Over the course of the next four to six months, I have decided to change the regularity/format of the meetings for the usergroup in the North East.  I had been speaking with a fellow Twitterer, Jonathan Noble, about desires for usergroups in the North East.  It was mentioned that there are few very IT Pro events occurring in the North East of England, barring the occasional visits by the TechNet Team.

Therefore in order to help with my planning and provision of events, with Jon’s help, I’ve decided to look at putting on bimonthly developer themed events and alternate month’s running.  In February we are pleased to welcome Eric Nelson, from Microsoft UK’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team, who will be covering Parallel Programming in .Net using Visual Studio 2010.  We hope to announce our March Event in the coming weeks.

Longer term, dependant on popularity we may change the format of these events, possibly two, 1 hour sessions on and IT Pro and Developer topic, or even two two hour sessions run concurrently.  This will depend on the popularity of the events and the feedback we receive. We look forward to seeing many old friends and meeting lots of new friends over the coming years.

VBUG Newcastle kicks off 2009 on Tuesday 3rd February with Eric Nelson, Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelist, visiting to cover Parallel Programming in .Net using Visual Studio 2010.

Session Overview:

The next version of the .NET Framework will come with new classes that start to remove the difficulties in building multi-threaded applications that are able to take advantage of the modern multi-core processor architectures and the future many-core architectures that are coming over the next few years. In this session, we will look at why we will all need to start thinking about parallelism and drill into what is available in the current previews for managed code development.

Eric Nelson:

After many years of developing on UNIX/RDBMS (and being able to get  mortgages) Eric joined Microsoft in 1996 as a Technical Evangelist (and stopped being able to get mortgages due to his new 'unusual job title' in the words of his bank manager). He has spent most of his time working with ISVs to help them architect solutions which make use of the latest Microsoft technologies - from the beta of ASP 1.0 through to ASP.NET, from MTS to WCF/WF and from the beta of SQL Server 6.5 through to SQL Server 2008. Along the way he has met lots of smart and fun developers - and been completely stumped by many of their questions! In July 2008 he switched role from an Application Architect to a Developer Evangelist in the Developer and Platform Group. Currently Eric’s interests include digging into LINQ to Entities, ADO.NET Data Services and switching from C# to Visual Basic development. At home, he battles rat infestations, comes second to the family dog and uses any spare moments he has after 10pm to team up and play online with and against friends - keep an eye out for 'erknel' and say 'hi'.

Location: Room 118, Claremont Tower, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, GB – Map - http://www.ncl.ac.uk/travel/maps/navigator.php?type=&bldg=16&go.x=12&go.y=10

Price: FREE

To Register - http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/February-2009/VBUG-NEWCASTLE-Parallel-programming-in-NET-VS2010-with-Eric-Nelson.aspx

I look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new friends at our first meeting of the year!

In my last post, which wasn’t intended to be my last of 2008, I mentioned that I was looking for new challenges.  Well one of those got underway in December when I changed jobs and started working for Hydratight in their Software Engineering Team.  However the next challenge which I have embarked upon started today.  I have taken my first steps into completing Project365 on Flickr!

What is Project365?

Essentially Project365 is about having one photo for every day in a year.  There are different groups and ways of achieving this on sites such as Flickr, you can choose what you want you pictures to depict.  As this is my first attempt I am taking a photo of what’s happened in my day or selecting a photo which depicts what I’ve been up to.  My first photo, taken and uploaded today was a reflection of issues I’ve been having while installing Adobe CS4 Web Premium today onto a fresh HDD.

My First Picture of Project 365

I hope that this, the first of many, will become a great way of seeing what happens in my life in 2009.  I also hope to see my photography skills get better and better as I learn more about setting up photographs and learning more about the capabilities of my camera.  I am starting off with my Fuji FinePix S5600 but will soon be stepping into the world of DSLR’s with a Nikon D40!

Keep up to date with my Flickr Stream and maybe even add me as a contact if you wish and see how my year pans out.

I’m very late posting this but I want to say a big thank you to all of those who have supported me and sponsored me in my efforts to complete the BUPA Great North Run and raise some money for the Guide Dogs for the Blind.

On Sunday 5th October, on a beautiful sunny morning, where conditions were perfect!  The atmosphere on the Metro into Newcastle and at the start line was great.  The BUPA Great North Run was a wonderful experience and I really enjoyed the whole day.  I managed to complete my first ever half marathon in 2:15:10.  I’ve now got a time to beat and watch this space to see if I enter next year, I’m still mulling it over, I will do the GNR again but… :).  I’ve managed to raise over £500 so far and money is still coming in – keep an eye on the JustGiving counter on my blog for latest information.  I know the money will go to a great cause!

Big thanks to the people at the Guide Dogs for the Blind charity for looking after their runners so well after the Great North Run!!!

As you’ll remember from my previous BUPA Great North Run postings, this started off as a challenge and has left me enjoying running and the level of fitness I’ve achieved and will maintain.  Now I’m looking for new challenges and experiences!  Next up maybe snowboarding, western riding, who knows – suggestions on a comment please!!!

I’m very pleased to be able to welcome Craig Murphy to VBUG Newcastle on Wednesday 29th October to give us his introduction to OpenXML.  Craig has this to say about the topic:

Overview
With the release of Office 2007, Microsoft moved their document formats over to XML-based formats. This text-based format has many advantages, including, but not limited to readability, good compression and ease of reconstruction.

However, as developers [responsible for report creation], OpenXML has significant benefits for us. We now have a consistent object model across all Office applications. More importantly, we no longer have to understand the intricacies of the Component Object Model (COM) in order to create an Excel spreadsheet (for example) from our applications. This in itself should be reason enough to consider looking at OpenXML!

Looking at costs, OpenXML can bring savings. Server-side creation of Word, Excel, etc. documents can be performed without an Office license being purchased - these files are little more than text-based files. Similarly, if you are using a brand-name reporting engine, the cost of its license could be saved by using Excel or Word as your reporting medium.

Over the course of 60-75 minutes Craig will introduce OpenXML and will demonstrate how he is incorporating it into one of his line-of-business applications. Code examples will be written using C#.

For more information and to register for this free event please visit the event page on www.vbug.com

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

If you don’t already subscribe to the MSDN Flash newsletter, first of why not?? and secondly sign up now to have the chance to win an XBOX 360 Elite.  Microsoft are running this competition until 28th November 2008 for all who sign up to the MSDN Flash Newsletter which is crammed with useful information, articles and event listings every fortnight

Sign Up Now for the MSDN Flash Newsletter

This morning I have put live the new design for my blog.  For ages I have been unhappy with the look and feel of my blog, but as I know my limits :), I was struggling to come up with something to replace the default choice of theme.  I am pleased to announce now and start using, a great new design, courtesy of my colleague Peter Mitchell at Canford.  I am NOT a designer I am a DEVELOPER and therefore I know what I can and can't achieve.  I can often picture what I'd like to see but to create is a whole different ball game.  Thankfully Peter had the know how and has done a magnificent job!.  I thank him greatly for his time and efforts, and now all we need to do is get him blogging too!  I've been itching to use the new theme but had to wait for final fixing and testing.

At the same time of releasing the new design, you've probably noticed a lot of new content appearing, lets just say I have started to free up a lot more time for my blog and I'm really enjoying getting the information out there!  But wait that's not where the new content ends - I've also been working on the following:

• I've implemented the great Social Bookmarking Extension by Danny Douglas - this adds links to add posts to many of the social bookmarking services quickly and easily.
• I've updated the About Me page (or rather About Monkey now) with some updated information and a little more detail, including the interview recorded by Gary Short with me.
• I've reviewed a lot of my posts and updated links and removed long hyperlinks and replaced them with more meaningful titles for the underlying link

I hope you like the new design as much as I do and would love to hear your comments!