In a few hours I will be giving a new presentation to the Atlanta MS Professionals User Group. The topic for tonight is Asynchronous UI.

I will be talking about a number of common development patterns, along with discussion of the benefits and tradeoffs of each, and demos of the more mainstream approaches. I will also be covering a very simple and elegant solution that meets most async requirements – Jeffrey Richter’s AsyncEnumerator.

In advance of tonight’s presentation, I am posting my slides and code early. You can download them from this link. They may also become available as a download for members of the MSPros user group after the session.

Also, as a raffle prize, I am donating a one-year subscription to MSDN Premium with Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite Edition. If you were to buy it from Amazon, this subscription would cost over $10,000, so be sure to show up tonight if for nothing else than to win.

We are happy to announce that the 2008 Atlanta Code Camp is coming up soon. We have confirmed the event date of Saturday, March 29th, and it will be held at the Devry University campus in Decatur (this is the same place as last year).

We are actively seeking speaker submissions for the event. You can get the speaker form from our speakers page. We are also looking for volunteers to help on the day of the event. If you are interested in volunteering, please sign up here.

Attendee Registration is not open yet, but check back often because it is likely to fill up quickly once opened.

Monday night, March 3rd (tomorrow), I am lined up to present on the topic of "Surviving the Multi-core Revolution". This presentation focuses on the concepts and skills needed to bring scalability and performance to server-based processing.

This year I will be heading to MIX in Vegas along with thousands of other UX enthusiasts. I have always had a deep interest in all things related to User Experience, and for the past couple years have wished I could attend a MIX event, and finally this year I get to go!

What will I be doing at MIX? Well I will certainly be soaking up any and all information related to Silverlight and WPF. I will also stick my head into some of the designer-oriented sessions. It's a good thing to see how the other half lives. In between sessions I am hoping to meet all kinds of people who are also passionate about UX. And of course this is Vegas, so I am sure I will lose a few dollars in a casino at some point and drink more booze than is healthy.

Joining me will be a number of Wintellectuals including Steve Porter, Sergio Loscialo, Rik Robinson, Sara Faatz, and Todd Fine. I know of a number of other local Atlanta folks will be making the trip as well: Sean Gerety, Doug Turnure, and Shawn Wildermuth to name a few. Are you going too? If so, let me know and we can get together for a cup of coffee or a beer.

I have uploaded my slides and associated source code that was demonstrated, for the benefit of those who were not able to attend my session, or for those who have asked for copies of the code and slides.

I understand that these will be made available from the Alabama Code Camp web site, but I am also making them available for download from my server as well: http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/weblog/content/binary/AlabamaCC6-Silverlight-KeithRome.zip

I am packing my bags and heading out to Huntsville AL tonight. In the morning I will be kicking off the Silverlight Track at the Alabama Code Camp with a presentation titled "Tapping into the power of Silverlight 1.0". My goal with this presentation is to show that although 2.0 will indeed be a phenomenal release of the Silverlight platform, the currently shipping version is still very powerful and offers a tremendous amount of value.

If you are planning on attending this Code Camp event, please stop by and listen in!

This coming Monday night would normally be our monthly Atlanta MS Pros / Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET / Atlanta VB.NET user group meeting, but this month we have a special treat lined up...

Microsoft (aka Doug Turnure) will be providing a FREE copy of Visual Studio 2008 (Professional Edition) to the first 150 people that arrive. This is a GREAT way to get an upgrade right away without having to convince your boss to buy a license! Well, technically we will be giving out DVDs with the trial version, but as soon as the Retail Packages are ready, each person that gets a Trial copy on Monday will receive a full Retail Boxed copy.

So bring your laptop. Most folks will be loading it up right there, so you might as well join in and get your upgrade on.

And then, after the LoadFestivities, everyone will be welcome to come join in some XBOX fun... we have 9 (yes, NINE) xbox 360 consoles and 9 matching big-screen TV's, so there should be plenty of room for everyone to have a good time. The name of the game is Halo3, so put on your MJOLNIR armor and get ready to frag your buddies! And if John-117 is too intense for you, we will also have Guitar Hero cranking on some of the consoles... so you can come and rock out to some Hit Me With Your Best Shot on Easy.

I hear the Master Chief himself might be there to take on challengers!

Please register in advance, so that we can have an accurate count of attendees. The registration link is here.

Location:

Microsoft Corporation [Alpharetta]
1125 Sanctuary Pkwy.
Suite 300
Atlanta, GA 30004

See you there!

John Robbins, the wizard of debugging, is looking for suggestions for the Devscovery 2008 Keynotes. To encourage submissions, he is offering a FREE conference pass to the person with the best idea. Full price for such a pass is $900, which is a bargain in itself, but FREE is even BETTER!

The spring Devscovery will be in New York, and the fall Devscovery will be held in Redmond - the winner will get to choose which event they prefer to attend. Having attended the fall Redmond conference this year, I HIGHLY recommend it! Even if I weren't a Wintellect employee, I would still be comfortable claiming that this is hands-down the best way to spend your training time and budget.

To submit a keynote idea, please either comment on John's post here or email your suggestion directly to him. You can submit as many ideas as you like.

We have not sent out a bulletin message yet, but we will not be meeting on Monday 9/3 due to the holiday. The next Atlanta Cutting Edge / VBUG / AMP meeting will take place in October.

Steve Porter and myself are driving up to Charlotte tonight to present on Silverlight at the Developers Guild meeting. Steve will be giving an overview of Silverlight features and development, and of course I will be deconstructing my newest Silverlight game - Gem Blaster!

If you remember Popper!, this is the next generation of that game engine, upgraded to work with the newer Alpha 1.1 Refresh, and with better graphics and gameplay. You can also go directly here to play the game: http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/gemblaster/

EDIT: The game has been moved to the Wintellect servers at: http://www.wintellect.com/gemblaster/

I am also working on getting the source code published to CodePlex, but it has taken a while due to my very busy work schedule.

On Monday, July 9th (thats today!), Microsoft is trucking in a bunch of evangelists who will participate in an impromptu user group meeting at the Microsoft campus.

There will be three "tracks" of sessions, one covering Vista Internals (by Brian Hitney - NC), another covering Silverlight (by David Isbitski - PA), and the third covering the ASP.NET Provider Model (by Danilo Diaz - PA). After the main presentations, there will be an open Q&A period followed by "Whose Slide is it Anyway?" featuring Dev Evangelists being asked to present for a couple minutes based on a slide from someone else's decks that they have never seen before.

The festivities will begin as 6:30pm. If you have been to a Microsoft User Group meeting in the past 2 years, then you already know the place. If not, then the map and directions from this page on the Cutting Edge User Group website should get you there.

Doug Turnure has more information about the event on his weblog here.

Popper! is a simple Silverlight puzzle game. I wrote it as an exercise of my own skill with the platform, but then decided it was a rather fun (at least for a little while...) little game, so I am sharing it with the rest of the developer community. Popper! is written against Silverlight 1.1 alpha, and is mostly in C#, although the initial splash screen is done using unmanaged javaScript (yes, on purpose).

I will be walking through the innards of Popper! at the Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET User Group meeting tonight. So if you will be attending, then come check it out. Or if you just want to kill some time at "work" today... then play with it a little and let me know how it goes (good or bad)...

http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/popper/

I know of one minor bug so far: if you try to click around while a set of bubbles is in the process of "popping", then an error is raised internally, and the game pretty much stops working. I just haven't had the time to get that bug addressed yet.

I intend to post the source for this sometime after this month's meeting. Pretty much that equates to "when I have time to do it".

The Geek Dinners are back. Although usually attended by microsoft developer types, these are really open to anyone with a geeky side that needs reassurances from their peers that "it's OK to be a geek".

Shawn has more details here. Be sure to RSVP with him if you are going - so tha he can handle the accomodations properly.

Tomorrow night is the Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET User Group meeting for May. Actually, it's also the May meeting for the Atlanta MS Pros and VB.NET groups as well. We will all be sharing the facility and sponsorship, as well as having a combined networking period before the meeting and a combined "keynote" presentation for the first half hour. After that, we will split up into 3 rooms (well technically, we will probably just close the walls and divide the main room into individual sections), each of which will offer a seperate track of material. We have a track for Cutting Edge, one for VB.NET, and one for MS Pros.

For more details, including the topics and speakers that are scheduled, please refer to the user group website at http://www.atlantace.com/

In case you missed the highly successful Atlanta Code Camp, there is another one coming up in Mobile, Alabame on April 14th. Registration is currently open, and I do not think they are sold out (yet). Like always, this Code Camp is a free event and it is jam-packed with lots of great topics being delivered by great speakers.

If you are anywheres near Mobile that weekend, it would be worth signing up for.

http://www.alabamacodecamp.com/

Please join us on Monday, March 5th at 6:00 PM for the monthly Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET User Group meeting.

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This month we have two speakers:

Paul Lockwood will be presenting Semi-Advanced Production Debugging - a brief discussion on little known debugging techniques including WinDbg and the sos.dll.

About the speaker:

Paul maintains a weblog at http://www.dotnetworkaholic.com/.

Also speaking this month is Eric Engler who will be presenting ASP.NET AJAX: Beyond the UpdatePanel. This session will provide an overview of ASP.NET AJAX. Eric will briefly cover the basics of ASP.NET AJAX, and then he'll drill down on some of the less commonly known, but very powerful aspects. Among the subjects to be discussed will be:

• The parts of the AJAX Distribution
• UpdatePanel - a brief obligatory overview
• The ScriptManager
• AJAX Control Toolkit: design of server-side control extenders and custom controls
• JavaScript: how to use objects in a non-OOP language
• AJAX Client Library: micro sized version of the .NET Framework written in JavaScript
• ASP.NET AJAX Application Services
• Calling Web Services from the Client
• Debugging AJAX applications

About the speaker:

Eric is a Senior Software Engineer at ZC Sterling, a real estate insurance and tax servicing company in Atlanta. He has over 20 years of experience programming many languages, on many platforms. His current focus is on Visual Studio and C#, including all types of applications: Windows, Web, and middle-tier. He holds a MCSD.NET certification.

Website: http://www.EricEngler.com

Thanks go to our sponsor Intellinet (www.intellinet.com) for graciously providing refreshments during the meeting.

This month's agenda (Monday, March 5th)

    * Networking starting at 6:00
    * Announcements at 6:15
    * Paul Lockwood – Production Debugging at 6:30
    * Break at 7:00
    * Eric Engler – ASP.NET AJAX at 7:15

We will be meeting at the Microsoft Regional Headquarters at the Sanctuary Park complex in Alpharetta (Mansell Rd. Exit). The meeting begins at 6 PM so folks can mingle, however the announcements and presentations are not scheduled to begin until 6:15 PM.

For more information on this month's meeting, please visit our website at:

http://www.atlantace.com/

If you are not familiar with the meeting location, please print out the driving directions for reference:

http://www.atlantace.com/MeetingLocation.aspx

**** A CALL FOR SPEAKERS ****

If you have a topic that you would like to present to the group, please contact me to discuss your ideas. We have lots of available time slots in the coming months, and our group is a fantastic place to hone your public speaking skills and to contribute back to the user group community.

*****************************************

NOTE: You have received this message because your email address was registered at the Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET website at http://www.atlantace.com/ or the Atlanta C# Developers Group website at http://www.atlantacsharp.org/.

*****************************************

Thanks, and I hope to see everyone at this month's meeting!

Keith Rome
MCPD-EAD MCSD MCDBA MCAD

At this month's Atlanta Cutting Edge, I presented a short talk on basic project management and estimation using PERT techniques. This is a topic that I find most developers (and managers too!) tend to ignore because they assume it woul dbe uninteresting or perhaps "fake science". Quite the opposite is actually true, and it can be astounding how much positive impact some of these techniques can bring to a software development project.

So if you were there and requested the slides, or if you were simply not able to make it, here they are.

As announced earlier today by Jim Wooley:

 

 

Fellow Code Campers,

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

Registration for the 3rd annual Atlanta Code Camp is now open. Please register on the Click to Attend website to guarantee your spot at the Code Camp.

Here's the link:
https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=113135

Just a reminder. The 3rd annual Atlanta Code Camp will take place on January 20th. The event is completely free and lunch is included. Doors open at 7:30am at the Decatur campus of DeVry University

250 North Arcadia Ave
Decatur , GA 30030

If you are coming in from out of town, we have a recommended hotel near the event. Call the Holiday Inn and ask for the DeVry University rate to get a $99/night rate. Parking is extra and costs $7/day

Holiday Inn

130 Clairemont Ave
Decatur, GA 30030
404-372-0204

During the Code Camp, lunch will be provided at no cost to you. After the event, we are planning on gathering in a local eatery to continue any discussions which we were not able to complete by our 5:30 pm end time. Location information will be made available at the event.

The Atlanta Code Camps have historically "sold out" extremely rapidly and we don't expect this time to be any different. Please register quickly to lock in your spot as we are capping registration and attendance due to facility limitations.

Join Doug Turnure and guests on the third Monday of every month at the Microsoft regional headquarters in Alpharetta for a "Lunch and Learn" event.

These events are 1 hour in length, held from noon to 1pm. Lunch is not provided - you will need to bring your own if you wish to eat. The content itself is level 100 to 200.

This month, the topic is WPF and Cardspace. Visit Doug's weblog for more information if you are interested... Lunch and Learns at Microsoft

Tonight is the September meeting for the Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET User Group. Jim Wooley (RSS ) will be presenting on LINQ - the new language integrated query extension technology. This is really cool stuff IMO.

Normally we meet on the first Monday of every month, but with yesterday being a holiday, we moved this month's meeting to tonight.

In case you don't have it yet - our new User Group's URL is http://www.atlantace.com/.

Just in case you happen to monitor this weblog, but have not registered with the group's mailing list:

------------------------------------

Please be aware that due to inability to secure a speaker for this month, the Atlanta C# User Group will NOT be meeting in June.

Also, the July meeting would fall adjacent to the Independance Day holiday, and therefore there will not be a C# Meeting in July either.

Our next scheduled meeting is currently expected for August, more details will be posted when we get nearer to the meeting date.

**** A CALL FOR SPEAKERS ****

If you have a topic that you would like to present to the group, please contact me to discuss your ideas. We have lots of available time slots in the coming months, and our group is a fantastic place to hone your public speaking skills and to contribute back to the user group community.

**** SPONSORS ****

If your company is interested in sponsoring a month (or more) of the Atlanta C# Developers Group, please contact me to discuss. Sponsorship is inexpensive and a great way to market your organization.

*****************************************

NOTE: You have received this message because your email address was registered at the Atlanta C# Developers Group website at
http://www.atlantacsharp.org/ .

*****************************************

 

Keith Rome
MCSD MCDBA MCAD

In case you haven't heard, the 2006 Atlanta Code Camp site has now begun accepting registrations. This year promises to be even more successful than last, we have nearly thirty topic submissions, so many in fact that we will not be able to accept them all due to the realities of physical meeting space and event logistics.

We are planning on 5 different topic tracks, so there should be a little bit of something for everyone.

You can now register for the Atlanta Code Camp by clicking on the registration link on http://www.atlantacodecamp.com/ or go directly to the registration site at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=108776.

 

Paul Lockwood gave an interesting presentation last night to the .NET UG on TDD. I will admit that haven't integrated this methodology deeply into my own development habits (yet). I do however recognize the benefits, and fully intend to incorporate it into my habits, just taking things one step at a time as I push my own skills to ever higher levels. So to me, the discussion was quite timely.

Listening to audience feedback, it appears that a number of folks (Rusty, Marcie, etc) are already leveraging this technique... and have some really positive opinions of it. When smart people are recommending something with such enthusiasm, it is generally a wise thing to pay attention.

One thing I would have liked to have seen is an end-to-end example of the process itself. I have seen unit tests before, I have even used NUnit on a few projects, but never to much success. I always felt like I was "not getting it". I get the impression (mainly from Rusty's comments), that this is normal, and there is a point of critical mass, serendipity if you will, where it all just starts to "make sense", and your Unit Tests become the first-class citizens that they deserve to be. I want to reach that point, but am shooting blind right now... a slight nudge towards that light is really what I need I think.

My current development habits have served me well (I have been told on more than one occasion that I am the most meticulous developer ever to pick up a keyboard), but I wish to push it to the next level. Zero defects in QA Iteration 1 is the Holy Grail. So now I at least have an idea of what I need to work towards. The next step is finding the best path to get there.

Last night, the Atlanta MS Professionals User Group was treated to an outstanding presentation by one of the great gurus of Windows programming - Jeffrey Richter of Wintellect. His coverage of the internals of CLR thread termination and associated concerns was extremely enlightening. I would rank this talk as easily being in the top 5 presentations I have ever had the opportunity to attend (and I have seen a LOT in recent years).

Anyways, Jeffrey has a new book coming out in March ("CLR Via C#: Applied Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 Programming"), which he claims will be his last. I made sure to pre-order a copy ($50!) so I can divine some of his wisdom and insight.

 

This was a presentation I gave earlier this month (October 2005) to the Atlanta C# Developer Group.

Code generation is one of those "cool" techniques in software development where you just don't know what you have been missing until you see it in action... and then once exposed to it, you find yourself wondering "how did I ever get along without this?".

In this presentation, I discussed the reasons and benefits of using code generation tools, and the problems they can solve (or avoid entirely). I focused on the benefits of consistent code, building upon a solid foundation, and simplification of complex application features.

We designed and built the code for a basic application foundation, supporting simple features such as lightweight enforced transactions, entity persistence, and other baseline features. Then a series of linked templates were created that take advantage of that code foundation. Finally, we built an example UI that leverages the generated middleware to dramatically simplify and streamline the actual development process. It was pretty durn cool IMO.

All templates were built using CodeSmith, which is a fantastically useful tool. I feel like I might have been giving a sales pitch for that product by showing off many of the way too cool features of the new version of CodeSmith, but it's one of those things I strongly feel is worth every penny.

The powerpoint slide deck and all relevant source code can be downloaded from the presentation archive of the Atlanta C# Developer's Group website at: http://www.atlantacsharp.org/PresentationArchive.aspx

 

I actually gave this short presentation to the Atlanta C# Developer Group back in September, but never got around to blogging about it...

The presentation covered why you should be using custom exception classes in your own code, and how to structure your exception class inheritance to gain the most benefit. It showed working examples of the concepts. It also touched on a few related practices such as only catching exceptions that you can deal with, and designing a meaningful exception taxonomy.

The slides and source code can be downloaded from the Atlanta C# Developer Group's presentation archive at: http://www.atlantacsharp.org/PresentationArchive.aspx

 

The third installation of the Sharepoint 1, 2, 3! training series is next Monday and Tuesday. This session goes deeper into the capabilities of SharePoint than our previous two sessions did. We will be covering advanced topics such as connectable web parts, Office integration, Document Library Events, Workflow Implementation, the SharePoint Object Model, and SharePoint Web Services!

We have thirteen detailed demos packed into this session, so this is definately tailored for folks who are comfortable writing code. Just like last month, attendees of the Hands-On Lab will also recieve a DVD containing the training materials loaded on a trial version of Windows Server 2003 (VPC image). This is a really cool take-away that allows you to share what you have learned with your cohorts back in the office. It also makes a great way to demonstrate the power of Sharepoint to that skeptical manager! We also expect to have Content CDs available that contain the presentation slides as well as the Hands-On Lab manual and code snippet files. All of this will be made available at the Hands-On Lab on Tuesday night (we are still debating on whether or not to offer the Content CDs after Monday night's seminar as well).

Our first two sessions were extremely popular, with fantastic positive comments from across the board. The Hands-On Lab for Tuesday night is already fully-booked, but it you show up with a laptop and are willing to be slightly inconvenienced we most likely will not turn you away (our training room is only designed to hold about 20 people, but as we proved at the first HOL session we can manage to fit up to about 40).

There is still room to sign up for the seminar on Monday night however. You can get more details and find a registration link on our main website at http://www.sharepoint123.com/. Just like the previous sessions, the coming Sharepoint sessions are FREE.

Like last month, Intellinet (our corporate sponsor) is providing refreshments and any giveaways. There will also be a number of Sharepoint experts from Intellet on hand to handle "sideline" discussions and to lend their expertise to the presentations.

Atlanta Nerd Dinners are back.

 

Rik asks:

"Keith, do you have a link to the details of SP2 of Sharepoint?"

Certainly!

Mike Fitzmaurice is talking a lot about it on his blog

Maurice Prather is also talking about it on his blog

I also dug up a little more about it to satisfy my own curiousity. Man they have got some COOL stuff coming down the pipe. I wish I was at PDC to attend these talks...

SP2:

• Will support ASP 2.0, but only on WSS. SPS will not support this until v3 next year.
• Apparently there is a new version of SmartPart that allows ASP 2.0 Web Part user controls to be hosted in WSS SP2.
• Not much else being talked about that I have seen except bug fixes in SP2.

SPS/WSS "v3":

• Due after Q2 of 2006.
• Ghosting isn't such a big concern anymore. Why? Because v3 will allow you to use ASP 2.0 Master Pages, and Frontpage 12 will be able to work with it. Sweet!
• You won't be limited to windows integrated authentication anymore. Why? Because v3 will support authentication providers from ASP 2.0! Extranet developers of the world rejoice!
• All sharepoint lists can be exposed via RSS. Also some templates for Blogs and Wikis.
• Huge improvements to Workflow support.
• A document recycle bin.
• Item-level security.
• A new Business Data Catalog - you can define your line of business data and web parts can consume it. Sounds like an enterprise level data dictionary of sorts.

I am not at PDC, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology I am still able to get the scoop on some of the things being discussed. And there is some really cool things being announced. Things related to Sharepoint.

We can look forward in the near-term future to WSS SP2, which has some cool new features. Primarily, it will support .NET 2.0 web parts! Thats like TOTALLY Awsome! The downside? Portal Server will not support 2.0 until the next major release in 2006. I wish they would reconsider that descision, but in the meantime at least we can use 2.0 with WSS.

Another cool feature coming is the "Slide Library"... you upload a powerpoint slide deck and it breaks it apart into individual slides. You can then incorporate the slides into a new deck, but the slide remains linked to the first (I guess until you extract the deck into a .ppt file). How I WISH we had that feature while building the slide decks for the Sharepoint 1, 2, 3! sessions!!!

There were other cool things mentioned as well, but those two stuck out to me as too cool to forget.

 

The second installation of the Sharepoint 1, 2, 3! training series is next Monday and Tuesday. This session is aimed squarely at the developer who is interested in "cutting their teeth" in developing code that targets the Sharepoint environment. We will be covering basic Web Part development, debugging, and deployment. We will also be covering things more on the customization side, such as page and template customization. Really cool stuff!

If you attended the first session last month, you will recall that there was very little code to be seen. It was almost exclusively slides. This session will be very much different - we have a healthy number of demos lined up for the Level 200 topics. Just like last month, attendees of the Hands-On Lab will also recieve a DVD containing the training materials loaded on a trial version of Windows Server 2003 (VPC image). This is a really cool take-away that allows you to share what you have learned with your cohorts back in the office. It also makes a great way to demonstrate the power of Sharepoint to that skeptical manager!

Our first session was extremely popular, with fantastic positive comments from across the board. The Hands-On Lab for Tuesday night is already fully-booked, but it you show up with a laptop and are willing to be slightly inconvenienced we most likely will not turn you away (our training room is only designed to hold 20 people, but we had 45 at last month's HOL session).

There is still room to sign up for the seminar on Monday night however. You can get more details and find a registration link on our main website at http://www.sharepoint123.com/. Just like the first session, the coming Sharepoint sessions are FREE.

Like last month, Intellinet (our corporate sponsor) is providing refreshments and any giveaways. There will also be a number of Sharepoint experts from Intellet on hand to handle "sideline" discussions and to lend their expertise to the presentations.

 

It seems there is a code camp every other week now! I just got back from the Portal "Mini" Code Camp in Charlotte this weekend, and now I see that there are two more coming in the Southeast!

Jacksonville Code Camp on August 27th

and

Charleston Code Camp on September 17th

Both are looking pretty good.

 

This post is about a week late, as we kicked off the first month of the Sharepoint 1, 2, 3! training series last monday night. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. With hardly any promotion (we were too busy working on the material), we still managed to draw about 65 for the seminar and 35 for the Hands-On Lab on tuesday. Early indications are that we will have far more than that at our level 200 and 300 sessions. I think we are already "sold out" on some of the future sessions.

There is LOTS of buzz circulating, which is a great feeling since the four of us (Matt, Brendon, Dan, and myself) have put a tremendous amount of work into it. The Hands-On Lab "experiment" went over especially well... it's not every day that you get to attend free training and take home a DVD with a running Virtual PC of the lab materials!

Intellinet has been an extremely supportive sponsor, and we are already working hard on making the next two months' sessions even better! There are some truly awesome ideas floating around right now centered on the work we are doing with the 1, 2, 3! Training series... so keep your eyes and ears open.

 

 

I blogged about this new local organization a few weeks ago, and tonight was the first meeting.

I thought this was a really good meeting. It was well-managed, very professional, and lots of great content in a format that is pretty new for me. I thought the "panel" discussion was really neat, not something I have seen attempted in a user group before.

It was quite interesting to view things from a more business-oriented perspective as opposed to just worrying about the nuts and bolts of building systems. I think this is a fundamental growth step for senior developers, there is only so far into "technology expert" that a person can go before running out of room to grow... and moving vertically to systems, integration, and finally enterprise architect is just a natural extension of that growth. And the career backgrounds of the panelists strengthened this view - they all came from a strong developer background.

I see that there is much I can learn from this group. I will definately be going to these meetings in the future.

 

If you missed this month's c# user group meeting, you definately missed out on some good information.

Chris Wallace started out by showing us the slick new profiling capabilities in VSTS 2005 for a few minutes. This will certainly be a handy set of tools available in VSTS.

Then Eric Marvets gave the main presentation on .NET Encryption. He did not show us a single line of code (there are plenty of examples on the web), but instead he felt it was more important to teach people how and [more importantly] when to apply or not apply particular cryptographic solutions. We all learned how Electronic Code Book ciphers and Chained Block ciphers work, their attack vectors, and in what situations they work best. We learned why when using CBC, you MUST ALWAYS generate a new Initialization Vector whenever the encrypted data is modified, and just exactly how that IV is used to make certain cryptographic solutions more secure. As a final tidbit of wisdom, we learned how DPAPI, while certainly an improvement over clear-text storage, is fundamentally no more secure than a good DACL.

8 out of 10 doctor's agree - The Atlanta C# Users Group lowers cholesterol while reducing hair loss and brightening your smile!*

 

 

* These statements have not been evaluated or approved by the FDA.

For the past few months myself and a few other Local Developer Event Activists (hey, I like the sound of that title!) have been secretly working on some interesting new ideas.

Well, the proverbial cat is now out of the bag as we have opened up registration to the Sharepoint 1, 2, 3! series of events. These are a totally new concept in regional developer events. Inspired by the recent popularity of the many "Code Camp" events that have been popping up all over the east coast, we wondered "well, instead of a huge swathe of topics, how about we try delivering very tightly focused training events on hot but neglected subjects?". Well, Sharepoint is definately one of those HOT topics - just ask any recruiter these days, or surf over to Monster.com or ComputerJobs.com. EVERYONE wants to hire Sharepoint experts, but NOBODY is helping developers to learn those skills. Same thing goes for BizTalk, and various other hot technologies.

With these ideas in mind, myself, Matt Ranlett, Dan Attis, and Brendon Schwartz have teamed up and formed the Atlanta MS Professionals User Group. This "User Group" is unlike any other. We plan on providing high-quality training sessions to the community, with a 3-month focus on each technology. By concentrating on specific technology areas over several consecutive months, we feel that a superior level of learning and understanding can be accomplished. And this is how the Sharepoint 1, 2, 3! series came about.

So by now if you are still reading, you probably want to know what this is all about. You want details such as topic coverage, number of events and dates, target audiences, difficulty level, and cost. You might even be wondering how to go about reserving your spot...

• Topic Coverage: Sharepoint from a user's perspective, Installing configuring and deploying, basic portal concepts, site customization, enterprise integration, and webpart development.
• Number of Events: 3 Seminars (Level 100, 200, and 300), and 3 follow-up Hands-On Labs, spread over the course of three months.
• Target Audiences: Primarily web developers who are curious about the whole "sharepoint thing". But also administrators, end users, and IT managers might find value as well from the level 100 session.
• Difficulty Level: We are trying our best to make the difficulty level progressive - this is to encourage individual attendee's growth as the series progresses. The first session is Level 100, and is intended for technically-savvy people who are just getting their feet wet with Sharepoint. Level 200 builds upon the core concepts, and adds Customization and simple Webpart Development among other things. Level 300 goes deeper into complex Webparts, and touches on more advanced issues such as deployment and recovery.
• Cost: FREE! Totally, completely FREE!! We are doing this as an INVESTMENT into the local developer community, hoping to build up a stronger skillbase here.
• How to reserve a place: Please use on of the registration links on the event's website at http://www.sharepoint123.com. PLEASE do not sign up your entire development staff! We have limited space (especially for the HOLs), so be thoughtful of your peers and only register places for folks on your team who are truly interested in learning these skills.

Please refer to the event's website via any of the above hyperlinks for even more details about this fantastic series.

We are really excited to be providing this kind of event to the Atlanta developer community. This is something we had been talking about doing for a very long time - and now we have finally gotten off our tails and put it all together!

 

I ran into a nice fellow, Burr Sutter from BravePoint, at last monday's .NET User Group meeting. I seems he is forming an Atlanta chapter of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA). This is a platform-agnostic group that is interested in moving this emerging field forward - and they don't care if you are J2EE, .NET, or WebSphere, or any other platform advocate. The basic concepts and issues are the same, and we can all share the many flavors of kool-aid without any name-calling. At least thats the idea...

I for one plan on attending these meetings as often as I can. The kick-off meeting announcement goes something like this:

======================

International Association of Software Architects - IASA announces the opening of the Atlanta Chapter.

IASA Atlanta has an established network of Atlanta's most elite software engineers, executives and architects.  Please join us on August 10,
2005 for our
first public meeting for a discussion on Enterprise Architecture.

Topic: Enterprise Architecture
Speaker: Angela Yochem, Vice President, Portfolio Architecture - SunTrust Banks, Inc.
Description:
Angela Yochem will talk about the responsibilities, complexities and significant challenges of Enterprise Architecture in today's enterprise. A facilitated panel discussion will follow, featuring some of the industry's notably impactful enterprise architects.

Whether you consider Enterprise Architecture to be an effort, a team, a diagram of systems, a method of governance or otherwise, this event provides an excellent forum for discussion and examination of the field of Enterprise Architecture.

Panelists:
Les Phillips, Enterprise Architect - UPS Supply Chain Solutions
Jason Chambers, Principal Architect - Delta Air Lines
Patrick McClellen, Senior Technical Architect - SunTrust Banks
Andrew McSherry, Vice President of Technology Services - Fujitsu

 

Location: MATRIX Resources
115 Perimeter Center Place, NE
Suite 250
Atlanta, GA 30346
Directions:
- I-285 Exit 29 Ashford-Dunwoody Road (East of 400)
- Pass Perimeter Mall on your left
- Turn left at the 4th traffic light onto Perimeter Center West.
- The 3rd driveway on right will be marked SOUTH TERRACES and 115 Perimeter

Center Place.
- Turn right into the curving driveway and enter parking garage.
- Feel free to park in any unmarked space on any floor. Visitor
parking is also available on the 2nd level, but is limited to a
maximum of 2 hours.

Time: 6:30 to 8:30 PM

Contact:
Burr Sutter - burrsutter@gmail.com
Phone: 770-714-3292
Website: www.iasarchitects.org

IASA Atlanta is open to all professional software architects regardless of
development platform.

 

If so, then you try your best to make it to the FREE Portal Development mini- Code Camp in Charlotte on August 20th.

If you were in Atlanta for the May Code Camp, you might remember Maxim Karpov [you might even have been one of the many who wrote "Maxim ROCKS" in your event survey comments]. Well, Maxim is the host for this mini- Code Camp, and on his agenda are sessions for Portal Design Patterns, Sharepoint, DotNetNuke, and ASP.NET 2.0 Portal Frameworks.

This should be a pretty good event to attend if your schedule is open, and I highly encourage everyone to attend.

Attendance IS limited, so it would be a good idea to register now and reserve your place!!

 

In less than 24 hours the festivities will begin.

Towards the end of the day, my presentation will be a deep look into asynchronous programming, with particular emphasis on multithreading. This is more or less the same presentation I gave a few months ago to the C# User Group, but with information about the new Semaphore support in 2.0 (with a corresponding example project).

The other major difference is that with the C# UG version of this presentation, it took me an hour and 20 minutes to cover it... moving through it all very quickly. However at Code Camp, we are limited to under an hour! More slides, more demos, and less time to do it!

I am also posting the Slide Deck and Sample Code here, for anyone who misses the presentation or that just wants to see what the session is covering before deciding which one they want to attend.

 

At last night's Atlanta .NET User Group meeting, Alan Griver showed us the new Refactoring tool that is free for VB.NET 2005.

In a nutshell - this tool is amazing!

And the first question posed was "how do we get this in c#?"

It turns out that if all you need is VB.NET 2005, you can use the free version. But there is also a "pro" version for $99. This pro version supports C# as well as VB, but not only that - it supports both languages in all versions of Visual Studio!

PLUS, there is a 30-day free trial available for this pro version. After downloading it and playing around for less than 5 minutes I can safely say this tool is a MUST HAVE for anyone involved in writing code!

You can find out more about the Pro version at this URL:

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Refactor/

And you can find the trial installation download at this URL:

http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/Refactor/

 

Today we got the word from our "man inside", Doug Turnure, that the arrangements have now been made to have the CLR Team deliver some in-depth talks to our user group on Monday, May 2nd. (That's under 3 weeks away for the procrastinators out there!)

Brad Abrams, Kit George, and Claudio Caldato will talk about CLR Internals for about 45 minutes or so, then after a short break they will cover CLR Performance. At the end of the presentations there will be time for Q&A, so be sure to bring your questions!

This will be a fantastic chance to pick the brains of some very sharp people who not only know an awful lot about the CLR - but that actually helped to design and build it.

So send your pets to a boarding house, put your spouse on a plane to visit his/her parents, and make sure to block out Monday, May 2nd on your calendar for this awesome night of complete .NET geekness!

 

Just in case you might be reading this blog, and didn't already know, next month a few folks from the .NET CLR Team will be the center of attention at the Atlanta C# User Group meeting!

Brad Abrams and krewe will enlighten us with answers to those burning questions like "When is it going to really ship?" and "So, when do you think it will ship?".

There is always some guy that skips the really good user group meetings (usually to watch some mindless sitcom episode that happens to be playing at the time...), and inevitably he regrets it. He ends up hearing from his buddies again and again about how cool the event was, and that it's too bad he missed out. Don't be that guy.

This will be a great meeting - probably our best to date. Even Bill Gates will be here to talk about the impact of the CLR on our industry.

OK, maybe Bill won't be here. But the CLR team will be - and I would rather hear them anyways.

 

First of all, thank you to everyone who came out tonight to the C# User Group meeting in Atlanta. Paul and I are very pleased with how this group continues to grow.

I am posting the slides and source code from my presentation ".NET Async Programming Demystified" here for download.

This is essentially the same presentation I intent to deliver to the .NET Code Camp next month, although I will need to strip out about a quarter of the slides to keep myself within the alloted time budgets there. I chose to present it to the C# group first, since a large number of our attendees were not able to register for the Code Camp (due to it selling out in only 5 days).

I did make two corrections to my material before posting the slides:

1. I incorrectly stated that each AppDomain has it's own thread pool. This should have been "each Process has it's own thread pool".
2. I forgot to include the third type of Timer object - the System.Timers.Timer. Chalk that one up to lack of sleep, I simply forgot to include it in my outline.

Both of these corrections are reflected in the downloadable files.

 

I have two potential topics I wish to cover. Can't do both though. Both can get pretty deep, and I will have a tough time fitting it into a single session as it is. So even after concluding a topic, I will need to whittle down the details. But first on to the topics.

Leave a comment, send me a message, whatever. Just let me know which of these two topics interests you most for a Code Camp session. I will probably save the other one for a possible Fall code camp, or another user group presentation. The subjects are both just too interesting to me for me to totally ignore either one.

• Topic #1: Asynchronous Programming

"Fully Baked" CLR support: Async Delegates, Thread Pools, System.Timer, and Queued Work Items. "Partially Baked" CLR support: Thread/ThreadStart, interthread communication, monitoring, signaling, and syncronization. Also would touch on important topics such as debugging, concurrency, Control.Invoke, lock(this), and deadlocking/performance implications. The end of the presentation would also talk about some exciting new async support in Whidbey for event-based async processing. In other words: "This ain't your daddy's multithreading presentation"

• Topic #2: Performance Planning, Design, and Tuning

In my opinion, a really important topic, but also really big. I would cover results-based performance programming, memory management (yes, its still important!), algorithm selection, profiling, and evaluating trade-offs. Would also touch on other aspects of performance, such as choosing your battles and managing the user experience/expectations. Lastly would talk a little about impact of Whidbey (generics/boxing, etc).

Let me know what you want to hear about!

 

OK so I am really late on the heads-up, but tonight is our monthly Atlanta geek dinner. Hey there! Yes, you reading this, you are coming right? You did RSVP to Shawn right? Thought so.

 

Anyone else dig motorcycles?

The 2005 Great American Motorcycle Show is being held in Norcross this weekend. I went last year, and some of the bikes really kicked ass! So I am thinking about going this year too. Anyone else into hogs and choppers and all that, and wanna go check it out too?

Tattoos and grizzly beards are optional!

And yeah, I know my VTX has been sitting in the garage for a year now (undriven), but one day... one day.. I will get to take it out again on the road :/

 

My VTX (well, mine also has saddlebags and stuff):

(yeah, it's not a Harley... can't afford a HD or a custom bike just yet...)