CINNUG Blog : General News

Want to Volunteer Your Development Time?

MikeWo — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:54:15 GMT

A group of local visionaries are working on a project to help bring some insight into all the nooks and crannies of interesting places, people and history of Cincinnati – Secret Cincinnati. They are planning a weekend on March 5th, 6th & 7th to bring together designers, planners and developers to produce a viable web presence for their project. If you are interested you should check out the site to learn more.

This is somewhat like the “In One Weekend” events, but the goal isn’t to produce a company at the end. This won’t lead to a new job, but it will be a chance to work with some other developers on a cool project you can point to and say, “I helped code that”.

Reminder – ASP.NET MVC Firestarter Event on Oct. 17th

MikeWo — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:21:16 GMT

Don’t forget that CINNUG will be hosting an ASP.NET MVC Firestarter event on Saturday, October 17th at the Microsoft Office in Mason, OH. If you haven’t already registered you can do so at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=140750.

What is an ASP.NET MVC Firestarter? Well, check out the event description:

Have you heard of ASP.NET MVC, but just haven't had time to look into it? Are you ready to explore a different way to work with ASP.NET? If you've answered yes to either of these then the ASP.NET MVC event is for you! On Saturday, October 17th the Cincinnati .NET User Group, in co-operation with Microsoft, will be hosting a day long event designed to introduce you to ASP.NET MVC technologies.
The event will be broken down into introductory sessions that cover the basics for getting started with ASP.NET MVC development:

○ Keynote presented by James Bender
○ Introduction to ASP.NET MVC presented by Tim Wingfield (with special guest Steve Horn)
○ Testing with ASP.NET MVC presented by Phil Japikse
○ Using JQuery with ASP.NET MVC presented by Leon Gersing
○ ASP.NET MVC on Azure presented by Bill Steele
○ Panel Discussion: Compare Webforms with ASP.NET MVC

Come out and join us to learn about ASP.NET MVC. The event will take place at the Microsoft office in Mason, OH. Lunch will be provided. Please note that public wireless access will not be available.

Nerd Dinner the night before!

There will be a nerd dinner the night before for anyone interested in hanging out prior to the event. The dinner will on Friday, October 16th at Dewey’s pizza in West Chester starting around 6:30 PM. Please RSVP at http://nerddinner.com/1129.

Elections for Directors for 2009

MikeWo — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:34:49 GMT

Nominations for CINNUG Directors were taken at last month’s meeting for the 2010 year. Elections will be held at the next regular CINNUG meeting, Tuesday, October 27th. In order to vote you must have attended at least 3 meetings out of the last 6 months (both CinARC and CINNUG count).

Phil Japikse will be the new Lead Director for CINNUG as he was the only one nominated for the position. The remaining three (3) Director positions received quite a few nominations. Below are the nominees who have accepted and are eligible for the positions:

Matt Brewer
Andy Erickson
Nino Benvenuti
Ernie Stormann
Jennifer Griffin
Mike Wood

Note that this is not a popularity contest in any way. Please vote for the person you think will help lead the group well over the next year. This person should be passionate about the community and interested in continuing to make CINNUG a great place of .NET developers to learn and share from one another.

Winners will be announced after the vote and will assume their roles in November of this year.

2009 Membership Drive!

MikeWo — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:46:47 GMT

In June we started our 2009 membership drive which will end at our November meeting. For each meeting of CINNUG or CinARC you attend you get a chance to win one of our prizes (but you must be present in November to win). For each friend you bring that has never been to a CINNUG or CinARC meeting you'll get another chance to win. If you come to a special event you'll also get another chance to win. As you can tell, this can add up pretty fast. NOTE: Attending Bitslingers does NOT count towards your chances to win.

We've published that fact that our membership drive is in full swing, and how to get chances, but up until now we haven't indicated what the prizes will be. You’ll have to keep an eye out on this blog to see what great prizes we have this year. Last year we gave away a 1 year MSDN license subscription, a 1 year subscription to the online book resource Safari, an XBox 360 and several other great items.

If you want to win you have to come to the November meeting. You can still pick up some chances to win as we have many more meetings prior to our November meeting. Come and bring a friend!

Interested in SharePoint? This seminar may be for you

MikeWo — Sat, 23 May 2009 10:59:00 GMT

IBS is having a Free seminar at the Microsoft Mason Offices on Friday, May 29th. The seminar is entitled SharePoint Server 2007: 5 Ways to Improve your Intranet.

Weather Policy for Meeting on 1/27/2009

MikeWo — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:46:00 GMT

[Monday, 1/26/2009 - 6:46 AM] - Given the current reports the CINNUG staff is keeping a close eye on the weather conditions. We will have a decision on if the meeting is cancelled up on the website by 12:00 PM NOON on Tuesday, if not before. If we decide to cancel we will send out the notification in as many ways as we can think of. Please keep an eye on the website (http://cinnug.org), this blog, twitter and the newsletter. Also, please make your own decision regarding your safety. Some of us live in areas that are not as quick to clear roads and driving conditions can be difficult even when the Mason area is completely clear.

UPDATE: [Tuesday 1/27/2009]: The meeting has been cancelled.

Membership Drive

MikeWo — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:35:29 GMT

In July we started our membership drive which will end at our November meeting on Tuesday, November 25th. For each meeting of CINNUG or CinARC you attend you get a chance to win one of our prizes (but you must be present in November to win). For each friend you bring that has never been to a CINNUG or CinARC meeting you'll get another chance to win. If you come to a special event you'll also get another chance to win. As you can tell, this can add up pretty fast.

We've published that fact that our membership drive is in full swing, and how to get chances, but up until now we haven't indicated what the prizes will be. Well, the time has come to spill the beans (on at least some of the prizes):

An Xbox 360 Elite
1 year subscription to the O'Reilly Safari Books Online service.
$1,000 worth of training from MAX Technical Training

And the big winner will get a 1 year Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscription. Yep, that's right, the big prize is a year's subscription to the highest level of MSDN you can get worth $10,939 MSRP! Now that's a cool prize to get just for coming to some meetings.

If you want to win you have to come to the November meeting on 11/15. You can still pick up some chances to win as we have four more meetings prior to our November meeting (two CinARCs, a CINNUG meeting and a special event). Come and bring a friend!

August 2008 Meeting Recap

DanHounshell — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:32:00 GMT

August 2008 Meeting Recap

This month Leon Gersing talked about Script.aculo.us and Prototype. Jim Holmes also spoke about Code Complexity. The materials for Jim's presentation can be found here. We hope to post Leon's presentation at the CINNUG download site soon and a blog entry will be created to announce the posting.

Attendance (33): Remember our 2008 membership drive. The rules are the same as last year: come to a meeting and get a chance to win. Bring someone to a meeting that has never come before and both you and your guest get a chance to win. This year's membership drive will end at the November CINNUG meeting. Note that attending CinARC and any CINNUG Special events DO count towards you chances to win! You must be present in November to win.

Announcements:

The 2008 Membership Drive has started! Come to CinARC and CINNUG meetings to get chances to win. We haven't decided on the prize this year, but last year it was an XBox 360.
Elections for CINNUG Directors will be held in October. All the rules and such can be found in our Bylaws but in order to nominate, be nominated or become a Director you must be a Supporting Member, which means you have attended at least three out of the last Six meetings inclusive of Oct). You must also be a Supporting Member to vote.
MSDN Unleashed - Oct 7th at the MS office in Mason
ArcReady - Oct 7th at the MS Office in Mason
If you are interested in starting a book club please contact the CINNUG Administrators. This will be members reading a technology book and meeting to discuss it.
If you are interested in getting together for some peer/pair programming sessions to solve fictional problems for the purpose of learning TDD, BDD, patterns, coding styles and perhaps even other languages contact the CINNUG Administrators. We are tentatively thinking of calling these Bitslinger events or Code Fests.

Upcoming Events

The 2008 Indy Techfest has been announced and will be held on October 4^th. http://www.indytechfest.com/
Ann Arbor Day of .NET will be October 18^th. http://dayofdotnet.org
The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has opened registration! This is a huge conference out in LA that is only held when Microsoft has big announcements to make. October 27th-30^th, preconference Oct. 26th. http://www.microsoftpdc.com

September Meetings:

We have two CINNUG related meetings coming in September! Remember that each one you attend gets you a chance to win the Membership Drive prize.

CinARC Meeting (Tuesday, September 9th)

Come join this new special interest group as we discuss topics related to software architecture. This meeting is run using the fishbowl technique where the attendees are encouraged to share their thoughts with everyone while keeping the meeting from becoming a free for all. :) What topic will we cover? Well, that's up to the attendees!

The CinARC meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 9th at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason , OH .

CINNUG: Microsoft Project Astoria and the Semantic Web (Tuesday, September 16th at Microsoft Office in Mason, OH)

The goal of Microsoft Codename Astoria is to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by web clients within a corporate network and across the internet. The Semantic Web brings to the Web the idea of having data defined and linked in a way that it can be used for more effective discovery, automation, integration, and reuse across various applications. Astoria applications are reachable over HTTP, and URIs are used to identify the various pieces of information available through the service. Chris will show how the Semantic Web can bring new opportunities to your business and/or clients using new technologies like the Astoria Project.

Presented by: Chris Woodruff

Chris Woodruff is an Architect in the West Michigan Practice group at NuSoft Solutions. His work involves integrating new technologies, assisting development teams with architecture designs, and helping with development standards. Chris is the VP of the West Michigan .NET User Group and also is an Advisory Council Member at Capella University for the External Information Technology Advisory Council. Chris is the founder and coordinator of the Day of .NET West Michigan and also helps with other Day of .NET events in Michigan. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the College of Engineering at Michigan State University. In his spare time, Chris coaches his sons sporting teams and plays poker.

Grok Talk: Narayana Yeluru will be presenting a shorter talk on Google Maps and Virtual Earth.

The CINNUG meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 16th (Special Night and Place!) at 6:00 PM at the Microsoft Office in Mason, OH.

TDD Talk this week at CincyPG

MikeWo — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:05:00 GMT

Phil Japikse, who is a regular at the CINNUG and CinARC meetings, will be presenting his Test Driven Development in .NET talk for the Cincinnati Programmer's Guild (CincyPG) on Wednesday, July 20th (that's this Wednesday!). If you aren't familiar with the CincyPG they are non-platform specific user group that meets at MAX on the third Wednesday of the month at 6:00 PM. We have some cross over of members from our groups so if you want to learn more about the group ask Joe W. or Maggie L. about it at the next meeting. You can find out more about the group at their website: http://cincypg.org/.

Try Safari Books Online...for free!

MikeWo — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:21:20 GMT

You can try out the Safari Online service for a 10 day free trial. Here's some info on it:

"Safari ® Books Online Library is like having your own personal reference library filled with content from thousands of books and videos by the most respected authors and publishing brands in the industry. Get online access to more than 6,000 books from top technology publishers, including Addison-Wesley Professional, Cisco Press, Exam Cram, IBM Press, Prentice Hall, Que, and Sams. Start your free trial today!

URL: www.Informit.com/safaritrial"

DevLink Bus

MikeWo — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:21:43 GMT

For those interested in riding the bus to DevLink there is now an official DevLink Bus page! Go fill in the contact form so that you can get your name on the list. More information is forthcoming as the organizers are soliciting sponsors to help offset the cost. If you know of a company that is interested in getting their name one the devLink bus page and on a banner/sign for the bus then please contact us so we can forward the information on to the organizers.

If you have been waiting to buy your devLink pass (registration) then don't wait too much longer. The early registration deadline ends July 3rd. Right now the cost is $50.00 while starting July 4th it bumped to $75.00.

June 2008 Meeting Recap

MikeWo — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:13:20 GMT

a:link { color: #000000; }

The June meeting went off really well. This month we had Tim Wingfield come talk to us about ASP.NET MVC. It was great to have Tim drive down from Columbus to share with us. After the pizza Leon Gersing gave a quick pattern talk on the Single Responsibility Principle.

Attendance (47): Once again average attendance is picking up! This is great. We are thinking of starting another membership drive. Last year we gave away an Xbox 360! We'll see what we can rustle up this time.

Announcements:

Please remember that starting this month our monthly meetings shifted to the Fourth Tuesday of every month (switching nights with CincySQL). Our next CINNUG Monthly meeting will be on July 22nd.
Starting with the July CinArc meeting the SIG will meet monthly on the second Tuesday of every month! Thanks to MAX Technical Training for again providing us a space and night to meet. Next time you're in MAX be sure to thank Stacey for her time.

Upcoming Events

Would you like to give to charities but don't have the cash? What about sharing your coding or design skills instead? Check out the Ann Arbor Give Camp! On July 11th-13th developers from around the Heartland district will be coding to help charities. They really need help with this so if you can spare some time they are even willing to get remote help. Donate your code to charity and skip the drive to MI. Contact me immediately if you are interested in helping.
CodeStock is a one day event similar to a Day of .NET. It is in Knoxville, TN on Saturday, August 9th. Get registered and find out more at their website.
devLINK bus! If you are interested in going to devLINK, but don't feel like driving there is a bus-share being organized by Amanda Laucher. Let me know at admin@cinnug.org if you are interested and I'll get your name to Amanda. More information about the bus will be hopefully be out later this week.
There will be a Kentucky Day of .NET in Louisville, KY on August 30th. They are in the process of getting things squared away but keep an eye on this site. Speakers: They will be putting out a call for speakers soon.
September 6th: Chicago Day of .NET. Notice a pattern? These things are popping up everywhere!
Do you want to discuss improving software development? Oh, do you want to do it while camping? Then this is just the thing for you. The Agile Summer Camp is the weekend of September 5th-7th in Brighton, MI. They have a cabin reserved.
The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has opened registration! This is a huge conference out in LA that is only held when Microsoft has big announcements to make. http://www.microsoftpdc.com

July Meetings:

We have three CINNUG related meetings coming in July! Mark your calendars it's going to be a busy month.

CinARC Meeting (Tuesday, July 8th)

The CinARC meeting will be held on Tuesday, July 8th at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, OH.

Open Spaces Event (Wednesday, July 9th)

The Dayton .NET Developer Group and CINNUG are teaming up to put on an Open Spaces Event! MAX Technical Training is graciously hosting the event at their Mason facility. Open spaces events are not about "eyes front" presentations, but rather about sharing the views of the attendees on topics they've chosen. Several talks will be going on at once throughout the building, so come join us! As usual, pizza will be provided.

The Open Spaces Event will be held on Wednesday, July 9th at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, OH.

CINNUG: Creating a Silverlight 2.0 Presentation in Silverlight 2.0 (Tuesday, July 22nd)

Get ready for a recursive experience! This presentation is actually a Silverlight 2.0 application which gives a presentation about the features of Silverlight 2.0 and how to use them to build a presentation about Silverlight 2.0. Got that? You'll learn about the XAML elements, dynamic languages, data binding and networking support available in Silverlight 2.0 Beta.

This is the same presentation Matt gave at CODODN, however with the newest release of Silverlight 2.0 at MIX his talk has been updated.

Presented by:

Matt Casto

Matt Casto is a Developer for the Application Development consulting practice at Quick Solutions, Inc. He has been designing and programming web and windows applications on the Microsoft platform for 10 years. Recently, Matt has been focusing on learning all things Silverlight and also wrote the CodeMash Session Scheduler (http://www.codemash.org/sessionscheduler/). Matt maintains his blog at http://programwith.net/

The CINNUG meeting will be held on Tuesday, July 22nd at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, OH.

Test your SQL Skills

MikeWo — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:07:15 GMT

ReviewNet has posted a SQL skills test that you can use to review your SQL abilities. Here is the announcement they sent the group:

"ReviewNet would like to extend an opportunity to your user group members to take our new SQL Server skills tests to evaluate their skill level. Individuals that complete a beta test will be credited as an advisory panel member on our website at http://www.reviewnet.net/meetexperts.cfm. Individuals receive their test results and can see where their skills compare with other test takers. Participants also qualify for our Advisor Rewards program and a chance to receive quarterly cash prizes. You can learn more by visiting http://www.reviewnet.net/advisor.htm. I would like to extend this opportunity to you and your members."

Special Announcements!

MikeWo — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:37:00 GMT

A few new things have cropped up since our May Recap newsletter that I wanted to share prior to the June meeting.

June Special Event: XNA & Robotic Studio with Bill Steele! (Thursday, June 19th)

If you like to tinker with electronics or are interested in learning how you can code games for your PC, Xbox 360 or Zune then you won't want to miss the CINNUG Special Event this month! Bill Steele from Microsoft will be giving us an introduction on XNA and Robotics Studio. This special event is for the hobbyist in all of us and while it most likely won't lead you to that break through answer at work it will be a lot of fun! There will be two presentations with food (yes, pizza) served between them.

Since this will occur before our next meeting please help me spread the word by forwarding this information on to your co-workers and friends who may be interested.

The June Special Event will be held on Thursday, June 19th at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, OH.

Other Announcements:

Please remember that starting in June our monthly meetings will shift to the Fourth Tuesday of every month (switching nights with CincySQL).
Would you like to give to charities but don't have the cash? What about sharing your coding or design skills instead? Check out the Ann Arbor Give Camp! On July 11th-13th developers from around the Heartland district will be coding to help charities.
Speaking of giving to charity. Do you have some older hardware that you want to get rid of? Stacey at MAX Train has been working with a charity to get computers to needy kids locally as well as to class rooms in 3rd world countries. If you have some old hardware you'd like to donate be sure to talk to Stacey the next time you're at MAX.
devLINK bus! If you are interested in going to devLINK, but don't feel like driving there is a bus-share being organized by Amanda Laucher. Let me know at admin@cinnug.org if you are interested and I'll get your name to Amanda.
Pluralsight and Microsoft are putting on a half-day presentation on the "Next Web Roadshow". There will be topics on WPF, Silverlight and ASP.NET. Find out more and register at http://shrinkster.com/ycd.
Save the date of Wednesday, July 9th from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM. The Dayton .NET Developers Group and CINNUG are hosting an Open Spaces event at MAX Training in Mason. Look for more information to come on this.
Starting with the July CinArc meeting the SIG will meet monthly on the second Tuesday of every month! Thanks to MAX Technical Training for again providing us a space and night to meet. Next time you're in MAX be sure to thank Stacey for her time.
The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has opened registration! This is a huge conference out in LA that is only held when Microsoft has big announcements to make. http://www.microsoftpdc.com

June Meeting:

CINNUG: Getting Started with ASP.NET MVC (Tuesday, June 24th)

Are you finally tired of trying to maintain state in your web forms? The event model and page lifecycle finally pushed you too far? Fear not, ASP.Net MVC is on its way. 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.

Presented by: Tim Wingfield

Tim has been involved in web design and development for over 10 years. For the last three 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. He has been involved with many successful projects for clients in health care, government, and consumer services, among others. In what time is left over, Tim enjoys coaching his sons' hockey teams and playing a little hockey himself.

The June CINNUG meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 24th at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, OH.

CiNPA Technical Fair! May 31st

MikeWo — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:31:28 GMT

Call it the resurrection of Hackers' Night! CiNPA (Cincinnati Networking Professionals Association) is bringing it back to life in a new iteration - the CiNPA Technical Fair.Would you pass this on to the appropriate folks on your staff and/or colleagues who would be interested in this a day of information exchange and new product trends in networking. Technical presentations include Novell, Cisco, IBM, Vmware, HP, Microsoft, Datacore and Systemax, Trend Micro, Storage Craft, and more. Training & Education organizations as well as Professional Associations will also be there.

Saturday, May 31 from 9am-4pm.

Cost is $5 for non-members (free to CiNPA members). Box Lunch provided. Lots of great door prizes!

Cincinnati State Technical & Community College,
Evendale Campus
10100 Reading Road (Directions)

NOTE: REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=126353