely different from one night to the next.
We took them to a great local brew pub last night (BobCat Cafe in Bristol, VT). I will see if it’s possible to get a photo of Jeff without a glass of beer in his hand.
Definitely looking forward to tonight’s presentation!!
We also are fortunate to have gobs of swag. The magazines (CoDE and aspNET Pro) have been piling up for two months (they always seem to arrive the day after the meeting). We got lots of books sent at Christmas time and I always seem to have a bunch of Infragistics .NET Advantage licenses to give away now.
Additionanlly, we have a sponsor taking care of the whole meeting’s expenses- room fee and pizza – tekSystems. Thanks!!
Security focused MSDN & TechNet Events coming to Burlington Feb 26th
According to Chris Bowen’s blog, there will be a TechNet and MSDN event in Burlington on February 26th.
The afternoon MSDN event will be two sessions covering:
MSDN: “Explore IIS7, ASP.NET and Tackle Web Security”
Check out the latest coding solutions with like-minded developers at MSDN Events. Witness the evolution of IIS and see why IIS7 is our most extensible, manageable and secure Web platform on record. You’ll learn how to extend application services – including membership, role management and navigation – from ASP.NET and how to consume them from a wide variety of clients. As a special bonus, we’re also tackling the biggest security risks and clueing you in to the top counter measures available for Websites and Web applications of all kinds. Don’t miss these free, live sessions that are really on your wavelength.
Register for the MSDN event at www.msdnevents.com
The morning TechNet event is also about security:
TechNet: “Secure Your Critical Data”
Step up and save the day with hot new solutions from TechNet Events. Make sure your company’s private information is fully secured – even if it falls into the wrong hands – with Windows BitLocker disk encryption technology in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. You’ll also learn how the new Network Policy Server Role in Windows Server 2008 enables powerful functionality in the form of Network Access Protection. Now you control who can access your network – whether wireless or wired. Sign up now for these free, live sessions in your local area.
Register for the TechNet event at www.technetevents.com
Vermont InstallFest and Bob & Chris RoadShow was a big success
Although I wasn’t able to be in Vermont on Thursday for the Bob & Chris Roadshow or the VS2008 Installfest, I have gotten emails from Chris Bowen and others letting me know that it was a great success. Over 40 people showed up for the installfest, and I learned from Dave Burke’s blog that they also had TWO XB0X 360’s set up for folks to play with.
Larry Keyes blogged his extensive notes from the day.
Sorry to have missed it.
What I really enjoyed reading was Dave Burke’s epiphany about VS2008. The sessions from Bob & Chris really made things click for him and he’s ready to get in bed wiht VS2008. I was thinking about that becasue he said he’s seen LINQ 4 times before, but not until Thursday did he finally get to his AHA! moment with it. I believe this may have a lot to do with the fact that it’s finished, it’s deployed and in hand, rather than seeing very early bits (we’ve had 3 LINQ talks at VTdotNET in the last 1 1/2 years).
Vermont is getting a VS2008 InstallFest on Dec 6th.
Thanks (humongous thanks) to Chris Bowen for pulling off getting Vermont on the list for the installfest. It will be an “add-on” to the Roadshow day.
From his blog: (read the details carefully.. priority goes to registered attendees of the roadshow…)
Burlington (Williston), VT
December 6th, 4:15 to 6:00 PM
Vermont Technical College, 201 Lawrence Place, Room 401, Williston, VT
In partnership with the Vermont .NET User Group
Like Rochester, we’re running this InstallFest in the same room as the Roadshow event that day. Stay with us from 4:15 until 6:00 and enjoy some food, camaraderie, and gaming.
Priority for giveaways will be given to everyone who attends (not just registers for) the Burlington Roadshow event. Remaining materials are available, while they last, to any walk-ins.
Partnering with area user groups, we’re offering attendees a chance to install the release version Visual Studio 2008, enjoy some food, conversation, and gaming! Since the packaged product hasn’t been released yet, here’s what will happen:
- Bring your laptops (or heck, a desktop!) and your festive selves
- Grab a DVD with the Visual Studio 2008 Pro Trial Edition bits
- Install and be happy
- Play some Halo 3 or Guitar Hero, munch on some food, chat with people
- Go home and enjoy VS2008
- …wait…
- When the packaged product ships, you’ll get a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional in the mail! (Which will *not* require a reinstall of the trial version.)
As an added incentive to get VS2008 installed that evening, we’re giving away T-shirts and raffling off a new 8GB Zune among the people who get VS2008 on their machines!
“Free Sounds Good! So, Where? When? How Do I Sign Up?”
You may notice that the events are generally on our MSDN Roadshow days (except for Waltham, where the Roadshow will be the following day.) That’s of course no coincidence, we’d like to take advantage of our passing through various areas in the northeast to run these special events.
Each event has its own timing, registration, and logistics, detailed below.
As you can guess, we have limited quantities of giveaways (and “free” always draws a crowd) so we can’t guarantee everyone will walk away with something.
A good month to be a developer in Olympia, WA and in different way, in Burlington VT, too
Camey blogs that they are having a VS2008 install fest (with VS2008 being supplied by Microsoft) at the South Sound .NET User Group in December. I immediately emailed our D.E. asking if we can do that at VTdotNET, but unfortunately, he doesn’t have enough licenses to go around (not his fault) so that leaves out our little teeny tiny itty bitty market. I know he tried to get more, so there’s not much we can do. WHat a gift that would have been for our user group members!
But on a good note, we are getting a full day of the Bob & Chris Roadshow, where we will be tortured and tempted with all of the goodness of VS2008. (grin) SIgn up here! (It’s Thursday, Dec 6, all day at Vermont Tech College in Williston.)
When the official launch happens in late February (and we’ll aim for doing this at our March meeting) hopefully we’ll get a bunch of licenses to give away as we did with the VS2005 launch a few years ago.