November Newsletter

It has been a hectic time at Scottish Developers this past month. We’ve been working hard to update things and we hope you like the result.

Last month we put on a talk by Mike Ormond on An Introduction to ASP.NET MVC. It has to have been the most popular talk we’ve ever put on. We even had to go back to Microsoft, who very generously provided us the venue, to ask if they had a bigger room we could use. We even managed to fill that up and were turning people away a few days before the event because the registration was full.

That talk was arranged after a number of people came to me and said how interested they’d be in learning about that technology. So, if there is anything you’d really love to learn about then please let me know and I’ll do my best to arrange a speaker.

This month we also announced the date of Developer Day Scotland 2. It will be on Saturday, 2^nd May 2009. We will be opening the call for speakers soon. If you are interested in speaking at the conference we’ll give you the details so you can submit your session proposal soon. Developer Day Scotland is a conference by the community for the community of the community (to quote one of America’s founding fathers). It is a democratic process where you, the community, vote on the sessions you want to see. All the speakers are community speakers who volunteer their expertise. And all the organisers volunteer their time to bring your the conference.

As always, we are on the look out for new speakers. If you would like the opportunity to do a presentation on a software development topic from 10 minutes to 90 minutes then get in touch with me at [email protected].

Regards,
Colin Mackay, Chairman, Scottish Developers

Links

ASP.NET MVC Beta 1: The ASP.NET MVC Framework went in to beta recently. Download it here.

Events

17-November-2008 @ 17:00 in Edinburgh (Agile Scotland)
Agile from the Code Face
FREE - Registration Required

This seminar will discuss the current view of Agile development methods as well as common pitfalls in implementing Agile approaches. The talk will also highlight & discuss specific agile methods such as XP and Scrum.

18-November-2008 @ 19:00 in Glasgow (Scottish Developers)
Red! Green! Then What?
FREE - Registration Required

So by now everyone knows about TDD (you do know about TDD right?) and the Red, Green, Refactor mantra, but what’s this refactor thing? How do you do it? What should you refactor? Why should you refactor? In this presentation I’ll show you the how, what and why’s of refactoring. There’ll be little by the way of slides and a lot by the way of code examples. By the end of this presentation you’ll have a good understing of the principles of refactoring and you’ll be eager to get to work on Monday and sort out your codebase!

20-November-2008 @ 19:00 in Dundee (Linux Society)
Flash Talk Night
Cost Unknown

If any of the past Flash Talks evenings are anything to go by then this should turn out to be a great night indeed.  If you are unfamiliar with our flash talk night, then the concept is pretty simple: four speakers doing a 10 minute slot each, on something they find interesting and would like to promote.  The talks don’t have to be about Linux, but they can be. They just have to be something that the speaker would like to share their thoughts on.

26-November-2008 @ 19:00 in Edinburgh (Linux Society)
Groovy and Dynamic Developer Productivity
Registration Required - Cost Unknown

This presentation will address the need for an Agile Language in a traditional project, before introducing the Groovy language, before finally presenting real-world examples of the applicability of Groovy.

26-November-2008 @ 19:00 in Dundee (Scottish Developers)
Functional Programming in C# 3.0
Registration Optional - Cost FREE

The newest version of C# introduces a number of language features that finally make it very easy to employ a functional style of programming. However, from the perspective of an imperative programmer, there are lots of questions surrounding functional programming. Why would I want to do it at all? Should I drop all state information in my apps? What useful functional patters are applicable to C#? This session uses many practical examples (and some theory) to try and answer these questions.

8-December-2008 @ 18:00 in Glasgow (BCS)
Game Based Training/Learning
Cost FREE

No further details available

8-December-2008 @ 18:30 in Edinburgh (Skills Matter)
Agile Estimating and Planning
Cost FREE

No further details available

9-December-2008 @ 19:00 in Glasgow (Skills Matter)
Internet Information Services 7.0 for ASP.NET Developers
Cost FREE - Registration Optional

One of the biggest and best new features of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista is Internet Information Server 7.0.  IIS 7.0 is the latest and most significant release of Microsoft’s Web Server. With this release comes a new extensibility model which gives developers more options than ever before, more diagnostic tools with which developers can debug and locate issues. During the session Andrew will investigate the new architecture, look at extending, configuring and developing for IIS7, take a look at its management user interface, and introduce the debugging and diagnostic facilities within IIS7.

9-December-2008 @ 18:30 in Edinburgh (Skills Matter)
Why Agile Teams Fail
Cost FREE

Martine Devos will run a mini workshop where participants can discuss their real-world challenges and issues with the introduction and implementation of Agile methods in organisations. This will be a highly interactive, audience driven workshop, featuring your questions and challenges, where Martine will endeavour to provide practical ideas and techniques that participants can take away to apply in their organisations.

Further Afield

January:
NHibernate (Glasgow)

February:
Introducing OpenXML (Glasgow)

May:
Developer Day Scotland 2 (Glasgow)