Central Ohio .NET Developers Group

How are your software estimation skills?  If your answer was "dude, I'm terrible at estimation", you're not alone.  Being able to accurately estimate software is a skill every developer should have but research and statistics show it's a skill few actually possess. In this session, we'll talk about why we have so much trouble with this key skill and then discuss some strategies for improving our software estimation chops.

Michael Eaton

Michael Eaton is an independent consultant currently living in southern Michigan. Since 1994, Mike has been designing and implementing high quality, robust solutions using Microsoft technologies including .NET and SQL Server. When not working on projects or spending time with his family, he enjoys blogging, playing his XBox 360 and hanging out with friends.

When

Thursday, 06/25/2009, 6:00 - 8:00pm

Are you finally tired of trying to maintain state in your web forms? Ready for a little request, response like the web was intended? Fear not, ASP.Net MVC has made it to v1.0 and has seen some maturity over the past year. In this talk we’ll investigate getting started with the MVC Framework, how it differs from Web Forms, and all with an eye towards TDD.

Tim Wingfield

Tim has been involved in web design and development for over 10 years. For the last five years Tim has been a developer with the Business Solutions Group at Quick Solutions Inc. in Columbus, OH. Tim has a wide range of knowledge in .Net but focuses on the user interface and the user experience in ASP.Net applications. Recently he has put more time into studying development processes and how to more efficiently create quality software. In what time is left over, Tim enjoys coaching his sons’ hockey teams, playing a little hockey himself, and traveling with his family.

This session will cover the highlights from the Mix 09 (http://mix09.com) conference in Las Vegas, NV. There were many large announcements, including the release of Internet Explorer 8, Silverlight 3, and Expression Blend 3.  We will cover the new features of IE8, including Web Slices, Accelerators, and how they are useful to developers.  We will also be taking a look at a new tool for developers called Super Preview, which allows us to manage the "browser differences" we have all come to hate in a simple visual way.  Finally, we will be taking a look at a new rapid prototyping tool called SketchFlow.  This tool has the potential to change the way you begin constructing software in the future.

Jeff Blankenburg

Jeff Blankenburg is an ultra-passionate web developer who works for Microsoft.  As a Developer Evangelist, he has the unique responsibility to consult and advise software developers about the new tools, technologies, and practices available to them.  Jeff's previous roles as a software developer allowed him to build industry-changing websites and marketing efforts for Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ford Motor Company, Sony, and several major pharmaceutical companies.  Through many major speaking engagements and an active technically-focused blog, Jeff has established himself as a valuable resource to anyone writing software or looking for advice on their next software endeavor.

Come learn about the idea of deliberate practice as applied to the craft of software development.  Alan Stevens will perform (less than) amazing feats of coding and he will do it for your enjoyment in real time.

Alan Stevens

Alan Stevens is a father, a geek, a vegetarian and a software artisan living in Knoxville, TN. Alan, a Microsoft MVP in C#, regularly speaks at industry conferences and user groups.

Much emphasis has been placed on writing unit tests for .NET code, but most people have never written unit tests for JavaScript code.  In this talk we'll show you test driven development in action as we review JavaScript unit test frameworks and write unit tests for JavaScript code.

Jon Kruger

Jon Kruger is a Project Engineer with Quick Solutions where he provides technical leadership for .NET development projects.  Jon has over 6 years experience in various different programming languages (mostly C#/.NET) and is always looking for ways to create better quality software and speed up the software development process.  You can follow Jon on his blog (jonkruger.com) or on Twitter (twitter.com/jonkruger).

Topic #1: Silverlight in the Enterprise

Building powerful, rich experiences is getting easier and easier, or is it? We will discuss how Silverlight can be leveraged to build more powerful enterprise experiences that meet the appetites of the modern enterprise user. We will address common pitfalls of building applications with this fledgling framework and how you can overcome them to produce dazzling results that don't break the bank.

Topic #2: Microsoft Surface: Beyond the Silver Screen Hollywood has its new heart throb and it is Microsoft Surface, but is it ready for business? We will demonstrate how to build real world Surface Applications that could add life to any venue be it at the office or in the store.

Speakers 

Jason Kerns

Jason Kerns is a Senior Consultant at Avanade. With more than nine years of experience, Jason has developed solutions for a variety of industries including a financial institution, an educational software firm and an insurance company. He is proficient in various .Net technologies including web application development and back-end business services. Jason earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University.

Mark Tinderholt

Mark Tinderholt is a Manager and Presentation Layer Technologies Community Lead at Avanade. Mark has over 10 years of experience in Web & Rich Client development and has successfully implemented solutions in the Financial Services, Retail, and Consumer Goods Manufacturing industries. Mark has extensive experience architecting and building enterprise solutions with Microsoft’s next generation presentation layer technologies WPF and Silverlight, as well as Microsoft’s multi-touch offerings Microsoft Surface and Wintouch. Mark holds degrees in Computer Science, Actuarial Science, and Mathematics. 

When

Thursday, 01/22/2009, 6:00 - 8:00pm

Where

Microsoft Office - Columbus

This presentation will talk about what Azure is, what its purpose is, and why keeping your head in the cloud is important.  We will also dive into Live Services, one component of Azure, and talk in detail about what they are, and how they can help you build applications.

Speaker

Jeff Blankenburg

Jeff Blankenburg is a Developer Evangelist for the Microsoft Corporation. Over the past 10 years, Jeff has successfully implemented his technology expertise in numerous industries including retail, education, and healthcare. Jeff has exceptional proficiency in user-interface design, Web Standards, and web application development. He is a contributor to the O'Reilly title Windows Developer Power Tools on the subject of code validation services. Jeff is also an organizer of the CodeMash conference. Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. 

When

Thursday, 12/11/2008, 6:00 - 8:00pm

Where

Microsoft Office - Columbus

The phrase “drive quality upstream” has been abused so badly by ALM software vendors that it has to be relegated to the platitude junk pile along with such all time favorites as “work smarter not harder,” “Think outside the box,” and “Synergistic leveraging of code reuse.”  Before we drive quality anywhere we need to give quality a seat at the table. VSTS Rosario release will do this by automatically gathering critical information about the project and code and making that data available when, where and to whom it is needed. During this discussion we will examine how Rosario impacts quality across the application lifecycle by:

• Allowing testers to provide developers with details about what the code did instead of just providing the details about what the tester did.
• Allowing development leads and architects to visualize and understand their current code (not the code they wish they had, but the code they really have) so that they can minimize the impact of changes; and
• Allowing developers to understand the impact of their changes in terms of affected tests, concurrency and bounds checking. 

The Rosario release of VSTS will bring all project stakeholders together to allow richer information to be shared across every role to make software quality accessible and achievable.

Speaker

Mark Mydland

Mark Mydland is the Principal Group Manager for the Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Testers product at Microsoft.  In the past 12 years, Mark has worked as a developer and consultant across a wide variety of applications and industries.  Mark first joined Microsoft in 2001 working as a member of the Natural Interactive Services Division (NISD).  During his time in that group, Mark was the development manager for a team focused on analytics for assessing the efficacy of natural language interpreters with a particular emphasis on driving authoring simplification and relevance quality for user assistance.  Based on this work, Mark filed numerous patents and coauthored a paper for the SIGIR journal.  In 2004, Mark left Microsoft to work as a Director of Development at Getty Images where he led a change in process from a traditional waterfall methodology to a scrum-based agile approach which brought the release frequency from 12-18 months down to 1 month.  Since Getty made extensive use of VSTS, it seemed a natural fit for Mark to join VSTS on his return to Microsoft in 2006.  Mark received his B.S. from West Point in 1991.  He has also held positions with USWeb/marchFirst and Andersen Consulting/Accenture. 

When

Friday, 11/14/2008, 6:00 - 8:00pm

Where

Microsoft Office - Columbus

Functional programming is making such a huge splash in the software world with concurrency becoming more important than ever! Microsoft is taking this very seriously by adding a new first class language to the next version of Visual Studio. F# is Microsoft's fusion language that has a major functional focus in addition to the object oriented capabilities. This discussion will focus on what functional programming is, and how it can change the way you think about solving complex business problems. We'll learn about functional constructs, and design as well as what makes this language so important. You'll also walk away knowing how to get started with F# and a basic understanding of the syntax.

Speaker