NWADNUG: Jay Smith - Exposing Yourself with RSS and ATOM Syndication

Lightning Presentation

Title: 2009 Tech Salary Survey
Description: Discussion about the current trends for 2009 in Tech Salaries.

• Employee Concerns about Career Marketability
• Salary Satisfaction
• Average Salaries by Metro Area & Region
• Average Salaries by Job Title & Industry
• Average Salary of Skills, Years Experience, and Company Size

Presenter: Jeremy Wilson works for GDH Consulting as a recruiter. GDH Consulting provides professional services solutions in Information Technology and Business Management uniquely tailored to the needs of our clients. GDH has earned continuous repeat business from our client partners since 2001, and is recognized by Inc Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in 2006, 2007, and 2008. I have been with GDH for 4 years as an Account Manager and Recruiter working with small, medium, and large sized clients in the NW Arkansas IT market.

Main Presentation

Title: Exposing Yourself with RSS and ATOM Syndication

Description: In just about every web application today some amount of information is exposed via RSS or ATOM feeds. Many frameworks have been developed to give your applications this functionality. With the release of Windows Communication Framework a new set of classes were added to allow for the creation and consumption of RSS and ATOM feeds right in the framework. This session will take an look at these classes and how they can be used to generate feeds of any kind from your application.

Presenter: Jay Smith works for Tyson Foods, Inc. where he is a PMO Architect and Evangelist, and is a former President of the Northwest Arkansas .Net User’s Group. Jay currently serves on the INETA Speakers Committee and works diligently with others on test bed projects to learn new concepts and designs. You can read more about Jay on his blog http://www.jaysmith.us or follow his tweets at http://twitter.com/jaysmith.
Jay regularly presents to user groups on various topic including Design Patterns, Visual Studio 2008, Enterprise Library, WPF, and Unit Testing. He is a registered speaker on Codezone, you can make speaker request through there or contact him directly.

Swag:

Resharper 4.5 License
Microsoft T-Shirt
Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Book
Restful .Net Book
Inside Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Web Services Book
Build a Program Now Visual Basic 2008 Book

When:
5:30 PM - 5:45 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
5:45 PM - 6:00 PM - Lighting Presentation
6:00 PM - 6:10 PM - Intermission – Presenter switch over
6:10 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room 226 (Kansas City Room)

NetMeeting URL: http://snipr.com/nwadnug
Link RSVP URL: http://snipr.com/ha6du

jQuery Intellisense with VS 2008 SP1 Tips

If you are a poor schlub stuck working on a ASP.NET Webforms project and not an ASP.NET MVC project, you may run into a few hiccups getting the jQuery Intellisense working along the way. Scott Guthrie has a great tutorial, but a couple of important steps are missing. I would like to mention that this is less of an issue with ASP.NET MVC because all of the required files are included in the default project template.

How Did I Get Into This Mess?

You would first go to jquery.com to download the “min” file which is (currently) titled “jquery-1.3.2.min.js”. Following ScottGu’s instructions, you would get the Visual Studio Documentation file linked from his page here and would end up with a documentation file named “jquery-1.3.2-vsdoc2.js”. There are two confusing aspects to this file name:

1. It has the number “2” at the end of vsdoc
2. It does not have the “min” section

Does this really matter? No, because all you need to do is match the original jQuery file name and add the text “–vsdoc” before the “.js”, but it adds to a rookies confusion.

The Big Finish

Since you are a pragmatic developer and wish to write unobtrusive javascript, you would create a separate js file and prefix it with this line:

/// <reference path="~/Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" />

Our new javascript file, the original “jquery-1.3.2.min.js” file, and our newly renamed “jquery-1.3.2.min-vsdoc.js” all reside in a “Scripts” folder. Now we can use jQuery Intellisense to chain the heck out of some methods.

$("#test").addClass('hidden').click();

NWA Code Camp

Join us at the NWA Code Camp this SATURDAY at NWACC!

WHAT IS Northwest Arkansas Code Camp 2009?
CodeCamp events are designed for the software developer community at large. These events are put on by developers for developers all across the county. They are a place for developers to come and learn from their peers about topics that are always based on community interest. Code Camps are always free for attendees.

WHAT TOPICS will be presented?
A wide variety of topics of interest to the developer community including:

.NET
Unit Testing
LINQ
SharePoint
Design Patterns
SQL Server
WCF
Entity Framework
iPhone Dev

WHEN AND WHERE is the event?
Saturday, April 25th, from 8:30am to 5:30pm.
Shewmaker Center at Northwest Arkansas Community College

HOW can I learn more and register?
Visit the Code Camp website at http://codecamp.nwadnug.org/

April NWADNUG Meeting – Chris Koenig

Come join the NWA .NET User Group on April 7th at 5:30 PM and learn the benefits of Windows Live and Mesh Frameworks!

Lightning Presentation

Title: Continuing Education in Information Technology

Description: In the IT field, you have to keep learning. Whether you keep learning because you want to, or because you have to (if you don’t, someone else will), many options exist for IT professionals to expand the breadth and depth of their skill sets. This presentation will explore several different options for continuing education in the IT field, including self-learning, traditional training, conferences, and a couple of interesting part-time graduate school programs.

Presenter: Jeff Mullins is a faculty member and Associate Director of the Master of Information Systems program for the Information Systems department in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. Prior to his move into academics, Jeff spent more than 10 years playing various roles in the IT department at Tyson Foods, including .NET and Java application development, business analysis, and project management. Jeff also recently founded Windsong Solutions, a small IT consulting, development, and training firm.

Main Presentation

Title: Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services

Description: Learn about the Live Framework, our latest offering for developers programming against our Live Services from any device, platform, runtime, or programming language. See new and future services (such as Mesh Services), protocols, APIs, and tools which enable your web, service, or client applications to access, store, and synchronize user data with Live Services, obtain audience analytics data, and more

Presenter: 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 traveling, 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.

Swag:
JetBrains ReSharper License
Infragistics Resource DVD
Infragistics NetAdvantage
Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation
Application = Code + Markup A Guide to the Microsoft Windows
Presentation Foundation
Microsoft 6 Office Business Application for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Programming Microsoft Office Business Application

When:
5:30 PM - 5:45 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
5:45 PM - 6:00 PM - Lighting Presentation
6:00 PM - 6:10 PM - Intermission – Presenter switch over
6:10 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room 130 (Generations Room)

NetMeeting URL: http://snipr.com/nwadnug
Link RSVP URL: http://snipr.com/epmzx

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Released!

Well, it looks like I do not have anymore excuses for delaying some personal projects that I have intending to work on for quite sometime. ASP.NET MVC 1.0 has been released this morning! Remove your old version and give it an install. Download it here.

My Personal Mission Statement

I want to be the master of my craft.

I want to earn the love and respect of my family and friends through mutual love and respect.

I want to inspire passion in my peers through shared knowledge and experiences.

I want to have as much fun as possible with my family, friends, and peers while achieving these goals.

NWA DNUG Meeting – Tuesday, March 10th John Teague – A Path to Automated Testing

Main Presentation
Title: A Path to Automated Testing

Description: In this session we will discuss different ways of testing applications and the benefits of having an automated suite of tests.  We'll show you how to start unit testing your applications and techniques and strategies you can use in your application and your test cases to make them both easier to maintain.

Presenter: John Teague is a Co-Founder and Principal Consultant for Next Level Technology, focusing on Agile Software development, coaching and training. He is very active in the .Net community as an organizer of the Austin .Net Users Group CodeCamp conference, Los Techies Day of Test Driven Development and presenting at several .Net user groups.

Lighting Presentation
Title: How To Build A Resume

Description: Megan is going to show how to write a technology resume in a way that is clean and easy for potential employers to read in order to put your best foot forward and be able to get an interview.  This will involve a clean, easy to read format, bullet points with active words, and an eye catching objective that caters to each job opportunity.

Presenter: Megan Coger has 4 years of experience as an IT Recruiter in Northwest Arkansas with TEKsystems, the largest IT staffing company in the nation.  She specializes in helping IT Professionals with their careers; this involves helping with career pathing, career opportunities, and coaching with resumes and interviews.

When:
5:30 PM - 5:45 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
5:45 PM - 6:00 PM - Lighting Presentation
6:00 PM - 6:10 PM - Intermission – Presenter switch over
6:10 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room 130 (Generations)
NetMeeting URL: http://snipr.com/nwadnug
Link RSVP URL: http://snipr.com/clkm7