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

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

Ready Steady Speak is back for the RemixUK Event in Brighton on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th of September 2008.  Are you a budding speaker? A Designer with a passion for what you do who would like to educate us Developers in how it's done or some other aspect of design which we really don't get?  Are you a Developer who wants to get his message across to designers about just how cool the latest features in Web Development Technologies are or do you just want to share your knowledge with your fellow designers and developers?  If so then Ready Steady Speak at RemixUK could be the ideal opportunity!

RemixUK is all about the conversation and the opportunity for Web Developers and Web Designers to mix and discuss their roles and technologies and work together to shape the future of the Web!.  Ready Steady Speak is a unique way for you to have a go at delivering a short presentation to a very receptive audience of like minded people, and hopefully once you get a taste you'll go on to deliver full presentations or more nugget style presentations at local usergroup events, Barcamps etc around the country!  I've presented at a number of events and conferences now and the Buzz is amazing - so I very much encourage you to have a go!  If you have any questions or doubts email me - using the contact form on this blog and I'll do everything I can to help you!

The full details of the RemixUK Ready Steady Speak Competition are:

Contestants will present a 5 min session on a subject of their choice relating to Web Development or Web Design.  They will present in front of the REMIX audience and in front of a panel of judges.  If there are more than a  certain number of contestants (TBD), there will be ‘heats’ earlier in the day with the winners of the heats in a ‘speak-off’ in the evening session.  The ‘speak-off’ will take place as stated in the evening of the first day of MIX and the first prize is an XBox 360 + Goodies! 

Prerequisites:

Mandatory

· Speakers must NOT have previously presented ‘full sessions’ at DDD, TechEd, DevWeek, SDN, SQLBITS, VBUG Conference, NxtGenUG FEST or any similar such conferences.

· Speakers must create a new session of their own with new material which can be based on existing material but cannot be a simple copy of it.

· Speakers must limit their session to as close to 5 mins as possible( overrunning time will cause the speaker to be marked down.)

· Speakers must not have previously won Speaker Idol or “Ready Steady Speak” UK Launch

· Speakers must state their desire to enter the competition by no later than COP Monday 15^th September 2008 by email.

Desirable

· Speakers should provide if at all possible their own laptop, but one can be provided if necessary.  The speaker should notify the organisers of any software prerequisites.

· Speakers should have spoken previously at a User Group meeting even if only for a 10 min mini-session or ‘nugget’.  This is NOT mandatory.

So come on and have go it'll be a great and very rewarding experience!!!  I'm really looking forward to making the very long trip down to Brighton and look forward to meeting lots of new great people!

Richard Costall of NxtGenUG has just sent through the details of an implementation of Manic Miner, the old Spectrum Classic, that has been completed in Silverlight.  I started with the C16 and C64 and never had a Spectrum but will be looking forward to having a go with this.  If you had a Spectrum or loved the game, this is a must.  Here are the details from Richard:

NxtGenUG Silverlight Manic Miner
http://www.nxtgenug.net/manicminer

NxtGenUG Co-Founder Richard Costall & Member Pete McGann are pleased to announce their “Silverlight” Manic Miner game Beta is now live on the NxtGenUG site. Manic Miner was originally written by Matthew Smith, under games company Bug-Byte in 1983. The game was a landmark title in the history of gaming.

The original classic features 20 caverns to negotiate, and Pete and Rich had lovingly created 9 of these so far, with more to follow shortly.

Silverlight Manic Miner shares a custom built ‘time based’ engine with an XNA version of the game. A library of c# files is shared between the two systems. The Silverlight edition is also integrated into the NxtGenuG site, through Application services, and registered visitors can have their high scores recorded and shown in a leader board which refreshes every 60 seconds.

Pete and Rich will be telling their story at NxtGenUG Coventry on August  11^th 2008

Silverlight, XNA and Gaming
Matthew Smith did it in 6 weeks in the early 80's, now over 20 years later Pete McGann and Richard Costall have built Manic Miner in .NET, with an engine which works for Silverlight and also XNA. In this session Pete and Rich, talk about the .NET engine, implementations and issues on the two platforms - before Pete steps up to take the ultimate gaming challenge...
http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=136

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 :-)

Here's the latest information on NextGenUG's great FEST 08 event running later this month.  Check it out!

FEST08 the annual NxtGenUG one-day event takes place at Microsoft Reading on Thursday 12th June.  As ever it's going to be an action packed day with great content from the likes of Mike Taulty ,Oliver Sturm , Dave Sussman and other top speakers.  No doubt there will be bundles of 'swag' and prizes and Pizza somewhere down the line - there always is when the NxtGenUG Boyz are around.  There seems to be a few more of them this year with the Cambridge and Southampton crews joining in the mix.

So got to http://www.nxtgenug.net/fest08/ for details and to register your place.  It's free to all NxtGenUG members and a mere £49.99 to non-members - bargain!  Oh and also if you're around the night before there is a G(r)eek dinner to toast Daniel Moth on his way to the states.  http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=140 is the link to signup to."