When: 1/17/2012 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Michael Perry

Speaker Bio: Michael is a mathematician. He has applied mathematical concepts to the design and construction of provably correct software, what he calls Q.E.D. code. One example is Update Controls, an open source library that automatically tracks dependencies in your Winforms, WPF, or Silverlight application. Other examples can be found on qedcode.com.

Topic: Synchronizing Data for Line of Business Applications

Summary:

Life is good when you have a fast, persistent connection. You can store all of your data on the server, and run your line-of-business application in a browser.

But today’s workforce is increasingly mobile. They need access to their data on-the-go whether they have a reliable connection or not. Any changes that they make on their local device need to be stored locally. Conflicts between clients need to be identified and resolved.

Synchronizing data between occasionally connected applications is hard. In this talk, you’ll learn 6 rules for modeling data that can synchronize. You’ll learn 4 patterns for applying those rules to solving business problems. And you’ll learn about 1 great framework that makes this problem a lot less hard.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

RSVP: Click here

When: 11/15/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Rob Vettor

Speaker Bio: Rob Vettor is a C# MVP, INETA Regional Speaker and Microsoft .NET Architect/Technical for Jack Henry and Associates, a large financial services software company. Rob has built systems for a number of corporations, including Avanade, Raytheon and American Express. Rob lives in Dallas, TX, with his wife, twin sons, three dogs and rooms full of NET computer books. You can contact Rob at robvettor@hotmail.com, and check out Rob's blog at www.robvettor.com.

Topic: Must-Know Design Patterns

Summary:

Design patterns offer proven solutions to recurring software design problems that you encounter building applications. They also serve as a universal 'vocabulary' for developers to communicate their ideas.

Come walk through 5 key patterns, with easy-to-follow examples, and a clear explanation of the 'how and why' behind each:

• Factory
• Strategy
• Observer
• Template Method
• Decorator

You'll walk away with a clear understanding and examples that you can implement in your projects

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

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When: 10/18/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Brian Sullivan

Speaker Bio: Brian Sullivan is a developer analyst for Falcon Applications, LLC in Shreveport, LA. He got his start in programming maintaining legacy mainframe applications in COBOL at a large trucking company, but quickly realized he needed to find a more productive environment in order to stay sane. He jumped at the opportunity to help transition some of those COBOL applications to .NET, and he hasn't looked back since. He has been working with Microsoft technologies for about 6 years, and is interested in increasing the exposure of agile techniques and methodologies in the Microsoft developer community. He currently runs the Shreveport .NET User Group and speaks frequently at local user groups and regional conferences. He received the Microsoft MVP award for Data Platform Development in 2011. Brian is a graduate of Harding University in Searcy, AR.

Topic: Evolutionary Database Design with Fluent Migrator

Summary: Today, with sophisticated version control systems like Git and Mercurial at our disposal, developers have an unprecedented level of control over the way their codebases evolve. In contrast, database change management feels like a second-class citizen. Emailing database backups to team members doesn't scale, and Visual Studio database projects just feel crufty. But there's another way. In this presentation, Brian will show you how to take control of your schema changes using migrations, and how this can take the pain out of working with databases on a team.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

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When: 9/19/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Devlin Liles

Speaker Bio: Devlin Liles is a Principal Consultant at Improving Enterprises and a Data Platform Development MVP. Since 2007 he has been presenting on software development practices and tools to audiences around the nation. He is a regular nationwide presenter at user groups, conferences, and corporate events. He founded an internal Corporate Software Craftsmanship conference in Northwest Arkansas as well as led the Tyson User group for a year and a half. He is an avid soccer player, passionate technologist and a hobbyist bowler.

Topic: Architecture in Data Access - How not to shoot ourselves in the foot

Summary: Proper architecture is something we all strive for, but most of us realize that it is the art of continual improvement that makes the most difference. In this talk we will start with a poor architecture and through an interactive session we will build this data access architecture into something any enterprise architect would be proud of.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

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When: 8/29/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Chris Koenig

Speaker Bio: Chris Koenig is a Senior Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft in March of 2007, Chris worked as a Senior Architect for The Capital Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect for the global solution provider Avanade. As an Architect and consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana while specializing in Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight development.

Topic: The Developer's Guide to Windows Phone Mango

Summary:

Windows Phone 7 was only the beginning. Later this year we'll release a new version of Windows Phone, codenamed "Mango" that will unlock new capabilities for developers. In this session, Microsoft Senior Developer Evangelist Chris Koenig will deliver a demo-heavy preview of the new features in Windows Phone "Mango" including multi-tasking, background notifications, live tile updates and more. This is session you won't want to miss!

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

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When: 7/19/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Cole Brand

Speaker Bio: Cole Brand is a Developer for Electsolve, a local IT service provider and custom analytics software developer for electrical cooperatives with offices in Shreveport and Austin. He is an active member of the Shreveport developer community as the leader of the Techx20 local Shreveport group, a participating member of the group TechRouler, and is on the Curriculum Committee for the Washington DC DevDays put on by StackOverflow in December 2011. He has a software development background and has been delivering solutions with .NET since 2005.

Topic: Continuous Integration with IIS and Cruise Control .NET

Summary:

Cole will walk through a complete system install and setup and configuration of CruiseControl.NET for a small sample website, and will show how easy it is to get continuous check-ins based builds operating on a local server. He will also discuss some of the other options available on the market and potential additional tools to help facilitate builds. This will be an introductory style speech.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

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When: 5/17/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Mike Huguet

Speaker Bio: Mike Huguet is an Evangelist for Sparkhound, a Microsoft Managed Gold Partner providing IT services to customers with offices in Baton Rouge and Houston. He is an active member of the IT community as the leader of the Baton Rouge .NET User Group, a founding member of the Baton Rouge SQL Saturday event, and an avid speaker at all day conferences and user groups. He has a software development background and has been delivering solutions with .NET since Beta 1 and SharePoint since 2006.

Topic: The Power of ASP.NET 4.0 Dynamic Data

Summary:

ASP.NET Dynamic Data is now a matured offering of the .NET framework. In this session we will take a feature tour demonstrating its power and flexibility. We'll discuss practical usages and customizations.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

RSVP: Click here

When: 4/19/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Michael Perry

Speaker Bio: Throughout his career, Michael has applied mathematical concepts to the construction of software. As a Solutions Architect at AmerisourceBergen, he applies the concepts of eventual consistency, event sourcing, and CQRS to building scalable and robust enterprise systems. He has written about the mathematical underpinnings of various algorithms in C/C++ Users Journal, Delphi Informant, and Code Magazine. Craig Shoemaker interviewed him on the Polymorphic Podcast about Update Controls, an open source project based on the mathematical concept of dependency. You can find out more at qedcode.com.

Topic: Hands-on MVVM

Summary:

As people apply data binding to real applications, patterns have emerged. One of the most prevalent is Model-View-ViewModel. In truth, MVVM is not just one pattern. It is a collection if interrelated patterns. Each person has a different idea of what MVVM actually looks like. This is my opinion.

We will walk through the emergence of MVVM in a WPF application. The goal of this exercise is to understand why it is good to follow these patterns. We are going to start with direct data binding. We won’t add any code until we need it. When we find that things don’t work, we’ll add code to make them work. When things start to get messy, we will refactor to clean them up.

• Model and View
• Dependent properties (but not DependencyProperties)
• ItemsSource and SelectedItem
• The ViewModel layer
• Communicate through the data model

Slides and source code from the talk are at http://qedcode.com/mvvm.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

RSVP: Click here

When: 3/15/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Brian Sullivan

Speaker Bio: Brian Sullivan is an application developer for Falcon Applications, LLC in Shreveport, LA. He has been working with Microsoft technologies for about 6 years, and is interested in increasing the exposure of agile techniques and methodologies in the Microsoft developer community. He is a graduate of Harding University in Searcy, AR.

Topic: Ditch the Designer: Building a More Maintainable Model with the Entity Framework Code-First API

Summary: The whiz-bang visual designer features of the Entity Framework demo well, and may even work for small projects, but anyone who's worked with EF knows that on larger projects, the design surface quickly becomes unusable and a bottleneck to your development process. Thankfully, the Entity Framework team has heard our anguished cries and introduced a new API for defining your EF models, dubbed "Code-First". In this presentation, Brian will guide you through building a true POCO model, basic mapping techniques, and leveraging conventions to keep your mappings DRY.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

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When: 2/07/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Phil Japikse

Speaker Bio: Phil Japikse has been working with .Net since the first betas, and developing software for over 20 years. Phil is a Microsoft MVP and also holds MCSD, MCDBA, CSM, and CSP certifications. Phil is an international speaker and a passionate member of the developer community, speaking at events all around the world as well as serving as the Lead Director for the Cincinnati .Net User’s Group.
Phil works as the Patterns and Practices Evangelist for Telerik (www.telerik.com), is a Firefighter/Paramedic, and a volunteer for the Ski Patrol. You can follow Phil on twitter via www.twitter.com/skimedic and read his blog at www.skimedic.com/blog.

Topic: Mocks, Stubs, and Dependency Injection, Oh My!

Summary: So you aren't writing any code without having tests in place…well, except for those tricky things like web services, database calls, and that section of code that no one wants to touch since it's a pile of spaghetti. I start with a big ball of mud and refactor that using dependency injection, fakes, stubs, and mocks. I will show you how to use Mocks and Stubs to isolate the system under test and write cleaner, more effective tests.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

RSVP: Click here

When: 1/25/2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Mike Moles

Speaker Bio: In January 2010 Mike Moles joined Bizzuka, Inc. a Lafayette Louisiana company, as the Executive Vice President of Systems and Devlopment and CTO.
Prior to joining Bizzuka Mike was President and Chief Executive Officer of Antares Technology Solutions, Inc. for over twenty years. His experience at Antares included company management, project management, systems analysis, and software design and development.
At Antares Mike stayed involved with software development throughout his tenure, just recently helping to lead Antares to the very distinguished recognition of Application Lifecycle Management Inner Circle partner from Microsoft. Antares is the only Microsoft Inner Circle Partner in Louisiana and at the time only one of about 45 in the entire United States.
Mike worked with many software publishers over the years to help them bring products and ideas to market. Some of these companies are: Fifth Generations Systems, Symantec, Communications Research Group, US Robotics, Wards Creek Software, Trace Security to name a few.
As a community-minded individual, Mike is active in area technical councils, economic development efforts, and government technology initiatives. He is on the Board of Directors of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and former president of the Baton Rouge Technology Council (BRTC), a former chairman of the Information Services Cluster of the Capital Region Competitive Strategy, and a former Association of Louisiana Technology Companies (ALT-C) Board Member. Mike has also served on St. Joseph Academy’s Technology Committee, and on St. Luke’s Church Vestry. In 2004, Mike accepted the Louisiana Lantern Award for Information Technology from Governor Kathleen Blanco and Louisiana Economic Development for Antares’ success, contribution, and commitment to the Louisiana economy. In addition, Mike server 3 years as a Board Member of the Girl Scouts of America – Audubon Council, a St. Luke’s Episcopal School Board Member, and is a CABL Leadership Louisiana 2005 Alumnus.
Mike earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
A life-long resident of Baton Rouge, Mike resides in Baton Rouge with his wife, Aimee, and their three sons.

Topic: Application Lifecycle Management & Agile: The Key to Sccessful Projects

Summary: Mike will go over why ALM is so important to the entire organization, not just development. After giving a brief overview of ALM, Mike will discuss Agile, Scrum and how agile should be used for development. We'll then dicuss estimating, the issues with estimating and how it fits in with Agile. We'll talk a little on Product elicitation withing Agile. The entire presentation is centered around TFS, Mike's tool of choice for ALM. If time allows, Mike will do a brief presentation on TFS licensing as of 2010 and why it is very affordable.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

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When: 11/15/2010 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Zain Naboulsi

Speaker Bio: For over 15 years Zain has been teaching and consulting on the latest Microsoft technologies. He's been a Consultant and Microsoft Certified Trainer since 1995 and holds all major Microsoft certifications. He is the creator of Virtual World Evangelism (VWE) which is an effort to build communities in virtual places like Facebook, Second Life, and OpenSim. He is not only a proponent of the community aspect of virtual worlds but also is a supporter of the myriad business applications that these new mediums offer. Zain's efforts have been featured by eWeek, Redmond Developer News, and many others. He has been interviewed by Forrester Research, ThinkBalm, UgoTrade, Gartner, and the Science Channel for his work with virtual world communities. He is a frequent speaker at events in Second Life, Facebook, and other virtual worlds and lectures world-wide to evangelize the future of this exciting new medium.

Topic: Advanced Tips and Tricks in Visual Studio 2010

Summary: So... you have most of the keyboard shortcuts memorized and can navigate without a mouse like a champ. Did you know that is only half the story? There is so much more to using Visual Studio than just keyboard shortcuts. Did you know you can use WinDbg commands (with SOS) inside the IDE? How about creating custom templates to make your work go way, waaaay faster? You can do all these things and more! Come join us as we show you how to take advantage of advanced tips and tricks for Visual Studio 2010.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

RSVP: Click here

When: 10/19/2010 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Rob Vettor

Speaker Bio: Rob Vettor is a C# MVP, INETA Regional Speaker and Microsoft .NET Architect/Technical for Jack Henry and Associates, a large financial services software company. Rob has built systems for a number of corporations, including Avanade, Raytheon and American Express. Rob lives in Dallas, TX, with his wife, twin sons, three dogs and rooms full of NET computer books. You can contact Rob at robvettor@hotmail.com, and check out Rob's blog at www.robvettor.com.

Topic: Getting Started With The ADO.NET Entity Framework, Version 4.0

Summary: While most enterprise applications are object-oriented, the data upon which they depend is not. Often, binding these two platforms together can result in significant amounts of lost productivity and a less than optimal solution.
Come see how you can resolve this recurring theme with the newest release of the ADO.NET Entity Framework.
In this session, we'll...

• Explore the Entity Framework 4.0, its related components and show how it all works
• Demonstrate how to build a business object model (Entity Data Model) and database mappings, from a database, from a model or from code
• Walk through a variety of examples of how to interact with the model
• Take a close look at how and why EF 4.0 implements "Persistence Ignorance"
• Show how to implement Entity Framework in a multi-tiered application

You'll walk-away with a clear understanding of how the Entity Framework 4.0 can greatly simplify your DAL and enable you to program against a conceptual model of your data, versus the actual data store itself.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

RSVP: Click here

When: 9/21/2010 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Tom DuPont

Speaker Bio: Tom DuPont lives in Dallas, Texas, where he is the Vice President of CodeSmith Tools, LLC. Tom is a .NET developer, specializing in C#, ASP.NET MVC, and JavaScript. Tom has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas. In his spare time he enjoys long rides across the country on his motorcycle.

Topic: Code Generation

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

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When: 8/17/2010 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Chris Koenig

Speaker Bio: Chris Koenig is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris worked as a Senior Architect on the Architecture Strategy Team for The Capital Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect, Developer and Development Team Lead for the global solution provider Avanade. As a consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. Chris is a devoted husband and father of four awesome children who keep him very busy. In his spare time, Chris serves as Scoutmaster for his oldest son's Troop, and Committee Chair for his youngest sons' Pack. Chris also enjoys travelling, cooking, camping and playing guitar. You can contact Chris through his blog at http://chriskoenig.net/, via email at chris.koenig@microsoft.com, or via Windows Live Messenger at chris@koenigweb.com.

Topic: Developing Silverlight Applications for Windows Phone 7

Summary: We live in a world today where people place a high demand on getting access to their data wherever they are, whenever they want it. In today?s technology landscape, the primary device available to all people is a mobile phone. In a mobile space arguably dominated byt the competition, Microsoft has been silent for some time about the next evolution of their mobile offering.
The time for waiting is now over!
Join Developer Evangelist Chris Koenig for a detailed look into Microsoft?s latest offering in the mobile space ? the revolutionary Windows Phone 7 Series. Based primarily on Silverlight and XNA, Windows Phone 7 Series provides a very rich and powerful development platform. In this session we?ll explore the Windows Phone 7 Series architecture, development patterns, design and development tools, and more. We?ll walk through some sample code as well as building a sample Windows Phone 7 Series application from scratch. You?ll leave this session with a solid understanding of what Windows Phone 7 Series is all about, and what it takes to build killer applications today!

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

RSVP: Click here

When: 7/20/2010 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Rob Vettor

Speaker Bio: Rob Vettor is a C# MVP, INETA Regional Speaker and Microsoft .NET Architect/Technical for Jack Henry and Associates, a large financial services software company. Rob has built systems for a number of corporations, including Avanade, Raytheon and American Express. Rob lives in Dallas, TX, with his wife, twin sons, three dogs and rooms full of NET computer books. You can contact Rob at robvettor@hotmail.com, and check out Rob's blog at www.robvettor.com.

Topic: Advance Your Debugging Skills with VS 2010

Summary: As a developer, you can easily spend 50% or more of your time in a debugger. Learn how to maximize your debugging productivity by leveraging the new debugging features in Visual Studio 2010.

In this session, we'll...

• Dive deep into the new IntelliTrace (formerly, historical debugging) feature, which enables you to step back in time within your debugging session and inspect or re-execute code, without having to restart your application.
• See how to manage large numbers of breakpoints with labeling, searching and filtering.
• Extend "data tips" by adding comments, notes and strategically "pinning" these resources to maintain their visibility throughout your session.
• Demonstrate "collaborative debugging" by debugging a portion of an application and then exporting breakpoints and labeled data tips, so that others can leverage your effort, without having to start over.
• Leverage these new debugging features in applications built in earlier versions of the .NET Framework through the MultiTargeting features available in VS 2010

You'll walk-away with a clear understanding of how you can use this upcoming technology to vastly increase your productivity and build better software.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LA map

RSVP: Click here

When: 6/15/2010 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Casey Watson

Speaker Bio: Casey Watson is a Technical Lead with RAPP (http://www.rapp.com/), Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, avid blogger, and proud father. For the last five years, Casey has been focused on helping customers realize business value through the development of quality software products, primarily on the Microsoft .NET platform. As a Certified Scrum Master, Casey is a firm proponent of agile practices and deeply believes in the value of product over process. Recently his focus has been on 3.5 technologies such as WCF and WPF, building rich Windows-based applications for several major financial and retail firms. While not blogging, coding, or updating his Twitter status, Casey enjoys spending time with his family and never turns down an ice cold bottle of Blue Moon.

Topic: MonoTouch

Summary: Interested in building iPhone applications but don't have the mental bandwidth or time to learn a new programming language? Join us as we take a deep dive into the MonoTouch platform and learn how to build rich, functional mobile applications using familiar development technologies and patterns such as C#. We'll start off with a gentle introduction to the MonoTouch framework and the Mono project in general then plunge into building a complete Twitter client from scratch. Join us as we go beyond assemblies and syntax and talk about the user experience implications of building mobile software. I think you'll be surprised at how easy MonoTouch is to pick up and how quickly you can get started development and publishing usable applications for today's top mobile platform.

Location: CoHabitat - 610 Commerce St., Shreveport, LAmap

RSVP: Click here

When: 5/25/2010 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Cory Smith

Speaker Bio

Cory Smith maintains a .NET related blog at AddressOf.com and is very active in the .NET community. His community involvement includes: President of the Dallas/Fort Worth DNUX group, Vice President of the Fort Worth .NET Users Group, VBInsider Member, Microsoft MVP, member of the South Central District Developer Guidance Council and a member of the INETA Speakers Bureau. A veteran developer (professionally writing software for almost 20 years) working on projects ranging anywhere from major e-commerce sites such as RadioShack.com and InterstateBatteries.com to applications that are at the heart and soul of over 4600 radio stations around the world. His work history includes working for Tandy/RadioShack, Rare Medium, Inc., Electric Works Corp., Scott Studios Corp. and Shiny Stone Digital.
In his spare time, Cory is also owns and operates a combative martial arts academy, coaches a MMA fight team, is an avid motorcycle enthusiast and attempts to watch every action movie ever released.

Topic: Windows Forms vs WPF/Silverlight: A Candid Conversation

Summary: What is the future of Windows Forms? If I stay with Windows Forms, am I SOL? Why should I move to WPF/Silverlight? Should I choose WPF or Silverlight? What tools are available for working with these new technologies? What are third-party component vendors providing that can help me? These are the questions that aren't answered when we see the glitz and glamour of technology demos regarding WPF/Silverlight; so these are the questions that we'll tackle head on.

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

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When: 4/19/2010 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Zain Naboulsi and John Weston

Speaker Bios

Zain:
For over 15 years Zain has been working with the latest Microsoft technologies. He's been a consultant and trainer since 1995. He currently creates the Visual Studio Tips and Tricks series. Also, he created Online Community Evangelism; which is an effort to build communities in virtual places like LinkedIn, Facebook, and elsewhere. He is not only a proponent of the community aspect of online environments but also is a supporter of the myriad business applications that these new mediums offer. Zain's efforts have been featured by eWeek, Redmond Developer News, and many others. He has been interviewed by Forrester Research, Gartner, and the Science Channel for his work. He is a frequent speaker at events in LinkedIn, Facebook, and other online venues. Zain also lectures world-wide on a variety of developer topics.

John:
Some may call John a geek. He prefers the term "technologist." Truth is, John began working with computer games before PCs even hit the scene - and he's probably got a dusty prototype stashed somewhere to prove it. He's a fourth generation educator who loves to help people learn new technologies and relishes that magic moment when the light comes on in their eyes. Before joining Microsoft full time, he spent six years as an MCT, training people at a local college and getting new Microsoft hires up to speed. John holds more certifications than he can remember, but the list definitely includes MCSE, MCDBA, MCT, and CCNA. His favorite technology is SQL and he gets a special thrill from solving customers' problems. For John, there's nothing like coaxing people from panic to joy when a server goes down and he can help get the business back up on line. When he's not working, John can usually be found sailing around Texas with his kids.

Topic: .NET Framework 4.0 Features & Cloud Computing

Summary: Seriously, the .NET Framework 4.0 is awesome! Come join Zain Naboulsi as we take a look at what's new and what's changed. Learn about Parallel LINQ, T4 Templates, Entity Framework changes, SortedLists, and much, much more! This is one session you don't want to miss!

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

RSVP: Click here

When: 2/16/2010 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Ken Byrd

Speaker Bio: Ken Byrd is a .NET consultant and mentor with more than 20 years of experience designing and building client/server and web-based distributed database applications. He has worked with a variety of languages including C, C++, Delphi, C# and VB.NET and has worked extensively with Microsoft .NET since the initial Beta releases.
Ken graduated from Baylor University in 1986 with a B.S. degree in Computer Science and currently works in Dallas with TekFocus, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Learning Solutions where he teaches advanced development classes in C#, VB, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, WCF, Workflow, ADO and WPF.
Ken is also a member of the INETA Regional Speaker's Bureau and is a frequent speaker at various user groups and community events throughout the area.

Topic: jQuery for .NET Developers

Summary: Occasionally a software product comes along that fundamentally changes the way we do things... jQuery does that to the world of client-side JavaScript! In this introductory presentation, Ken Byrd will show you how to incorporate jQuery into your ASP.NET WebForms and MVC applications. You'll be surprised at how easy it is!

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

RSVP: Click here

When: 1/19/2010 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Brian Sullivan

Speaker Bio: Brian Sullivan is a developer analyst for Praeses, LLC in Shreveport, LA. He has been working with Microsoft technologies for about 5 years, and is interested in increasing the exposure of agile techniques and methodologies in the Microsoft developer community. He is a graduate of Harding University in Searcy, AR.

Topic: Introduction to Object-Relational Mapping with NHibernate

Summary: Object-Relational Mappers (ORMs) have started to make their way into mainstream .NET development with the advent of LINQ-to-SQL and the Entity Framework from Microsoft. Before that, though, there was NHibernate. Based on the Java Hibernate project, NHibernate is one of the most mature .NET ORMs in the marketplace. The Fluent NHibernate project builds on this to make NHibernate a breeze to configure. In this presentation, Brian will discuss the pros and cons of ORMs in general, and demonstrate how NHibernate can take the pain out of writing your persistence layer.

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

RSVP: http://bit.ly/sdnugrsvp

When: 11/16/2009 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Speaker: Jon Dalberg

Speaker Bio: Jon Dalberg is a Senior Consultant with Antares Technology Solutions in Baton Rouge, LA. He has been writing software professionally since 1994 and .Net since its initial release. Jon specializes in mentoring and training other software developers on new and existing technologies and agile techniques. Jon is the co-leader of the Baton Rouge .Net User Group (www.brdnug.org) and one of the organizers for Baton Rouge SQL Saturday.

Topic: Dependency Injection - Why you need to know about it and how it can help you design better software

Summary: We will walk through arguments for modular design that eventually lead us to DI. We will discuss some tools that help us manage those dependencies. Plenty of demos and beautiful slides!

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

When: 10/19/2009 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Speaker: David Penton

Speaker Bio: David L. Penton lives in the Dallas, Texas area and has a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, LA. He currently is a Lead Software Development Engineer / Performance Lead at Telligent Systems, Inc. Before that, he was a technical lead for the International Systems Group and then in Merchandising Systems at JCPenney, Inc., in Plano, TX. Before that, he was a senior business and analysis analyst for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control in Grand Prairie, TX. During that time he has worked on various technologies. He currently spends most of his time with C# and SQL Server. Database platforms he has dealt with (development and admin) include but not limited to SQL Server, Oracle, DB2. David is a member of the ASPInsiders and was formerly a SQL Server MVP for several years and is now an ASP.NET MVP.

Topic: Deep Dive Into Microsoft Velocity

Summary: There are several external caching engines that are available. Now Microsoft is busy developing their own caching engine called "Velocity". This promises to provide the ability for application developers to horizontally scale their applications across numerous servers by providing unified cache across all application instances. This presentation will give an overview of "Velocity", the basics of requirements and installation, and an explanation of the basic areas of interest within "Velocity" such as Named Caches, Regions and Cache Items. The samples in this demonstration include code for accessing cache, and how this can integrate with the ASP.NET cache.

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

When: 9/21/2009 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Speaker: Jeffrey Palermo

Speaker Bio: Jeffrey Palermo is the CTO of Headspring Systems. Jeffrey specializes in Agile management coaching and helps companies double the productivity of software teams. He is instrumental in the Austin software community as a member of AgileAustin and a director of the Austin .NET User Group. Jeffrey has been recognized by Microsoft as a "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional" (MVP) in Solutions Architecture for five years and participates in the ASPInsiders group, which advises the ASP. NET team on future releases. He is also certified as a MCSD.NET and ScrumMaster. Jeffrey has spoken and facilitated at industry conferences such as VSLive, DevTeach, the Microsoft MVP Summit, various ALT.NET conferences, and Microsoft Tech Ed. He also speaks to user groups around the country as part of the INETA Speakers' Bureau. His web sites are headspringsystems.com and jeffreypalermo.com. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University, an Eagle Scout, and an Iraq war veteran. Jeffrey is the founder of the CodeCampServer open-source project and a cofounder of the MvcContrib project.

Topic: ASP.NET MVC in Action

Summary: With the new version of ASP.NET, developers can easily leverage the Model-View-Controller pattern in ASP.NET applications. Pulling logic away from the UI and the views has been difficult for a long time. The Model-View-Presenter pattern helps a little bit, but the fact that the view has to delegate to the presenter makes the UI pattern difficult to work with. This session is a detailed overview of the ASP.NET MVC Framework. It is meant for developers already building systems with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1.

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

This event is made possible by sponsorship from INETA, the International .NET Association.

When: 8/17/2009 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Speaker: Zain Naboulsi

Speaker Bio: For over 15 years Zain has been teaching and consulting on the latest Microsoft technologies. He's been a Consultant and Microsoft Certified Trainer since 1995 and holds all major Microsoft certifications. He is the creator of Virtual World Evangelism (VWE) which is an effort to build communities in virtual places like Facebook, Second Life, and OpenSim. He is not only a proponent of the community aspect of virtual worlds but also is a supporter of the myriad business applications that these new mediums offer. Zain's efforts have been featured by eWeek, Redmond Developer News, and many others. He has been interviewed by Forrester Research, ThinkBalm, UgoTrade, Gartner, and the Science Channel for his work with virtual world communities. He is a frequent speaker at events in Second Life, Facebook, and other virtual worlds and lectures world-wide to evangelize the future of this exciting new medium.

Topic: A Tour of Visual Studio 2010 (Beta 1 Edition)

Summary: You've heard about it and now you want to see it for yourself: Visual Studio 2010. Take a ride with us as we learn about new features like Highlighting References and Generate From Usage. Generate a database from your conceptual model by using the Create Database Wizard. Check out the new VB.NET Auto-Implemented Properties and C# Call Hierarchy features. This is a session you don't want to miss!

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

When: 7/20/2009 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Speaker: Keith Elder

Speaker Bio: Keith Elder is the co-host of the popular online technology podcast Deep Fried Bytes. He is also a Team Leader / Sr. Software Engineer for Quicken Loans, the nation's largest online mortgage lender based in Livonia, MI and is the founder of the Hattiesburg, MS .Net User Group called Hub City NUG. Keith is an experienced technologist, systems administrator, software engineer, speaker, trainer and all around geek.

As an experienced educator, trainer and speaker he has logged thousands of hours in front of the classroom teaching students of varying ages from the 6th grade to the college level. He has trained countless developers from various business sectors ranging from top auto manufactures, fortune 500 companies and Universities.

As a Microsoft MVP and INETA speaker he speaks throughout the United States at major technical conferences, Code Camps, and .Net User Groups. Keith's ability to explain complex topics with a friendly common sense southern attitude make him a highly regarded speaker at technical conferences. You can read more about Keith's interests, hobbies, rants and raves on his blog at http://keithelder.net/blog/.

Topic: Demystyfying Windows Communication Foundation

Summary: Windows Communication Foundation was released with the .Net 3.0 framework and is the future of the platform for distributed computing. With .Net 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) became a first class citizen with additional tooling and add ons for Windows Workflow Foundation. In this session we are going to look at WCF from the standpoint of how to transition from ASMX web services and some of the important things you should know about WCF. If you have been hesitant in adopting WCF and still writing ASMX web services, this session will hopefully put you over the edge to giving WCF a try. I assure you, once you do, you will never look back.

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

This event is made possible by sponsorship from INETA, the International .NET Association.

When: 5/18/2009 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Speaker: Zac Kleinpeter

Speaker Bio: Zac is an analyst at Praeses, LLC in Shreveport, Louisiana. He has experience with a variety of technologies, but is currently working in (and greatly enjoying) Ruby on Rails. Zac has a passion for technology, but also enjoys many non-geek pursuits, such as raquetball, brewing his own beer, and spending time with his daughters, Elizabeth and Eva.

Topic: CouchDB

Summary: CouchDB is a free and open source document-oriented database written in the Erlang programming language. It is designed for extreme scalability and is easily deployed to multi-core or multi-server clusters. Zac will present an overview of CouchDB, demonstrating how to use it from a coding perspective, as well as discussing situations where a document database would be a good fit for an application.

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

When: 4/20/2009 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Speaker: Chance Coble

Speaker Bio: Chance Coble is a partner and founder of A6 Systems, LLC. Chance is a regular speaker and author on the topic of functional programming for the real world. His career as a functional programmer began several years ago with Haskell, and he now works full time as a consultant and teacher in F# for applications ranging from scientific computing to advanced enterprise solutions. Prior to A6 Systems Chance was Senior Scientist at Ideal Innovations, Inc where his inventions were applied to mission critical systems for the DoD, DHS, DARPA and other government agencies around the world. He has an MS in Bioinformatics from the University of Texas at Houston and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Topic: The F# Language

Summary: Chance Coble will give a presentation on F#, Microsoft's new hybrid OO/Functional programming language for the .NET platform. In this talk he will give a general overview of the language, and walk through some real world examples of its use. The audience will walk away with an understanding of where this language fits, when to bring it into a project and where to go to learn more.

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

When: 3/16/2009 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Speaker: David Mohundro

Speaker Bio: David Mohundro is a software developer at Data-Tronics, Corp. in Fort Smith, AR and is a co-founder/leader of the Fort Smith, AR .NET User Group. He has over 5 years of experience developing software using technologies ranging from classic ASP and JavaScript to Windows Forms and WPF. David is enthusiastic about building decoupled and maintainable applications using practices such as Test Driven Development and he strives to be a lifelong learner. You can contact David through his blog.

Topic: The Power of Powershell

Summary: PowerShell is the a scripting language and environment from Microsoft built on top the of the .NET Framework. It offers functionality ranging from helping developers be more productive by automating their repetitive tasks to allowing them to create build scripts in a DSL-like syntax. It is being used heavily by Microsoft in the soon-to-be-released Windows 7 as the basis for the automatic troubleshooting system and is also featured in both IIS 7 and SQL Server 2008.

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

Since we've had a bit of trouble with the CMS system we were trying to use for the site, we've decided to switch to just a static HTML site. That's all we really need anyway, and hopefully it will be a little more accessible to our members.

The details about previous meetings, plus the slide decks and other resources from those meetings will be put back on to the new site shortly. We wanted to get the more usable site out on the web as soon as possible. We hope you like the new look!

When: 11/19/2008 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: David Penton

Speaker Bio: David L. Penton lives in the Dallas, Texas area and has a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, LA. He currently is a Lead Software Development Engineer / Performance Lead at Telligent Systems, Inc. Before that, he was a technical lead for the International Systems Group and then in Merchandising Systems atJCPenney, Inc., in Plano, TX. Before that, he was a senior business and analysis analyst for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control in Grand Prairie, TX. During that time he has worked on various technologies. He currently spends most of his time with C# and SQL Server. Database platforms he has dealt with (development and admin) include but not limited to SQL Server, Oracle, DB2. David is a member of the ASPInsiders and was formerly a SQL Server MVP for several years and is now an ASP.NET MVP.

Topic: A New Approach to HttpRuntime.Cache Management

Summary: ASP.NET has a wonderful built-in framework for managing Cached items within a website in the namespace System.Web.Caching. It is accessible from HttpRuntime.Cache (among other ways, such as from System.Web.UI.Page.Cache). You have great flexibility with the data you may wish to cache. With this flexibility, there is an extremely important piece missing from HttpRuntime.Cache - and that is thread safety. Not from inside of the Cache, but from the external code that accesses it. Websites under high load could cause a cache item to be populated multiple times. Web applications are multi-threaded (whether you know it or not!). This is wonderful and wicked at the same time. Why, do you ask? This discussion will show you how to manage safely loading items into HttpRuntime Cache. I will also describe methodologies for easily load collections in a thread safe manner.

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

When: 11/17/2008 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Brian Sullivan

Speaker Bio: Brian Sullivan is a developer analyst for Praeses, LLC in Shreveport, LA. He has been working with Microsoft technologies for about 4 years, and is interested in increasing the exposure of agile techniques and methodologies in the Microsoft developer community. He is a graduate of Harding University in Searcy, AR

Topic: Debugging Evolved - An Introduction to Automated Unit Testing

Summary: Automated Unit Testing has started receiving some "buzz" in the Microsoft developer community in the last few years, and even Microsoft itself has gotten into the game by creating its own unit testing framework. Brian will cover the basics of unit testing using the NUnit framework. The goal of this presentation will be to give the audience an entry-level understanding of how unit testing frameworks function to open the door for study into more complex topics, such as Test Driven Development

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

When: 10/20/2008

Speaker: Rob Vettor

Speaker Bio: Rob Vettor is a Microsoft .NET Architect/Senior Solution Developer, who has built systems for a number of corporations, including Avanade, Raytheon and American Express. Rob, an avid Toastmaster and 'hacker golfer,' founded the Dallas .NET Architecture User Group (http://www.dotnetarch.com) , and is a member of the Microsoft South Region Developer Guidance Council. Rob lives in Dallas, TX, with his wife, twin sons, three dogs and rooms full of computer books

Topic: LINQ

Summary: While most enterprise applications are object-oriented, the data upon which they depend is not. Today, binding these two platforms together results in a significant amount of lost productivity as well as a less than optimal solution. Come and take a detailed look at the "LINQ Project " to see what Microsoft is doing to help bridge the mismatch between OO and relational data. We will take a close look at the following areas:

• How LINQ manifests a move from an imperative to a declarative style of programming.
• New language and framework extensions that provide a single, unified approach to querying data.
• Examples of querying data from multiple data domains: In-memory, database, ADO.NET constructs and XML documents.
• A look at the upcoming Microsoft Entity Framework.
• How LINQ might fit into a multi-tiered application

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map

When: 8/18/2008

Speaker: Chris Koenig

Speaker Bio: Chris Koenig is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris worked as a Senior Architect on the Architecture Strategy Team for The Capital Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect, Developer and Development Team Lead for the global solution provider Avanade. As a consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. Chris is a devoted husband and father of four awesome children who keep him very busy. In his spare time, Chris serves as Scoutmaster for his oldest son's Troop, and Committee Chair for his youngest sons' Pack. Chris also enjoys travelling, cooking, camping and playing guitar. You can contact Chris through his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/chkoenig, via email at chris.koenig@microsoft.com, or via Windows Live Messenger at chris@koenigweb.com.

Topic: Silverlight 2.0 - Next Generation Web Applications

Summary: Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web

Location: Centenary College, Wright Math Building Room 103 - map