Brian H. Madsen - .Net Powered by Caffeine : Linked .Net Users Group

LIDNUG is now using Eventbrite to schedule events - why?

Brian Madsen — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 04:13:00 GMT

The Linked .Net Users Group has grown quite big, with a very diverse member base, spread out over the whole world.

Since we began running monthly events we have been using LinkedIn's own, inbuilt Event system with quite a bit of mixed results.

Now, we're changing the event listings to Eventbrite - why?

Well, the Events application on LinkedIn has become stagnant - no movement or answers to any requests for feature updates has come from LinkedIn and there's been quite a few detrimental ones.

First and foremost, we've had some issues with Events dissapearing - luckily that got resolved and since late last year that hadn't happened again. But some fundamental features were needed, considering that we have members from all over the world.

#1 Support for time zones (yes, oddly enough, LinkedIn Events does not support time zones at all)
#2 Add event to calendar feature (yes, another feature we've requested)
#3 Ability to get a full listing (easily) of all attendees (this is handy for when we have prizes and such, naturally, the information would never, ever be forwarded to anybody)

A few other things made it easy for us to change - such as, you have to be logged in/a member of LinkedIn (ok, small issue seeing as almost all developers/professionals are on LinkedIn, right!) to be able to register for the events. With Eventbrite that's not needed.

Secondly, Eventbrite has a Developer API so now we can start to create custom features which will make it easier for members to get to our event details - and there's been a LOT of feature requests from members plus some great ideas from our GMs.

It's also now going to be easier than before to find our events - simply go here: http://lidnugevents.eventbrite.com/ and you can see the current listings for our events.

So, are we leaving LinkedIn? of course not - LIDNUG has thrived on LinkedInn - it's our official home. If you aren't already a member, join up and become involved with our very, very active discussions and job listings.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=43315

Lastly, our unofficial site has already (finally?) been released - we will of course continue to expand on that site, but our home is on LinkedIn.

http://www.lidnug.org

This is where we will store all of our recordings (we are migrating them from our old site as fast as possible) as well - so check it out as well.

LIDNUG: Scott Guthrie Talks Shop IV recording now live

Brian Madsen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:09:19 GMT

After yet another fantastic session with Scott Guthrie last week, we’ve uploaded the recording from the session.

The man just simply doesn’t stop amazing me – his depth of knowledge is phenomenal, to put it mildly.

Naturally the upcoming releases of Visual Studio 2010, ASP.Net 4, .Net 4, Silverlight 4 etc were the most prominent topics for questions put Scott’s way.

To download the recording, go to our unofficial web site – www.lidnug.org/presentations.aspx

While you’re there, why not download Joe Albahari’s session recording – What’s new in C# 4.0 – this was probably one of the best technical sessions we’ve had yet.

LIDNUG: What’s new in C# 4.0 with O’Reilly author and MVP, Joe Albahari

Brian Madsen — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:17:25 GMT

The Linked .Net Users Group is putting on a huge range of “shows” in the next couple of months – starting with an absolute kick-ass presentation by Joe Albahari (www.albahari.com) the author of C# 3.0 in a Nutshell and the upcoming of C# 4.0 in a Nutshell, plus not to forget he’s the creator of one of the best LINQ tools out there – LINQPad.

yes, i know that it’s on Australia Day here, but it’s at 7AM – not quite drunk yet and what better way to kick off the day with some supreme geekdom!

About the event:

Title	What’s new in C# 4.0
Venue	Live Meeting
Date	January 26, 3PM PST
Cost	FREE (duh!)
Presenter	Joe Albahari (http://www.albahari.com) Joe Albahari, author of C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, is a software architect and developer with 17 years' experience in the health, education and telecommunication industries. He is currently a Systems Architect at Technosis in Australia. Joe has a keen interest in LINQ, and is author of LINQPad - the code snippet IDE for interactively querying databases in LINQ. He specializes in integrating LINQ into corporate multi-tier applications and creating extensions to maximize query composability. Joe is also a C# MVP.
About the event:	C# 4.0 introduces some of the most controversial new language features to date - including optional parameters, named arguments and (horror) dynamic typing! In this presentation, Joe will demonstrate C# 4.0's new features in a practical context, exploring potential uses, benefits, traps and best practices. You'll see a novel design pattern that may change your opinion on dynamic programming, and also how C# 4.0 simplifies interop with Office, COM and dynamic languages such as Python. Register for the event: http://events.linkedin.com/LIDNUG-Whats-new-C-4-0-Joe-Albahari/pub/208474

LIDNUG: A lap around Telerik Developer Tools for Web Developers

Brian Madsen — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:30:21 GMT

First event for LIDNUG in 2010 – Telerik is sending their very best: Todd Anglin.

A fellow MVP and also Telerik Chief Evangelist, Todd Anglin’s known for his huge contributions to the community as well as his book “Introducing Silverlight 1.1” which was released in June 2009.

As usual, this is a Live Meeting event and will be recorded.

About the event:

Title:	A lap around Telerik Developer Tools for Web Developers
Venue:	Live Meeting
Date:	January 7, 11:00AM PST
Cost:	FREE (duh!)
Presenter:	Todd Anglin (http://blogs.telerik.com/ToddAnglin/Posts.aspx)
	Todd Anglin is an active .NET community member, President of the North Houston .NET User Group, an O’Reilly author, Microsoft MVP and Telerik's Chief Evangelist. At Telerik, Todd is responsible for educating Telerik's global community of developers and helping ensure Telerik's products serve the needs of .NET developers around the world. In the general .NET community, Todd is an active author and speaker, focusing primarily on ASP.NET and Silverlight.
About the event:	As pragmatic developers, we want to find ways to minimize the time we spend writing “standard” code so we can maximize the time we spend writing code that makes our businesses money. Telerik offers many tools and components designed to enable just that: maximum developer productivity. Come join Telerik Chief Evangelist and Microsoft MVP Todd Anglin for a quick lap around the various tools and components Telerik now makes to maximize the speed of web development. Everything from advanced server controls for ASP.NET AJAX to modern UI extensions for ASP.NET MVC to related tools like OpenAccess ORM and Telerik Reporting will be covered. Come figure out how these tools can be used together for great results in your next project. Two Telerik Premium Collection licenses will be given away to randomly selected attendees of this session.
Register for the event:	http://events.linkedin.com/LIDNUG-Lap-Around-Telerik-Developer/pub/147370

LIDNUG: Phil Haack in the hot chair, open Q&A on ASP.Net MVC – Dec 14 10:30AM PST

Brian Madsen — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:19:00 GMT

Ever wondered what ASP.Net MVC is all about? Well, you now hat the chance to ask all the questions of Phil Haack when he takes a seat in the hot chair for a full Q&A on ASP.Net MVC at the Linked .Net Users Group (LIDNUG).

More and more applications are utilising the extremely flexible/powerful MVC framework and with the latest release of Project Orchard (Open Source ASP.Net MVC CMS) on CodePlex it’s now even easier to get going with ASP.Net MVC. ASP.Net MVC 2 has also just been released to Beta.

About the event:

Title: Phil Haack in the hot chair – open Q&A on ASP.Net MVC
Venue: Live Meeting
Date: December 14, 10:30AM PST
Cost: FREE

About Phil Haack:

Phil is a self-professed geek, Open Source supporter (running the Subtext project) and a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft on the ASP.Net team working on the ASP.Net MVC framework.

He’s an internationally acclaimed author (Amazon), speaker and technology evangelist.

Moreover, he’s a family man…

Phil Haack’s blog: www.hacked.com
Phil Haack on twitter: www.twitter.com/haacked

ASP.Net MVC: www.asp.net/mvc

You don’t want to miss out on this event….

LIDNUG: Scott Guthrie Talks Shop 3 recorded session now available

Brian Madsen — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:04:36 GMT

Yeps folks!! the recording from todays open Q&A with Scott Guthrie is now available for download.

Scott answered questions across the board, both about current releases, upcoming releases and specific platform/product features.

Needless to say, Scott’s a fountain of knowledge!

Download the recorded session here: http://www.lidnug.org/presentations.aspx

LIDNUG: Scott Guthrie Talks Shop III, Monday 23 Nov 11:30AM PST

Brian Madsen — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:39:00 GMT

Didn’t attend PDC – want to hear what the biggest announcements was straight from The Gu himself?

Well, now you have a chance – The Linked .Net Users Group (LIDNUG) is holding an open Q&A session with Scott Guthrie on Monday the 23rd of November, at 10:30AM 11:30AM PST (UTC-8).

Hell, even if you attended PDC 09 and was right in the middle of things, you know as well as i do that you can’t be everywhere at once and here’s your chance to ask Scott the questions you really wanted to at PDC 09.

To register for this free event, use your LinkedIn account and click here:

http://events.linkedin.com/LIDNUG-Scott-Guthrie-Talks-Shop/pub/144324
We will also be taking questions directly from Twitter – just twitter:
- @ScottGu #LidnugLiveQ your question here

Want to keep up with all the other LIDNUG events coming up, including Phil Haack on Dec 14, simply subscribe to our Live calendar here:

http://bit.ly/lidnughtmlcalendar

Look forward to seeing you there!

Note: Apologies for the mishap with the time – my computer had inadvertedly applied daylight savings change, which we no longer do here in WA. Correct time is 11:30AM PST.

LIDNUG: Project “Dublin” overview for application developers – Craig McLuckie

Brian Madsen — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:12:54 GMT

LIDNUG is bringing you an action-packed two months, leading up to Christmas. The first in a range of highly anticipated talks is Craig McLuckie’s Project “Dublin” overview for application developers.

The session will cover the following topics:

An overview of “Dublin”

“Dublin” service hosting extensions for .NET 4 – the role of the workflow management service, “Dublin” federated instance control capabilities, service autostart to reduce latency on first activation
Monitoring and troubleshooting .NET 4 WCF and WF services – a consolidated ETW based event model, open and extensible monitoring database
Deployment and configuration of .NET 4 WCF and WF services –service deployment with configuring services to work with “Dublin”
“Dublin” tooling –PowerShell based scripting layer, InetMgr plugin that provides an at-a-glance dashboard for service health, rich event querying capabilities, and supports most service related administrative tasks

How to get the most out of “Dublin” extensibility

Durable services extensibility
Monitoring extensibility
Tooling extensibility

Event Date: November 10, 2009

Event Time: 10:00AM-11:30AM PST (GMT-8)

LIDNUG: Visual Basic.Net with Lisa Feigenbaum, Oct 29

Brian Madsen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:07:33 GMT

Another stellar line of speakers are coming to LIDNUG – On the 29th of October we’ll be visited by Lisa Feigenbaum for a good look at Visual Basic.Net.

Lisa is a Program Manager in the Visual Basic team at Microsoft. She’s going to talk about what’s new in VB.Net and answer any questions you have.

Thursday, 29 October 2009

	Time		10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
	Subject		Visual Basic .NET with Lisa Feigenbaum
	Registration		http://bit.ly/UZeXW
			Lisa Feigenbaum is a Program Manager in the Visual Basic Team in Microsoft. She's going to talk about what's new in VB.NET and answer any questions you might have. blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/tags/lisa%20f eigenbaum/default.aspx

LIDNUG: Scott Guthrie session recording now available for download

Brian Madsen — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:51:49 GMT

It’s almost like a broken record, but i still can’t stop saying it – Scott Guthrie absolutely rocks!

In his open Q&A session for the Linked .Net Users Group (LIDNUG) he again dazzled us all with his “geeky” brilliance..seriously, i’m starting to think there’s at least a couple of thousand Gu clones walking around for him to retain that much knowledge!

In a 1 1/2hr session he answered questions from the attendees (252) and it was as usual a brilliant session.

For those that missed out – here’s a tidbit…The Silverlight team is working hard on Silverlight 4 already….He owns other coloured polos as well, not just red ones (????).

Lastly, head on over and download the recorded session from our archives – my voice’s still rather raspy/croaky etc, so i elected not to speak during the session (nobody’d be able understand me anyways).

LIDNUG: Scott Guthrie talks shop with developers II

Brian Madsen — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 01:27:51 GMT

Scott Guthrie will be visiting the Linked .Net Users Group (LIDNUG) for a second time this year, with a follow up on his first open Q&A session.

Event details:

Topic: Scott Guthrie talks shop with developers II - Open Q&A with Scott Guthrie
Date: August 25, 9:00am PDT (list of local times)
Cost: FREE
Registration: http://bit.ly/fbKNC

Prizes: JetBrains ReSharper & DevExpress CodeRush and Refactor

At this open Q&A session Scott Guthrie will answer questions from the attendees via Live Meeting.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to find out where ASP.Net, MVC, .Net is heading!

LIDNUG: Life inside the Big Blue Monster – Scott Hanselman’s recording available

Brian Madsen — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:53:15 GMT

Scott Hanselman; Author, code guru and internet legend visited LIDNUG late last week in an open Q&A session which gave us a bit of an insight into his life inside and outside of Microsoft.

In his normal humorous self, Scott took is through to his garage and showed us his arcade machine, which he built himself all the while answering a ton of questions from the attendees.

He also explained how he juggled work vs family life, talked about some of his likes and dislikes about working for Microsoft.

Download the recorded session from LIDNUG’s archives.

LIDNUG – Announcing an action packed August

Brian Madsen — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:27:47 GMT

It's that time again and wow, do we have a line-up this month that you definitely don't want to miss!!

First off, thanks to all the members who voted in the "Bring Sara Ford to MSFT Tech-Ed Australia" poll - it's now official and Sara Ford will be giving a Tips and Tricks presentation at this years Australian Tech-Ed.

July also saw the conclusion of the voting for our new logo - thanks to everybody who participated and congratulations to Dave Herren for submitting the winning entry.

see http://www.lidnug.org for the winning entry.

Upcoming events in August
---------------------------------------------------------------

August 13, 2009 at 10:30AM PDT
Scott Hanselman - Life inside the Big Blue Monster, a random Q&A
- http://events.linkedin.com/LIDNUG-Life-inside-Big-Blue-Monster/pub/90969

August 25, 2009 at 9:00AM PDT
Scott Guthrie - Talking Shop with Developers II
- http://events.linkedin.com/LIDNUG-Scott-Guthrie-talks-shop/pub/90959

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

As usual, these are Live Meeting events and will be recorded - of course, attending in "person" is half the fun.

Have you ever missed any of our events? Want to keep up to date with the most popular discussions in the group? Want to ask a question?

LIDNUG is now twittering, are you following us?

- http://www.twitter.com/lidnug

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on info[at]lidnug.org.

LIDNUG gets a new logo

Brian Madsen — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:39:28 GMT

The Linked .Net Users Group has just gotten itself a new logo – we had 10 entries and the vote fell on Dave Herren’s submission after 1 month of voting.

Congratulations to Dave Herren for his win!

LIDNUG: Tim Heuer presentation recording now available on www.lidnug.org

Brian Madsen — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:17:13 GMT

The recording of Tim Heuer’s presentation earlier this month, was delayed due to disk space running out – that’s been sorted out and the recording is now available for download over on www.lidnug.org.

The topic of the night was Silverlight 3 and Tim showed us around some of the new features as well as answered questions from the audience.

To download his presentation (or others), click here.

LIDNUG: Advanced Developer Features in Visual Studio 2010

Brian Madsen — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:03:43 GMT

We got a quick session coming up this July 21st at 10:30AM PDT, featuring advanced developer features in Visual Studio 2010.

Advanced developer features in Visual Studio 2010:

Time: July 21, 2009 at 10:30AM PDT - 11:30AM PDT

Experience a tour of what’s coming soon in Visual Studio 2010 for debugging, profiling, analyzing and diagnosing your applications so they are capable of 24x7 reliability and of scaling to enterprise loads.

Not only will you get to see the technology in action, you’ll get a chance to ask questions to a member of the Microsoft team responsible for delivering those features.

Come get the inside scoop, and get a leg up on all the other development teams out there!

Presenters: Visual Studio Program Managers Daryush Laqab and Andrew Hall

Registration and event details: http://events.linkedin.com/LIDNUG-Advanced-developer-features/pub/93249

LIDNUG: Tim Heuer presenting on Silverlight 3 this week

Brian Madsen — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:54:07 GMT

Join us for a Silverlight 3 talk with Tim Heuer at the Linked .Net Users Group on Thursday the 9th of July, 2009 at 10:30AM PDT.

We currently have 140 registered to attend and it promises to be a seriously cool presentation.

As usual, the event is presented via Live Meeting!

LIDNUG has also been looking for a new logo and voting has started for the submissions.

See the submissions here and vote: http://www.lidnug.org/community.aspx

Voting will close by the end of the month!

We’ve also reached an astonishing number of members – with now more than 27,000 registered members!

So, even though it’s summer in the northern hemisphere there’s still plenty of opportunities left to learn about all the new stuff coming out!

Since 2009 saw the kickoff for the Linked .Net Users Group, with both some hugely successful events and a massive amount of positive feedback, we’re definitely not resting on our laurels!

August will see us have both Scott Hanselman and Scott Guthrie present, on the 13th of August and 25th of August respectively!

As usual we’ll be recording all of our events and make them available from the LIDNUG web site.

LIDNUG: Double the Scott in August

Brian Madsen — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:47:39 GMT

The cat’s out of the box (or is that the dog?) as the Linked .Net Users Group will see Scott Guthrie return to our monthly meetings in August.

Last time we had Scott around, we had a massive 518 attendees to the event and it was a resounding success!

Obviously Scott enjoyed himself and promised he’d be back – so, here’s following up on that promise with a tentative date of the 25th of August, 2009 (that’s 25th US time, will be 26th for us in the AustralAsia region, my bad).

Did i say Double the Scott?? yessir, indeed!

Scott Hanselman will also be grazing us with a visit, albeit his first for us (nudge nudge!!) – The date we’ve currently put down is the 13th of August, 2009.

What will we be talking about? we’ll see, it’s not in concrete yet, but i’m guessing (probably rightly so) that The Gu will do another Q&A for us, since it’ll be right off the back of Tech-Ed US!

We’ll let you know where to register as soon as we get a full green light from both!

LIDNUG: Sara Ford session recording now available

Brian Madsen — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:39:00 GMT

Late Sunday evening, midnight for some residents in the US, and early morning Perth time had Sara Ford present for the Linked .Net Users Group.

The title for the presentation was “Embrace Open Source with CodePlex” and had Sara showcase the different features and functionalities available to projects on CodePlex.

Attendance was low, but we’re factoring in the time of day as this was our first “out of business hours” event, in an attempt to drive more international members to the presentations. Well, lesson learned…

The recording of the session is now available over on the lidnug.org site.

To download the recording, or to download past recordings, go to: www.lidnug.org/presentations.aspx

It’s well worth a look and as usual Sara brought her exuberance and energy to the floor.

LIDNUG: Sara Ford Embraces Open Source on CodePlex

Brian Madsen — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 07:09:19 GMT

Tomorrow we’re having the first, hopefully of many, event that caters not specifically for the US.

Sara Ford is presenting on Open Source on CodePlex at 9pm (PST time, which is middle of the day Perth time).

So, if you’re a software developer interested in running an open source project, or just looking around for a particular tool to download, come check out the latest from CodePlex.

Registration link: http://events.linkedin.com/LIDNUG-Sara-Ford-Embrace-Open-Source/pub/65637

Hope to see you there…