The MSDN Developer Conference is just around the corner (see event details below).  The MSDN Developer Conference brings the best of PDC 2008 to Chicago.  The event has 3 different tracks covering Cloud Services, Presentation, and Developer Tools.  The speakers for the events are mostly Microsoft evangelists with several community members.  I am extremely happy to say that I will be one of those community speakers.  I will be co-presenting with Patrick Foley, an Architectural Evangelist with Microsoft on Developing Line of Business Applications in Silverlight.  When not presenting, I will be hanging out around the open spaces area.

Location

Hyatt Regency Chicago
151 East Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL, 60601

Date

January 13th 2009

Register

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While at PDC, Dan Rigsby, invited me down to give a presentation and IndyNDA.  I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to talk about my favorite feature in .NET 3.6 SP1, ASP.NET Dynamic Data.  I plan to make this presentation extremely code based and create a web site based on the AdventureWorks database.  The abstract for the presentation is located below, along with details on the event.  I will be posting the power point slides and code samples here, after the presentation.

Presentation Abstract

ASP.NET Dynamic Data is a new framework released with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 that lets you create data-driven ASP.NET Web applications easily. It does this by automatically discovering data-model metadata at run time and deriving UI behavior from it.  A scaffolding framework provides a functional Web site for viewing and editing data. You can easily customize the scaffolding framework by changing elements or creating new ones to override the default behavior.  Come see how ASP.NET Dynamic Data can drastically reduce development time, while still giving you the flexibility necessary to create rich data driven web applications.

Meeting Time & Location

Date: January 8th, 2009
Time: 6:00 pm

Doors open at 5:30pm and the meeting starts at 6:00pm. Everyone is welcome to join us, and the admission is free. Presentations are targeted towards developers and IT professionals.

Thanks to our sponsors, we will again be having FREE PIZZA and cokes beginning at 5:30 (while supplies last).

Location:

The Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Education Center
7435 North Keystone Ave
Indianapolis, IN 46240

Map and directions

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I’ll be presenting at the Visual Studio Team System User Group next month on the features Visual Studio Database Edition provides and how it makes developers more productive.  Recently Microsoft announced it would combine VSTS Database and VSTS Developer since most developers also interact with the Database.  I think this is an extremely smart move on their part because it allows developers to build databases better.  I will be presenting at the Chicago Loop meeting and Paul Hacker will be presenting in Downers Grove.

Official Announcement

On September 29, 2008, Microsoft announced that Visual Studio Team System Development Edition will be combined with the Visual Studio Team System Database Edition in Visual Studio Team System 2010.  Microsoft recognized that many developers write front end code in addition to working deeply with database code and database tables. Bringing the feature of Team Development Edition and Team Database Edition together sets together enables you to take advantage of the core tools for application development as well as the necessary tools for database development, including performance profiling, code analysis, code metrics, code coverage, database refactoring, Schema Compare, Data Compare, and more.  You may also be happy to know there is a way to take advantage of this 2 for 1 deal TODAY.  Really, no joke!

Want to hear more about it?  Maybe even see these two incredibly powerful tools together?  Join the Chicago Visual Studio Team System User Group to hear more about how to get your hands on this awesome duo of tools, talk to field experts about how these tools have improved their overall quality of life (OK, maybe just their work environment), and to see them in action!.  We have decided to hold this session in both the Chicago Loop and Downers Grove offices to ensure everyone has a chance to learn about this terrific new opportunity.

To sign up, please email Laskowski.Dave@gmail.com. Please indicate which meeting you plan to attend.

Meeting Agenda
5:30pm – Pizza
6:00pm – Introductions
6:15pm – Presentation and Demo
7:30pm – Q&A and Raffle

Chicago Loop Meeting Details:
Wednesday November 5^th, 2008
77 West Wacker Drive, 23^rd Floor, Chicago, IL
Map

Downers Grove Meeting Details:
Wednesday October 29^th, 2008
3025 Highland Parkway, 3^rd Floor, Downers Grove IL
Map

Speaker Bios:

(Downers Grove)
Paul Hacker is a Principle Consultant at Polaris Solutions, LLC in Indianapolis, with a passion for Team System. He has been working with the product since beta 3. Paul has implemented Team System/TFS in numerous organizations. When not spending time with his family, you can find him presiding over the Indianapolis TFS SIG, Podcasting on Radio TFS or writing tools to enhance Team System. You can reach Paul at paul.hacker@polarissolutions.com

(Chicago Loop)
Josh Heyse is a Senior Solution Architect with Catalyst Software Solutions. He has always focused on staying ahead of the technology curve, investigating Microsoft technologies before they are available to the general public. Josh began developing on beta versions the .NET Framework when they were released in early 2001. Josh is currently focused on WPF, LINQ, and most recently Silverlight 2.0.  As an architect Josh spends a lot of time improving the software development lifecycle by implementing pattern & practices, continuous integration and ALM tools such as Team Foundation Server. MCSD, MCDBA, MCPD

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I’m giving my first presentation at the Lake County .NET Users Group (LCNUG) on Thursday, September 25th.  The topic is on ASP.NET Dynamic Data, a new feature released with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1.  I plan to make this presentation extremely code based and create a simple, but functional, automobile classified web site. The abstract for the presentation is located below, along with details on the event.  I will be posting the power point slides and code samples here, after the presentation.

Presentation Abstract

ASP.NET Dynamic Data is a new framework released with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 that lets you create data-driven ASP.NET Web applications easily. It does this by automatically discovering data-model metadata at run time and deriving UI behavior from it.  A scaffolding framework provides a functional Web site for viewing and editing data. You can easily customize the scaffolding framework by changing elements or creating new ones to override the default behavior.  Come see how ASP.NET Dynamic Data can drastically reduce development time, while still giving you the flexibility necessary to create rich data driven web applications.

Meeting Time & Location

Subs and will be provided at 6:30. Talk starts at 7:00.

College of Lake County Technology Building Room T326-328 19351 West Washington Street Grayslake, Illinois, 60030 Click on here for directions.

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Over the weekend I presented at the Indy Code Camp.  Within minutes of sitting down at the speaker’s table I was asked if I had a Twitter account.  Actually, it was more like "Hi, I’m Dan. What’s your twitter account?"  So, by the end of the day I had signed up for a twitter account.

I know I’m probably the last person alive to join the Twitter crowd. But, now that I have conformed I am enjoying my assimilation. Twitter is just so simple, it’s great. The greatest feature I have seen so far is the ability to post status messages and view updates via gtalk.

Follow me at: http://twitter.com/jheyse

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I am presenting at the Indy Code Camp on April 26th, 2008.  I am pretty excited about the opportunity to begin speaking on .NET topics.  Community involvement is something I have wanted to do for a while, and I am finally in a position where I believe I have some thing to bring to the table and the time to do so.  Catalyst has been supporting my community involvement and it has become one of my responsibilities as a Senior Solution Architect.

The Indy Code Camp is being hosted by Aaron Lerch, who has a great blog at http://weblogs.asp.net/aaronlerch/default.aspx.

Location The Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Education Center 7435 North Keystone Ave Indianapolis, IN 46240 Date & Time: Saturday, April 26, 2008 8:30 AM – 5:30 PM

[Woohoo: I got to use the LiveWriter Insert Map Plugin...]

Registration is free: http://www.indycodecamp.org/Register/tabid/424/Default.aspx

My Topics

Core: An Aspect Oriented Business Objects Framework
Learn about aspect-oriented design patterns and how they can be used to quickly add common functionality to your business objects. Aspect-oriented programming allows for the separation of true business logic and the code written allowing interaction with user interfaces. The Core framework is a generation model that dynamically adds common services, such as logging, auditing, persistence, and security to business objects. Aspects, or behaviors, are requested using attributes or configuration files which allows services to be included only where necessary eliminating overly bloated objects and tailored for the environment into which the object is loaded.

Line of Business Applications in Silverlight 2.0
Learn about Silverlight 2.0 and how it can be used to rapidly create feature rich line of business applications. Most Silverlight demos focus on the visual features and pass over binding and data manipulation. While, most developers do not create applications with animations and richly designed user interfaces, Silverlight is still a viable option for line of business application development. Learn how and why Silverlight 2.0 will change the way you write code while walking through the development of a simple CRM solution.

I am looking forward to this event, and hope that you can make it.  If not all presentation materials will be made available on my blog and the Indy Code Camp website.

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Catalyst Software Solutions is a member of the International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP) and we are active in events within the Chicago-land area.  The IAMCP is a community of partners who work together and with Microsoft to facilitate mutual growth and business development among partners.

Last month they asked if anyone would be willing to give a presentation on the new features of Windows Server 2008.  I took the challenge and created a presentation on the two features that I feel have the greatest impact.  My two points of focus where Hyper-V virtualization and IIS7.  My boss, Ken, added to ‘Green IT’ topic to the presentation which I had completely skipped over.  Green IT is becoming a strong driver in the IT community and I am glad he suggested it.

Hyper-V

We have been using virtualization at Catalyst for about 3 years and we have found it to be a great technology for both production infrastructure and development scenarios.  We are currently running 3 VM hosts with roughly 15 guest OSs using Virtual Server 2005 R2 and are looking forward to upgrading to Hyper-V and eliminating the poor web based configuration user interface.

IIS7

I have been running IIS7 under Vista for a long time and couldn’t wait to be able to actually deploy web applications to production servers under IIS7.  Microsoft did a good job of taunting the developer community for over a year before this finally became a reality.

Presentation

Here is the power presentation I used on 3/18/2008.  A majority of the slides are ones that I found on the Ready-To-Go campaign web site. The presentation went about 70 minutes with an additional 10-15 minutes of Q&A afterwards.  Overall people liked the presentation and felt it did a good job of describing the business and technical value of Windows Server 2008.

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