Events

Tuesday August 5th - Intro to F#, Microsoft’s answer to the concurrency problem by Rick Minerich

2008-07-15T15:05:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Tuesday, August 5th at 6:00 PM at the MassMutual Learning Center in Chicopee, MA. Free pizza, drinks and dessert will be provided compliments of MassMutual. Please note the location - directions are below. Also - note that we have moved the presentation out a week due to TechEd.

Presentation Abstract: Traditionally Microsoft has given functional programming languages a wide berth. However, the inherent complexities in programming for multicore platforms has led them to explore, new, non-traditional ideas. F# is the culmination of much of that exploration and is now slated to be the next officially supported .NET language.

In this session you will be walked through the basics of writing a program in F# and spend some time exploring the language’s concurrency features.

Topics:

-          What is F#?
-          Who is Microsoft Targeting With F#?
-          A Crash Course In Functional Programming
-          An Introduction To F# Syntax
-          F# and Concurrency

About the Presenter: Rick Minerich is known for his work with concurrency and emergent behavior within the F# community. In his day job at Easthampton, MA based Atalasoft Inc (www.atalasoft.com) he works mainly with C# and C++CLI on the backend of their DotImage image processing product.

Sponsors

Infragistics is the world leader in Presentation Layer Technology. We are committed to providing our customers the highest quality of reusable presentation layer development tools for Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Tablet PC, and Java environments. Our products and services empower our customers' software development teams to realize the potential of the presentation layer by accelerating their development cycles and improving usability for end users.

JetBrains has a passion for making developers more productive. We make development tools more intelligent, development processes more efficient, and development cycles shorter -- to simplify your challenging tasks, automate the easy ones, and help you /Develop with Pleasure/. Our innovative .NET products include: ReSharper, TeamCity and dotTrace.

Wrox Press, established in 1992 to publish books for computer programmers, is driven by the Programmer to Programmer philosophy. Wrox books are written by programmers for programmers, and the Wrox brand means authoritative solutions to real-world programming problems. Wrox's unique author-editorial process delivers the best and most useful information you need in the timeliest manner.

Meeting Details
Tuesday, August 5th at 6:00 PM
MassMutual Learning & Conference Center
350 Memorial Drive
Chicopee, MA 01020
Telephone: (413) 598-9898

From the West
Take I-90 East (Massachusetts Turnpike) to Exit 5 (Chicopee).
Bear Right after toll booth, and then Right again onto Rte. 33.
The MassMutual Learning & Conference Center is one half mile on
the Right.

From the East
Take I-90 West (Massachusetts Turnpike) to Exit 5 (Chicopee).
Bear Right after toll booth, and then Right again onto Rte. 33.
The MassMutual Learning & Conference Center is one half mile on
the Right.

From the South
Take I-91 North
to Rte. 291 East in Springfield. Follow Rte. 291 East to Exit 6
(Ludlow/Chicopee Falls). Follow exit ramp to first Stop sign. Take
a Right onto Fuller Road. Continue on Fuller Road to third traffic
light. Take a Left at light onto Memorial Drive (Rte. 33). Take a
Right into MassMutual Learning & Conference Center entrance.

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Dan Caron
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Thursday June 12th - Reflection, with Custom Attributes by Dan Mezick of New Technology Solutions

2008-05-13T12:36:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Thursday, June 12th at 6:00 PM at the MassMutual Learning Center in Chicopee, MA. Free pizza, drinks and dessert will be provided compliments of MassMutual. Please note the location - directions are below. Also - note that we have moved the presentation out a week due to TechEd.

Presentation Abstract: Reflection is an important topic for your all-round deep understanding of .NET platform mechanics. For example, without reflection, there is no
possibility of dynamic Intellisense. The reflection classes allow you to dynamically discover, identify and call methods on a class in a DLL. When you need to get going with Reflection and Attributes, what you really need is a very good explanation, and solid piece of code that demonstrates just how to use the API. This session provides both.

Attend this session to see .NET Reflection and custom .NET Attributes in action-- and to get clear on using Reflection and authoring Custom Attributes. You exit the session with the complete application, in commented C#.NET source code.

Topics:

* Reflection Concepts and Facilities
* Reflection in action: extracting classes, methods and method parameters
* Making the dynamic reflective call via .Invoke
* Three ways to make a dynamic method call: inline, function call, and using interfaces
* Custom metadata: Why you care, plus: how to write custom attributes
* Using attributes at runtime to tag classes, methods and parameters
* Writing your own framework using Reflection and custom Atrributes

About the Presenter: DAN MEZICK is a expert at explaining Microsoft development tools, with over 14 years of experience teaching software development. Dan teaches C# and ASP.NET programming for Connecticut-based New Technology Solutions (www.newtechusa.com). He holds software patents related to software development tools, and is an invited presenter at conferences such as Agile2007 and Agile2008. He ran the Microsoft Developer Days event in Hartford and Boston for 7 years in a row. Reach Dan at dan.mezick@newtechusa.com.

Meeting Details
Thursday, June 12th at 6:00 PM
MassMutual Learning & Conference Center
350 Memorial Drive
Chicopee, MA 01020
Telephone: (413) 598-9898

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Dan Caron
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Tuesday May 6th - Introduction to Build Automation using NAnt and CruiseControl

2008-04-29T19:42:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Tuesday, May 6th at 6:00 PM at the MassMutual Learning Center in Chicopee, MA. Free Pizza and Drinks will be provided compliments of MassMutual. Please note the location - directions are below.

Presentation Abstract: Learn how automated builds can improve your development process by making you always work with a green build instead of working toward one. We will take a look at the different technologies and concepts available for building a continuous integration environment and see how you can leverage that technology for any build process using customized tasks.

Whether you are programmatically removing references or modifying configuration files, there is a need to easily parse and manage XML. While NAnt provides tools to perform basic peek and poke using Xpath, they lack in the ability to add or remove XML elements. We will write a customized NAnt task that gives us the ability to do just that. You will also receive the source for other custom tasks that integrate with source control and remove source control bindings from projects and solutions.

About Jacob Lauzier: Jacob Lauzier is a Software Engineer for Atalasoft, in Easthampton, MA where he was a build systems engineer for the past 9 months. In that time, he used systems such as CruiseControl and NAnt to maintain and improve upon the continuous integration processes employed by Atalasoft. Recently, Jacob has begun work on extending the company's web image viewing technology which is based on zero-footprint principles using advanced AJAX techniques.

Jacob is a recent graduate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Systems Engineering with a second major in Computer Science. Throughout his college career, Jacob developed business solutions for university departments, area businesses, and local civic offices.

Meeting Details
Tuesday, May 6th at 6:00 PM
MassMutual Learning & Conference Center
350 Memorial Drive
Chicopee, MA 01020
Telephone: (413) 598-9898

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Dan Caron
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Tuesday, April 1st - Stylin’ with WPF Controls

2008-03-11T13:47:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Tuesday, April 1st at 6:00 PM at the MassMutual Learning Center in Chicopee, MA. Free Coffee, Pizza, and Drinks will be provided compliments of MassMutual. Please note the location - directions are below.

Abstract
Discover some of the features of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) that make it such a versatile and extensible technology for User Interface development. We will explore styling and templating WPF controls to give them the look, feel, and functionality you want in your applications. For those familiar with Windows Forms controls, you will be pleased with the relative ease which these customizations can be accomplished. We will also touch on using triggers and storyboards to give your controls animation that would have been very difficult to achieve with previous UI technologies.

About John Thayer
John Thayer is primarily an ophthalmologist. However, for the past five years, Dr. Thayer has worked extensively in medical practice management and electronic medical record application development and has experience with a variety of technologies, to include Windows Forms 2.0; SQL Server 2000 and 2005; Crystal Reports; BizTalk Server 2002, 2004, and 2006; Terminal Services; ADO.NET 2.0; Windows Server 2003 administration, Active Directory and clustering; Windows Communication Foundation; and Windows Presentation Foundation.

Meeting Details
Tuesday, April 1 at 6:00 PM
MassMutual Learning & Conference Center
350 Memorial Drive
Chicopee, MA 01020
Telephone: (413) 598-9898

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Dan Caron
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Tuesday, March 4 - LINQ-to-SQL & Entity Framework

2008-03-03T19:08:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Tuesday, March 4th at 6:00 PM at the MassMutual Learning Center in Chicopee, MA. Free Coffee, Pizza, and Drinks will be provided compliments of MassMutual. Please note the location - directions are below.

LINQ-to-SQL and the ADO.NET Entity Framework

Can you imagine being able to drag & drop your DAL and even your BUSINESS ENTITIES into your application - without coding? Dan Caron will present Microsoft's Object Relational Mapping (ORM) tools - LINQ-to-SQL and the ADO.NET Entity Framework. We will create two simple and similar applications using the .NET 3.5 Framework - one using LINQ-to-SQL and the other using the Entity Framework. Using these two applications as a focal point, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each of these two ORM technologies. As a natural part of covering these technologies, we will also be discussing Microsoft's Language Integerated Query (LINQ) technology.

About Dan Caron

Dan Caron is MassMutual's Professional .NET Leader and published author. With MassMutual, Dan leads the technical direction for Microsoft .NET application development for the enterprise. For over a dozen years, he has been designing and developing applications with programming technologies that include Microsoft VB.NET, C#, ASP.NET, XML/XSL, SQL and AJAX. Dan is also the new leader of the Western Mass. .NET Users Group.

Dan is an author of two technical books (Professional DotNetNuke 4.0 and DotNetNuke ASP.NET Portals). He has been a major contributor to the DotNetNuke open-source portal project since the core team was founded in 2003. Some of his noteworthy contributions include the exception handling framework, event logging provider, event viewer, module security redesign, web-farm support, namespace hierarchy organization and the event scheduler. Dan is now an alumnus of the DotNetNuke Core Team and Board of Directors. Based on his significant community contributions he has been recognized by Microsoft as a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in 2005 and 2006.

Sponsors

Telerik is the leading vendor of User Interface (UI) components for ASP.NET and Windows Forms, and .NET Reporting solutions. Building on our expertise in interface development and Microsoft technologies, Telerik helps customers build applications with unparalleled richness, responsiveness and interactivity. Check out the latest release featuring our RadControls for ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX controls, Silverlight tools, RadControls for WinForms, and Telerik Reporting: http://www.telerik.com. Enter our Sitefinity Challenge and win a complimentary copy of our CMS, an $899 value!

JetBrains has a passion for making developers more productive. We make development tools more intelligent, development processes more efficient, and development cycles shorter -- to simplify your challenging tasks, automate the easy ones, and help you /Develop with Pleasure/. Our innovative .NET products include: ReSharper, TeamCity and dotTrace.

Meeting Details
Tuesday, March 4 at 6:00 PM
MassMutual Learning & Conference Center
350 Memorial Drive
Chicopee, MA 01020
Telephone: (413) 598-9898

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Dan Caron
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Tuesday, February 5 - Extending Windows PowerShell

2008-01-23T04:37:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Tuesday, February 5 at 6:00 PM in the Springfield B Conference Room at the Mass Mutual Learning Center. Coffee, Pizza, and Drinks will be provided compliments of Mass Mutual. Please note the new location - directions are below.

Extending Windows PowerShell

Lou Franco will present on Extending Windows PowerShell (formerly Monad). Powershell is the biggest improvement in Windows scripting since %*. Lou will show us how to use PowerShell to script Windows administration tasks, but more importantly, we’ll learn how to add our own features to PowerShell.

About Lou Franco

Lou Franco is a Senior Software Architect at Atalasoft, a leading provider of Imaging Toolkits for .NET. Lou is a software development and management veteran with two patents who has delivered projects for NASDAQ, The Federal Reserve Bank of NY, the US Military and 800 of the top financial institutions in the world. He frequently blogs at http://www.atalasoft.com/cs/blogs/loufranco/default.aspx

Meeting Details
Tuesday, January 8 at 6:00 PM
MassMutual Learning & Conference Center
350 Memorial Drive
Chicopee, MA 01020
Telephone: (413) 598-9898

From the West
Take I-90 East (Massachusetts Turnpike) to Exit 5 (Chicopee).
Bear Right after toll booth, and then Right again onto Rte. 33.
The MassMutual Learning & Conference Center is one half mile on
the Right.

From the East
Take I-90 West (Massachusetts Turnpike) to Exit 5 (Chicopee).
Bear Right after toll booth, and then Right again onto Rte. 33.
The MassMutual Learning & Conference Center is one half mile on
the Right.

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Bill Bither (413-572-4443 x704)
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Tuesday, January 8 - What’s New in Visual Studio 2008

2007-12-29T02:45:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Tuesday, January 8 at 6:00 PM in the Chicopee Conference Room at the Mass Mutual Learning Center. Coffee, Pizza, and Drinks will be provided compliments of Mass Mutual. Please note the new location - directions are below.

What's New in Visual Studio 2008

Now that Visual Studio 2008 is released and available, it's important to understand the new available features and adoption strategies. This demo-heavy session will cover many topics, including new features for Windows application developers: Client Application Services, WPF integration, WinForm/WPF interop, and Office development. New features for web developers: new ASP.NET controls, integrated AJAX, CSS tools, nested master pages, JavaScript IntelliSense and debugging. Plus new features for everyone: unit testing, debugging to .NET Framework code, multi-targeting, and improvements for WCF & WF.

About Chris Bowen

Chris Bowen (http://blogs.msdn.com/cbowen) is Microsoft’s Developer Evangelist for the Northeast. A software architect and engineer with over 15 years of experience, Chris joined Microsoft after holding senior architect and developer positions at companies such as Monster, VistaPrint, Staples, and IDX Systems and consulting on web presence and eCommerce projects with others. He is coauthor of "Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System" from WROX and the upcoming “Essential Windows Communication Foundation” from Addison-Wesley. He specializes in application architecture and building highly-scalable transactional web systems and holds an M.S. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Management Information Systems, both from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Meeting Details
Tuesday, January 8 at 6:00 PM
MassMutual Learning & Conference Center
350 Memorial Drive
Chicopee, MA 01020
Telephone: (413) 598-9898

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Bill Bither (413-572-4443 x704)
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Tuesday, December 4 - Introduction to Silverlight Development

2007-11-27T16:37:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Tuesday, December 4 at 6:00 PM in Easthampton. There will be a pizza dinner and time for socializing.

Introduction to Silverlight Development

Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.

This talk will focus on how to develop applications with Silverlight 1.0. We'll survey a variety of features currently shipping with Silverlight after which we'll review the development a simple Silverlight 1.0 application. If time allows, we'll also delve into a Silverlight 1.1 alpha application.

Speaker Bio:

Mike Bluestein is a software engineer in the CAD industry. His experience ranges from web development and database design to CAD automation and engineering software. His current interests involve rich internet application development and service orientated architectures in the context of large scale web applications.

Meeting Details
Tuesday, December 4 at 6:00 PM
Atalasoft, Inc.
116 Pleasant St, Suite 321
Easthampton, MA 01027
866-568-0129

Directions to Atalasoft, Inc. (map):

From the South
Travel Interstate 91 North, take Exit 17B (Easthampton). Follow Route 141 to Rt. 10 in Easthampton. Turn a right onto Rt. 10 North, and take a right at the rotary onto Pleasant St. Less than 1/2 a mile on your right is the Eastworks Building at 116 Pleasant St. Enter through the main entrance and take the stairs or elevator to the 3rd floor. The Atalasoft office is just past the Eastworks office on the left, Suite 321

From the North
Travel Interstate 91 South; take Exit 18 (Northampton). Take a right at the bottom of the ramp. Follow route 5 to Easthampton. Turn right onto East St. Follow for approx. 1.5 miles. Turn right on to Ferry St. Follow to the end. Take a left onto Pleasant St. Go approx 3/10 of a mile, Eastworks will be on your left at 116 Pleasant St. Enter the main entrance and take the stairs or elevator to the 3rd floor. The Atalasoft office is just past the Eastworks office on the left, Suite 321.

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Jami Albro-Fisher (413-536-5989 x116)
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Monday November 5: Programming The Internet - Why HTTP Rocks HTML, XML, Javascript, ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server

2007-10-30T15:12:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Monday, November 5 at 6:00 PM in Easthampton. There will be a pizza dinner and time for socializing.

Programming The Internet - Why HTTP Rocks HTML, XML, Javascript, ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server

Building web applications can get pretty involved. But the secret to building dependable, scalable web apps lies not in any of the typical technologies or buzzwords, but in an oft-forgotten, sometimes maligned aspect of the Internet - HTTP programming. It's HTTP programming that makes web applications from companies like Google, Yahoo, and others so successful. In this talk, you'll learn how the designers of the HTTP protocol envisioned the way Internet programming would work.

You'll learn the four parts of every HTTP message; the power of HTTP methods (and why they are so often ignored); the importance of Content Types and Status Codes; and how to control how other servers on the Internet find and store your content. Finally, you'll learn how easy it can be to use ASP.NET to build programs that take full advantage of HTTP's power and scalability.If you want to build web apps that rock, you want to become an HTTP programmer.

Speaker Bio

An internationally known author and lecturer, Mike Amundsen has traveled throughout the United States and Europe speaking and teaching on a wide range of topics including .NET, the Internet, team development, and other subjects.

He has more than a dozen books to his credit. His most popular titles are Teach Yourself Database Programming with Visual Basic in 21 Days, Using Visual InterDev, and ASP.NET for Developers.

When he is not working, Mike spends time with his wife and three children at their home in Kentucky, USA.

Mike's blog can be found at http://mikeamundsen.spaces.live.com.

Meeting Details
Monday, November 5 at 6:00 PM
Atalasoft, Inc.
116 Pleasant St, Suite 321
Easthampton, MA 01027
866-568-0129

Directions to Atalasoft, Inc. (map):

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Jami Albro-Fisher (413-536-5989 x116)
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Tuesday, October 2: Business Benefits of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Dan Relihan

2007-09-21T01:14:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Tuesday, October 2 at 6:00 PM in Easthampton. There will be a pizza dinner and time for socializing.

Business Benefits of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a new server program that is part of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Your organization can use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to facilitate collaboration, provide content management features, implement business processes, and supply access to information that is essential to organizational goals and processes.

You can quickly create SharePoint sites that support specific content publishing, content management, records management, or business intelligence needs. You can also conduct effective searches for people, documents, and data, participate in forms-driven business processes, and access and analyze large amounts of business data.

There are many presentations on SharePoint that describe it's feature set and technical capabilities. The goal of this presentation is to highlight and descibe the business benefits, or real solutions, available with SharePoint 2007 implementation.

Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) are described and compared. Selected solutions are descibed and demonstrated including:

Build an enterprise information portal
Provide enterprise content management
Build project and team sites
Facilitate internal and external collaboration
Implement an enterprise search engine
Drive and track workflow processes
Deliver Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities
Provide personalized "My Site" web pages
Build an Intranet/Extranet web site
Utilize as an enterprise application platform

Speaker Bio
Dan Relihan is the Project Management Office (PMO) Director for ASSA ABLOY Americas, headquartered in New Haven, CT. Dan and his team are currently leading ASSA ABLOY Americas through a SharePoint 2007 enterprise implementation. Prior to joining ASSA ABLOY Americas, Dan held a position at Andrews Consulting Group as Director of .NET Consulting. Dan has over 25 years of experience as a consultant, project manager, solution provider, architect and developer.

Meeting Details
Tuesday, October 2 at 6:00 PM
Atalasoft, Inc.
116 Pleasant St, Suite 321
Easthampton, MA 01027
866-568-0129

Directions to Atalasoft, Inc. (map):

From the South
Travel Interstate 91 North, take Exit 17B (Easthampton). Follow Route 141 to Easthampton. At the foot of the mountain, turn right onto East St. Follow for approx. 2.3 miles. Turn left on to Ferry St. Follow to the end. Take a left onto Pleasant St. Go approx 3/10 of a mile, Eastworks will be on your left at 116 Pleasant St. Enter the main entrance and take the stairs or elevator to the 3rd floor. The Atalasoft office is just past the Eastworks office on the left, Suite 321

(if you miss East St. and end up in the town of Easthampton, follow signs for Rt. 10 north, and take a right at the rotary onto Pleasant St. Eastworks will be on your right.)

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Jami Albro-Fisher (413-536-5989 x116)
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group

Tuesday, Sept 11: Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) in Six Easy Pieces - Allan Da Costa Pinto

2007-09-11T04:52:00Z

The Western Mass .NET Users Group is hosting its next monthly meeting Tuesday, September 11 at 6:00 PM in Easthampton. Please be aware the meeting is the second Tuesday of the month this month. This time we have Allan Da Costa Pinto for a presentation and discussion on Windows Communication Foundation. There will be a pizza dinner and time for socializing. WCF in Six Easy Pieces

Windows Communication Foundation is the strategic web services framework from Microsoft. Shipped as part of the .NET 3.0, WCF enables developers to build advanced, interoperable WS-* style services with less code. In this demo intensive session we’ll explore six facets of WCF including its architecture, extensibility and infrastructure. More powerful and capable than ASMX, WCF makes it easy to coexist with ASMX and reuse existing code by enabling new behaviors with simple XML configuration files. We will also review the exciting WCF enhancements coming with .NET 3.5/Visual Studio 2008 that enable Syndication (RSS/Atom), AJAX friendly web services and RESTful style architecture. If you care about interoperability or are building ASMX web services today, you’ll want to see WCF in action.

Speaker Bio

Allan Da Costa Pinto is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft focusing on Health/Life Sciences and Financial Services. His charter is to build strong developer communities within the enterprise customers he supports. He blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com/allandcp and lives in Hartford, CT.

Meeting Details
Tuesday, September 11 at 6:00 PM
Atalasoft, Inc.
116 Pleasant St, Suite 321
Easthampton, MA 01027
866-568-0129

Directions to Atalasoft, Inc. (map):

(if you miss East St. and end up in the town of Easthampton, follow signs for Rt. 10 north, and take a right at the rotary onto Pleasant St. Eastworks will be on your right.)

If you have questions, please direct them to:
Jami Albro-Fisher (413-536-5989 x116)
User Group Leader, Western Mass .NET Users Group