Yes folks, all the votes have been counted and verified and the Developer Day Team have now published the Agenda for the 7th Developer Developer Day on Saturday November 22nd 2008 at Microsoft’s Reading Campus.  There is a great deal of variety and what is most exciting is that there are a number of new speakers taking the plunge, including VBUG’s very own Phil Pursglove!  It looks to be yet another cracking day! best of luck to all new speakers!!

For latest registration information keep an eye on the Developer Day Website and if you’re on Twitter, follow @DeveloperDay for latest information

I have been heavily involved with the Agenda for this year’s VBUG Conference and am pleased to say that we have been able to set up a great selection of topics and a plethora of excellent speakers including the Keynote by Roy Osherove, sessions from Ken Getz, Jeffrey McManus, Oliver Sturm, Tony Whitter and many, many more excellent speakers.

Session Highlights include

• Tips and Tricks for Successful Software Teams
• ASP.Net 4.0
• Silverlight for Mobile
• Distributed Caching for ASP.Net Applications
• Create Managed Code for Office 2008 in VS 2008

We have a wide range of sessions with a good mix of introductory sessions such as Introductions to Windows Workflow accompanied by highly technical sessions such as Create Custom Workflow Activities.  Hopefully we have achieved a great balance of topics and there is something in the agenda to interest everyone.  For full details see the Conference brochure and for latest information see the conference pages on www.vbug.com

At VBUG we are pleased to announce the resumption of our Online Meetings, and we resume with CSLA.NET Introduction by Andrew Hallmark next Tuesday, 21st October 2008, from 19:30 – 20:30.  I know a few people in my own region have asked for this topic to be covered but unfortunately it’s not been possible, but now you can see the presentation online from wherever you are :).  Be sure to sign up for this free event – for more information and to register for the event be sure to visit the event page – VBUG Online: CSLA.NET Introduction with Andrew Hallmark

Craig Murphy via Twitter has just alerted me to the fact that session voting is now open for DDD7, go to the website now and select up to 10 sessions that you would like to see on the agenda for DDD7 - http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/votesessions.asp

Next month sees the resumption of the VBUG Newcastle meetings and I have Alan Dean coming up to deliver a session on the ASP.Net MVC Framework Preview.  I am looking forward to Alan's visit and seeing if he can convince me about MVC as I am still not convinced - it looks too much like old asp to me :o.

Details of the session:

Alan will be providing an introduction to the new ASP.NET MVC Framework Preview and, by way of association, usage of some new .NET 3.5 features such as LINQ. The talk will cover the MVC design pattern in outline, and demonstrate usage of the ASP.NET MVC Framework itself with a simple RESTful application

Alan Dean has been a professional developer for more than a decade, primarily in the retail sector, and is currently a Senior Technologist at Charteris. An unconventional thinker, he has been involved in REST and the semantic web for 7 years. He is also a committed extreme programmer and one of the Alt.Net UK Conferences organisers.

Location: Castle Gate, Melbourne Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 2JQ, GB

Registration is free, please register on the VBUG website

I look forward to seeing you there!  Also I have some good sessions in the plans for Newcastle for the rest of the year.  If you are based in the North East and attend user group meetings and would like to see a topic covered, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

I've got a number of blog posts in the pipeline waiting to be finished but this one is more urgent the others, as the subject contains something which is happening tomorrow night in Manchester! The second Manchester Girl Geek Dinner will be held tomorrow night, 25th July 2008 at the University of Salford. Looks like some excellent talks lined up, especially Gemma's session on how to engage young people in Geekery - I managed to capture the imagination of a female work experience student for a couple of hours last week but how can we maintain it is my question, especially as I feel the curriculum for Key Stage 2 upwards is very poor in IT.  For more details and to register please go to -  http://www.manchestergirlgeekdinners.co.uk/email/registration.php and here are some details Gemma sent through:

When: 25th July 7pm
Where: Salford University, University House
Who can attend: Girl Geeks! A lady who has an interest, or is involved in the Science, Engineering and Technology industries. Blokes can come too, but you need an invite from a Geek Girl.
Cost: Around £15
What:
For those who haven't been before, it's dinner, wine, talks from inspirational women, networking and discussions afterwards.
Dress up as much as you like, for those of us who like to wear pretty dresses (I am!), or if you're more comfortable in jeans that's fine too.
Currently we have two talks planned, if you want to get involved and speak about women in engineering, science and technology, please do get in touch.
The talks:
Gemma Cameron - How to get young people interested in Geekery!
Rachael Hoyle - winner of the Advanced Apprentice of Year Award. Rachael will be delivering an extremely interesting talk around the stigma of women in engineering. This will cover how ethics and equality are the dominant factors in employment, and whether this is damaging the industry, rather than encouraging diversity.
Links:
www.manchestergirlgeekdinners.co.uk
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/859931
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=22778411401

In addition to this great event, I was reading a post on the Girly Geekdom Blog which was advertising the first Girl Geek Dinner in the North East - well Leeds is almost the North East :p.  More importantly the Dinner is being held on 13th August at The Study @ The Living Room on Greek Street, Leeds.  Confirmed speakers include Lydia Machell, a Freelance Music Software Developer and Lorna Mitchell a Developer, Consultant and Trainer for iBuildings in Leeds.  For more information and to register for this event please view the Blog post - http://girlygeekdom.blogspot.com/2008/07/girl-geeks-to-make-some-noise-in-north.html

It's great to see the Girl Geek Dinners this side of the M25 and I hope this is the first of many more events in both localities.

The forthcoming SUGUK meeting in Newcastle which I mentioned in my previous post, SharePoint UserGroup Returns To Newcastle! 26/6/08 - MOSS Architecture Whiteboard Session, has now changed date to the 3rd July 2008.  Once again the registration URL and further details - http://suguk.org/forums/thread/11086.aspx

On the evening of Wednesday 2nd July 2008, I'll be presenting a session on IIS 7.0 for ASP.Net Developers at Black Marble's Community Evening in Bradford.  This event is part of a full day of sessions which Black Marble are hosting.  In the morning they're hosting a session on Overview of the current and future states of Microsoft’s Real World SOA and Business Process Automation platform and in the afternoon they are hosting a TechNet in the North session - Microsoft's Vision for Unified Communications - delivered by James O'Neill and then I will be completing the day with the community element.

The abstract for my session is as follows:

IIS7 for ASP.NET Developers

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.

For more information and to register for this event go to - http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Andy%20Westgarth%20on%20IIS7

The SharePoint User Group are hosting there next Newcastle meeting on Thursday 26th June 2008.  The details of the event are:

John Timney (MVP & MOSS Principle Consultant at Capgemini) and Philip Hunter, (MOSS Technical Lead from BT) will be hosting an open forum whiteboarding session on MOSS, WSS and best practice for architecting platforms using these products.

Although we cannot guarantee being able to answer every obscure question, we'll do our best! Participation is welcomed and expected from the audience, especially when the hosts get themselves in a mire and need rescuing. This is not death by powerpoint not product central, its an opportunity to ask your questions about architecture, platform sizing, backup and recovery, server virtualisation, publishing, database sizing, central admin, DNS, IRM, records management, support strategies, how best to handle Requests for Change. No topic is off the cards and we expect a healthy discussion to determine what might be a good architecture for your specific requirements, and what issue you might face in deploying MOSS or WSS either for your own compnay, or for customers.

Come along, sit yourself down and take part! 2 hours of free consultancy.

Venue:

BT Innovation Place
Delta Bank Road
Riverside Park
Innovation Place
Metro Centre, Gateshead
NE11 9DJ

Time 6.30 - 8.30 pm

http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.t4t652gvtvyw_NE11%209DJ%20(postcode)%2C%20United%20Kingdom___&encType=1

To register go to http://suguk.org/forums/thread/11086.aspx

Developer Developer Day returns to Reading on Saturday 22nd November 2008, and the call for speakers is now open, giving plenty of time for anyone who would like to submit a session, to prepare an abstract and think about what they would like to speak about.

So if you have a session, double session or grok talk you're interesting in submitting please go to http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/agenda.asp and fill in the short form.  Also as there is plenty of time before DDD7, if you would like to have some practice at delivering your session why don't you contact your local VBUG group or any of the other great Usergroups in the UK, I'm sure they'd love so have some new session for their groups to see.

Developer Day events and usergroups offer great ways for new speakers to gain experience and feedback with delivering technical presentations.  If there is a topic you're passionate about why not start off with a 10 minute Grok Talk at DDD or your local usergroup and then build up your confidence and presentation from there, before you know it you'll be delivering full hour long sessions.  Go on give it a go!!

I'm planning on submitting a couple of new sessions for DDD7 so I'm off to think about my abstracts now :-)