Tuesday  8 July Holiday Break no meeting

Tuesday 5 August Starts 5:30pm

Topic: Launching SQL Server 2008 

Speaker: Brenda Lloyd

This user group is associated with NZ Dot Net User Groups http://www.dot.net.nz/

This user group is a member of INETA, the International .Net Association http://apac.ineta.org

The leader of this group is Sue Chard, MVP Visual developer ASP/ASP.Net, President New Zealand .Net User Group  Association

Past meetings:

17 March 2008 - Paul Lo and Ryan Tarak came and gave their Dev Jam session.  Over 30 students, staff and extras turned up for a 9am session on Monday to hear about streaming media with Silverlight, games development with XNA, Popfly and the Innovation cup.  The Pizza breakfast was a bit late arriving so Paul and Ryan missed out but was enjoyed by students and staff.

13 February 2008 - Summer Road Trip - Great 2008 Launch with the combined Wellington region user groups over 400 people attended -at a rough count I could see 22 names in the draw from our mailing lists-  and a great time was had by all.

5 November 2007 - Rick Hook, Microsoft Practice Manager for Gen-i came and talked about the ongoing shortage of skilled developers across New Zealand - now and for the next five years. .  About 25 people enjoyed the Pizza and presentation.

15 October 2007 - Darryl Burling Development Advisor from Microsoft, led us through a lap around Visual Studio 2008. The new features looked really interesting and the prizes were much appreciated.  About 20 people enjoyed the Pizza and presentation although some couldnt stay to the end.

11 June 2007 - Chris Auld Shared the highlights of MIX'07 talking about Silverlight, IronRuby and the DLR.  He had some really interesting demos and code to show .  About 28 people enjoyed the Pizza and presentation.

7 May  2007 - Brenda Lloyd Introduced the security enhancements for developers in Windows Vista, another lucky winner received a copy of Vista Business and some hardworking helpers have new t-shirts.  28 People shared the pizza.  The slides etc will be available shortly.

2 April 2007 -  Sue Chard kicked off the year with the launch of Vista for developers. The topic was Windows Vista -Building Differentiated User Experiences and included a demo of an application showing off some of the aero features available to Applications developers.  36 people enjoyed lots of pizza and a few lucky ones got to take home copies of Vista and T-shirts from INETA. Download the Presentation and Demo

14 November 2006 - Chris Auld presented 'A Lap around Windows Workflow Foundation' 30 odd people enjoyed plenty of Pizza and an interesting introduction to Workflow foundation and the role it will fill in the development process.

10 October 2006 Darryl Burling, Developer Advisor for Microsoft  gave a very interesting presentation on The future of web development. Where are we headed next with our core web development technology? How will we keep innovating on the web to bring new levels of productivity and performance while continuing to innovate on the user experience - delivering the next generation web today? This session will discuss Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, Live.com Gadgets, Expression Web Developer and more.

12 September 2006 Emad Abdelhadil from ESR Gave a very interesting presentation to around 25 people on Software factories, covering the difference between patterns and anti-patterns approach and how the software factories leverage and ease applying any coding/design patterns and demonstrating the 'Service Factory' which applies design pattern using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Slides available here.

8th  August 2006 Steve Schapel, presented an overview of MS Access 2007. We looked at its place in the range of developers tools and some of the new features available in the new 2007 version. All those present were very interested in the new MS office and the changes that are coming up with the new version

13th  June 2006 Sue Chard with the help of Steve Cosgrove discussed the merits of Professional Certification, and the new certification structures at Microsoft.  We looked at the different qualifications offered by both Microsoft and other Organizations.  Then focused in on the new Microsoft MCTS qualifications and the entry points for developers and systems administrators. 

10 May 2006 Paul Lo came and gave a lunchtime demo of Vista and Office 12 user experience.  Visual Web developer and Ajax were  also demonstrated,  The audience was mainly staff and students and despite technical hiccups with data projectors it was really good to see Vista in action.

11 April 2006 WPF  - what is it and how do you get started, presented by Sue Chard. This presentation looked at Windows presentation Foundation, what it is, how you get started, and how you use it to build applications.   Files from this presentation powerpoint, demo apps  and an,  interesting video with a demo app for on demand TV created for the BBC at the end - BBC demo

14 March 2006 .  This is our first meeting for 2006 - Rick Hook presented Microsoft technologies in 2006 and the Persistent Enterprise. looking at the latest evolution of Microsoft technologies and how they are becoming a natural part of organizational and working life. How to prepare for the development challenges of tomorrow.  Around 30 people attended and shared pizza while considering the challenges and opportunities for software developers in the future..

15 November 2005 .Net 2005 Launch Party  :) We had a great celebration to Launch of VS2005 with heaps of prizes and a presentation on the new features in Asp .net. 3 lucky members took home a copy of VS2005 and SQL2005, there were also pens, t-shirts, exam vouchers and other interesting giveaways.  Over 50 people came to support out launch event.

11 October 2005  Thanks to Rick Hook, Microsoft Practice Manager for Gen-i Software Solutions and  Mark Carroll, Architect Advisor, Microsoft New Zealand for the double show about Architecture and .Net. 

13 September 2005 Darryl Burling from Microsoft New Zealand, presented An overview of SQL 2005 availability, business intelligence and developer features.  There was lively discussion from the 27 strong audience in response to the prizes of sunglasses and a copy of the Microsoft digital Image Pro.  And today the pizzas were early :)   but we ran out of drinks.

9th August 2005 Our Topic for August was Help on the Net for .Net developers, some of the links discussed are in the links section on the left, if anyone wants some more to add please email me.  There were 26 people present when I counted and the pizzas eventually arrived after the pizza delivery person had problems locating the right building on campus :) 

14th June 2005 Greg Hickling demonstrated the creation of new templates and wizards fro .Net development projects.  We found out how they are creating templates and wizards to assist developers create new projects at NZDF.  This looks a very useful way to speed development and standardise the code.  There was a big group of over 30 people - too many for the Mohuia crescent venue I will have to look for somewhere else to meet!

10th May 2005 Nic Wise introduced us to BizTalk 2004, we found out heaps about  BizTalk, what its good for, and  how it works. The presentation included very useful demonstrations and working examples. The large group attending really enjoyed the presentation, ate plenty of pizza and cleared out the drink supplies.

Nic had an extra duty - drawing the XBOX winner and the winners of two t-shirt consolation prizes.  The lucky winner of the XBOX from INETA was Nick Hill who has been a member of our group since 2003.

12th April 2005 Charles 'Chuck' Sterling gave a very interesting presentation on Visual studio 2005, looking at windows forms, tools for office and asp .net 2.0. There were lots of demos and at the end Adam Cogan demonstrated his latest code auditor too, which is available to usergroup members for a free download trial. A big group travelled in to Wellington to listen to the presentation and the venue was full to overflowing.

8th March 2005 Our first meeting in 2005 was held at the *temporary* DevLab at Mohuia crescent. We had a good turnout to the presentation from Dany Wu  MSDN Connection Resources Primer (...and a bit more).   The presentation  explored the use of the hosting resources provided through resource, including developing multiple applications on a single project.  Our user group has won an XBOX from INETA and one lucky user group attendee will be taking this home at the May meeting.

29 November 2004   We had a quick tour through the range of student BIT Projects and farewelled our home at Business Porirua location.  Five Student projects were developed in .Net with SQL server and all successfully created working systems for their clients.  See a brief overview of each project here. Microsoft sent a box of goodies and we had a prize draw with some great prizes, a great turnout of 32 people and a good farewell..  

12 October 2004 We went on a field trip to meet with the Wellington user group and Jonathon Wells, Microsoft's .NET Compact Framework Product Manager.  Jonathon gave a very interesting presentation on the Compact framework.  It was great opportunity to meet with the Wellington group and find some familiar faces among them.  

7 September 2004 Many thanks to Rick Hook for his very interesting presentation on service oriented architecture and what this means in Dot Net. Also thanks to Paul Andrew from Microsoft we had a stack of VS 2005 Beta 1 DVD's to give away, these were eagerly snapped up by those present.  

10 August 2004 The meeting was well attended, rather crowded in fact.  We appear to be outgrowing our venue!  Anthony Gan took us through methods of debugging and tracing dot net applications. Our members have all been receiving their MSDN connection cards in the mail and we look forward to the card scanner coming so we can record attendance and members can reap the MSDN Connection benefits from attendance at the meetings. 

1 June 2004 Greg Hickling gave us an enlightening presentation sharing tips and tricks for web forms development and scripting. General discussion followed.  We are also now officially registered with the O'Reilly books user group program.  Members are entitled to a 20% discount on O'Reilly books, check with Sue for details on how to get the discount.  Also members are invited to review books for O'Reilly, if there is a book you would like to review contact Sue and this can be arranged.

4 May 2004  Paul Andrew came and gave us a rundown on InfoPath and its integration with the upcoming Whidbey.  He also gave us information on the MSDN Connection Programme, and we are encouraging all of our user group members to sign up to this programme.  Sue gave a brief rundown on what happened at INETA APAC Summit, there is a summary here.  Questions from the floor centered on the release schedule for Whidbey and the features demonstrated.

6 April 2004 was a really useful meeting, we have a number of topics lined up for the 2004 meetings the next meeting is confirmed, Paul Andrew speaking on InfoPath and hopefully the MSDN Connection at the May 4th meeting. Future topics listed without confirmed speakers are BizTalk, Whidbey, testing tools and deployment, Yukon, tablets and smart phones, and voice recognition. Also on the agenda are sessions to share favourite tools, and show and tell sessions.

2 March 2004 the first meeting for 2004 and we were very lucky to have guest speaker Adam Cogan speaking about MS SQL Reporting Services.  This was a very well attended meeting with 55 people attending, we had to move to a bigger room to accommodate everyone.  I had many comments afterwards from people who had found the meeting very useful.   Many thanks to Adam for his time. A great start to 2004.

6 November 2003 we reviewed the year  and made plans for the coming year,  patting ourselves on the back on the successful first year of Dot net link.  Looking forward to an even better year in 2004.

9 October 2003 postponed from 2 October due to School Holidays - Barry demonstrated tips and tricks to speed debugging in the .Net environment to a very attentive audience.  There was lively discussion on the various debugging tools demonstrated.   The meeting was attended by 25 group members.

4 September 2003 - Rick showed a tech ed presentation on design patterns and architecture.  Questions from the floor centered on the relationship of the various data connection components and deklarit generated components to this model.  We discussed the scheduling of the meetings for the remainder of the year and have moved the October meeting to the second week of October so that it isn't in the school holidays and have agreed that the final meeting for this year will be 6 November.  The first meeting for 2004 will be in the first week of March.

7 August 2003 - Paul showed a trailer for halo the xBox game.  Questions from the floor centered on how to get that all important first job, how to get that first step into the workforce.   Those that were employed shared their experiences in acquiring that first position.  Those in the position of employing staff discussed the attributes they looked for.  Teaching staff described how the project component of the degree was designed to contribute  "experience" to students CV's.   Pizza was almost in surplus supply, thanks to price wars between pizza outlets.

3 July 2003 - The wizardry of deklarit was demonstrated by Sally.  Discussion centered on the productivity gains from the use of this tool, the architecture of the application generated and the structure of the components.  The relationship of the generated application architecture to design Patterns was highlighted.

6 June 2003 - Barry took us on a voyage of discovery through the application development process at NZDF.   Comments and questions flowed freely, with discussion centering around the standards and architecture of the application he demonstrated.    We have started the process of registering the user group at www.ineta.org to get the group official Microsoft .Net user group status   We need our website up and going to get this approved, all assistance and ideas gratefully received. 

1 May 2003 - Rick explained .Net Enterprise Application Architecture.  Pizza and discussion were enjoyed by all present.  The structure of  future meetings is to be a featured speaker on a topic plus discussion on topics, issues being encountered by those present.  Feel free to  suggest topics for future meetings to dotnet @ devlab.ac.nz .  A mailing list is being setup to facilitate group communications. 

25 March 2003 - The inaugural meeting of DotNet Link.  DotNet Link has come from the VBUG Visual Basic User Group which started in 1995 as a partnership between local industry representatives and Whitireia polytechnic.  The aim of VBUG was to provide a vehicle to enhance the learning of students and establish connections with industry, while developing everyone’s expertise in the development of applications using Visual Basic.  However, over time this expanded to include, database and Web development.   Now we have adopted the .Net development environment and renamed the group to reflect its expanded focus.   The new group is DotNet Link and will meet for pizza and discussion on the first Thursday of each month at the DEVLAB