Topic: Developing and Deploying Your Windows Azure Application

In this session we will take a tour of the capabilities of the Microsoft cloud platform, “Windows Azure”, by building and running an application using the platform SDK. The sample app highlights some of the features of the platform including UI, service management, storage, and an integrated developer experience. This is a demo-heavy session.

Speaker: Jeff Brand

Jeff has been with Microsoft for over 12 years, starting with the company soon after the release of Windows 95. While at Microsoft, he has been a consultant, an ecommerce specialist, and an enterprise technology advisor. Prior to Microsoft, Jeff was in the Air Force stationed at Offutt AFB in Omaha, NE where he was Chief Network Engineer (his pre-developer days) for the USSTRATCOM LAN. Today, Jeff is a .NET Developer Evangelist for Microsoft's North Central District. He lives in Minneapolis and often travel to the surrounding states of Nebraska, Iowa, and the Dakotas. In his current role, he is responsible for working with developers and customers that are evaluating or using .NET and assisting in them in understanding and using Microsoft's developer platform.

Topic: Matrices and .NET

Matrices play a big role in .NET graphics. But they also play a leading role when solving linear systems. This presentation explores and demonstrates both usuages. And along the way we'll discuss Matrix mathematics.

Speaker: Tom Fischer

Tom Fischer helps Magenic (www.magenic.com) clients design and build applications using Microsoft tools and technologies. And when not consulting he occasionally writes about the lessons learned using Microsoft tools and technologies.

Topic: ugMIX - .NET User Group & Silverlight User Group  

Join us for a special edition of the .NET User Group & Silverlight User Group. This month we’re bringing highlights from the MIX09 conference to you!! You’ll get detailed information and in-depth demonstrations on the upcoming release of Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3 as well as see some of the great new technologies that were introduced at MIX09. Following the event, we’ll roll out the red carpet and treat all attendees with a private screening of the new Star Trek movie, which opens in theaters the day of this event. Don’t miss out, register today for this premier event!

Speaker: Jeff Brand, Microsoft

Jeff has been with Microsoft for over 12 years, starting with the company soon after the release of Windows 95. While at Microsoft, he has been a consultant, an ecommerce specialist, and an enterprise technology advisor. Prior to Microsoft, Jeff was in the Air Force stationed at Offutt AFB in Omaha, NE where he was Chief Network Engineer (his pre-developer days) for the USSTRATCOM LAN. Today, Jeff is a .NET Developer Evangelist for Microsoft's North Central District. He lives in Minneapolis and often travel to the surrounding states of Nebraska, Iowa, and the Dakotas. In his current role, he is responsible for working with developers and customers that are evaluating or using .NET and assisting in them in understanding and using Microsoft's developer platform.

 

 

Topic:  Maintaining Resilient Code: Using Tools From Microsoft’s DevLabs and Research Sites 

Recently, there’s been a number of tools that have been released on Microsoft’s DevLabs and Research sites to assist developers in writing industrial-strength code. In this session, we’ll look at three of them in detail - Code Contracts, Pex, CHESS - and see how they can find insidious bugs in your applications before your users do.

Speaker:  Jason Bock, Magenic 

Jason Bock is a Principal Consultant for Magenic (http://www.magenic.com), and is also a Microsoft MVP (C#). He has worked on a number of business applications using a diverse set of substrates and languages such as C#, .NET, and Java. He is the author of "Applied .NET Attributes", "CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET", ".NET Security", and "Visual Basic 6 Win32 API Tutorial". He has written numerous articles on software development issues and has presented at a number of conferences and user groups. He also run the Twin Cities Code Camp (http://www.twincitiescodecamp.com) and the Twin Cities Languages User Group (http://www.twincitieslanguagesusergroup.com). Jason holds a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University. Visit his web site at http://www.jasonbock.net.

Topic:  ADO.NET Entity Framework Introduction and Overview
 

ADO.NET 3.5's Entity Framework presents us with several new options for accessing data within our application. EF can be used build applications against a conceptual model that is mapped to the logic data model. The goal of this session is to provide an overview of the components provided within the ADO.NET Entity Framework including EntityClient, Entity SQL, Object Services, the Entity Data Model, and LINQ to Entities. This session will explore these and other features and will provide several examples of how to properly apply this technology to your own development project.

Speaker:  Patrick Kragthorpe-Shirley

Patrick Kragthorpe-Shirley is a Senior Consultant at RBA Consulting with over 10 years of development experience. He is focused on providing enterprise solutions that leverage Microsoft's .Net technologies while applying best patterns and practices. Patrick has a BS in computer science from California Lutheran University and is a Microsoft Certified Application Developer.

Topic:  Developing on Microsoft Windows 7  
 

Building applications that are easy to use, visually appealing, and offer high performance is a challenge that developers face every day. Innovative applications can greatly improve the user experience, empowering companies to differentiate their services and solutions. However, developers are increasingly asked to do more in less time, while also optimizing the power and performance requirements of their applications. The Windows 7 platform makes it easy for developers to create engaging, user-friendly applications by providing familiar tools and rich development features that allow them to take advantage of the latest PC capabilities. In this session we will explore the new Taskbar and Jump Lists, the Scenic Ribbon, file management with Libraries, and Windows Web Services among many other enhancements to the new operating system.

Speaker:  Mike Benkovich 

Energy, laughter and a contagious passion for coding - Mike brings it all to the podium. His career has taken him from minion to business owner, and he's been programming since the late '70s, when a friend brought a Commodore CPM home for the summer. He wrote his first software in Basic (including a math game that was shown at the University of Wisconsin in 1982) and later completed a degree in aerospace engineering. In 1994 he started a consulting firm with his brother, focusing on the effective use of relational technologies for scalable, high performance and mission critical applications. Mike has worked in a variety of roles including architect, project manager, developer and technical writer. The coolest part of his job? Running into people who are still using (and liking) his software applications. Mike is a published author with WROX Press and APress Books, writing primarily about getting the most from your SQL Server database. Since appearing in Microsoft's DevCast in 1994, Mike has presented technical information at seminars, conferences and corporate boardrooms across America. This music buff also plays piano, guitar and saxophone - but not at his MSDN Events. For more information visit Mike's website.

Topic:  Stop Coding and Start Generating

Did you know Visual Studio 2008 comes with a code generator? Well it does, and you should learn to use it so you can stop writing repetitive code (i.e. DTO's and DAL's) and generate it. Come to this session to learn about the Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4). T4 allows you to use simple ASP.NET-like template syntax to generate application source code, configuration files, stored procedures and more. This session will give you all the information you need to start using T4 effectively in your project, TODAY! We will go from basics (such as T4 template syntax) to advanced topics (such as template design and use of T4 in large projects) stopping along the way to create several templates from scratch.

Speaker:  Adam Grocholski 

Adam Grocholski has a great job at RBA Consulting in Minneapolis, MN where he has been working since 2006. Lately he has been diving into the latest and greatest UI technologies such as Silverlight and WPF and showing his clients how they can leverage these technologies to create compelling line of business applications. Adam also has a strong commitment to the local developer community. From co-founding the Twin Cities Cloud Computing user group, to hosting nerd dinners, to speaking at the .NET and Silverlight user groups and code camps.

 

Topic:  Introduction to Domain Driven Design 

 
Domain Driven Design (DDD) has steadily become more visible to the broader software development community, and offers some unique approaches to developing complex business applications. This session will introduce you to the basic concepts of DDD, as well as some updated thoughts by the author of “Domain Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in Software”, Eric Evans. This session will focus primarily on DDD concepts, but will also present an implementation example developed on the .NET platform.
 

Speaker:  Jordan Terrell 

Jordan Terrell is a Consultant at Digineer, with over a decade of experience in the software development industry. He has been learning and applying Domain Driven Design techniques on .NET development projects since 2005. He is an avid proponent of teaching and applying current best-practices and patterns. Jordan is also interested in embedded microcontroller development and is the author of a DHCP stack for the Arduino platform.

Topic: Putting web service APIs to work in your applications

In this talk, John will demonstrate how to utilize different web service APIs in your applications. How can you integrate Twitter with your customer service system? How can you let your employees call your help desk, have their voicemails transcribed and have a support ticket automatically created? Technologies and services covered in this talk include ASP.NET MVC, Windows Azure, TweetSharp, Twilio, FogBugz and more.

 

Speaker:

John Sheehan is a technology and sports nut based in St. Paul, MN. He is currently the Director of Technology for Treefort (treefort.com, screenfeed.com), creator of ManagedAssembly.com and founder of RIM Systems (rimsystems.com). John has worked in numerous IT roles since 1996 and has been a full-time .NET developer since 2005.

 

Topic: Building Peer-to-Peer Applications

Explore the world of Peer-to-Peer programming. In this session, attendees will be introduced to the powerful peer-to-peer infrastructure that is present in the Windows platform. Starting with an overview of peer-to-peer networks including graphing, grouping, and secure nodes, the talk will move into examples of building peer-to-peer applications. It will include demonstrations on how to use the PeerChannel infrastructure in WCF to build an appand how to tap into the Peer APIs directly to harness the full power of the P2P platform.

Speaker:

Jeff Brand is a .NET Developer in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Group. Jeff assists customers in evaluating, developing and deploying applications built on the .NET Framework and the Microsoft platform. He has been with Microsoft for thirteen years and has served in variety of roles including infrastructure consultant, e-commerce technology specialist, and enterprise technology advisor.