When: 10/11/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CDT (Microsoft)

Topic: Testing the right thing: Behavior-Driven Development in ASP.NET using Gherkin, SpecFlow and WatiN

In recent years, the friction of creating scenarios in BDD, and in using those scenarios to author tests, has been reduced greatly. Developers now have tools that enable specifications to be written using a structured, English syntax, and to use those specifications as the tests that prove out the code. These domain-specific languages now enable us to create executable specifications first in the process, followed by building out only that functionality which meets the specification, resulting in fewer, more value-focused tests.
This presentation will introduce Gherkin, SpecFlow and WatiN, and provide examples of how these three tools can be used to create BDD-style in ASP.NET MVC applications. Gherkin and SpecFlow provide the framework for writing and executing specifications within Visual Studio, while WatiN allows us to write tests that drive a web browser automatically, giving us automated, end-to-end testing of the public features system.

Speaker: Brandon Satrom

Brandon Satrom is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft based in Austin, Texas. He has eleven years of industry experience, splitting his time evenly between consulting/service organizations and internal IT shops. A Software and Enterprise Architect, Brandon has worked on projects of all shapes for companies large and small, most recently using technologies such as WCF, WF, ASP.NET MVC with a healthy dose of OSS. Brandon is active in the Austin technology community, both as a participant in local user groups and as President of the IASA Austin chapter. He lives in Austin with his wife and son and blogs about software architecture and development at http://www.userinexperience.com.

Meeting Info:

When: 9/13/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CDT (Microsoft Office)

Topic: .

.

Speaker: Jeremy Miller

Jeremy is the Chief Software Architect at Dovetail Software, the coolest ISV in Austin. Jeremy began his IT career writing "Shadow IT" applications to automate his engineering documentation, then wandered into software development because it looked like more fun. Jeremy previously worked as a systems architect building mission critical supply chain software for a Fortune 100 company and learned agile development practices as a .Net consultant at ThoughtWorks, one of the pioneers of agile development. Jeremy is the author of the open source StructureMap (http://structuremap.sourceforge.net) tool for Dependency Injection with .Net and the StoryTeller (http://storyteller.tigris.org) tool for executable specifications in .Net. Jeremy's thoughts on just about everything software related can be found on his weblog "The Shade Tree Developer" at http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller, part of the popular CodeBetter site. Jeremy is a Microsoft MVP for C#.

Meeting Info:

When: 8/9/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CDT (Microsoft Austin Office - (New Location))

Topic: TDD and Refactoring: The Wonder Twins of Development

Based on experience with a wide variety of clients attempting to use Agile techniques as silver bullets, this talk focuses on removing code smells to improve your code base. The session takes a two-pronged approach to Agile development, focusing both on new development and how to adjust legacy code to fit an Agile environment.

Speaker: Gregory Beamer

tbd

Meeting Info:

When: 7/12/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CDT (New Microsoft Location)

Topic: Being Productive

Tired of feeling overwhelmed by emails, todo's and just life in general.  Hate when you have a great idea but forget what it was? Do you ever work all day but look back only to discover that you really didn't accomplish anything? Well come learn about how to prioritize, solidify, and productionize your life. Joe Ocampo will be discussing pragmatic techiques of employing practices such as, Promodoros, Getthing Things Done (GTD), reclaiming your inbox and personal Kanaban. Take control again.

Speaker: Joe Ocampo

My name is Joe Ocampo. I work as an Architect for a recognized leader in the global IT marketplace.  I have been working with .Net and various software development technologies for the past fifteen years. 

My background as a software developer has been a very interesting to say the least.  I enlisted in the United States Air Force from October 93 to January 01.  While in the Air Force I learned how to code in assembler, C++ and Visual Basic.  Currently my language of choice is C# but I have stong intrest in  Ruby as well as other dynamic languages.

I have taught various subjects in the IT arena ranging from A+, MCSE and MCSD courses at local Microsoft training facilities.

Meeting Info:

When: 6/14/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CDT (Microsoft Office)

Topic: Build Tools

Nant
Pskae
Rake & Albacore (Building .Net)
Deployments with powershell Pstrami & MsDeploy

Speaker: John Teague, Eric Hexter, Derick Bailey, & Jorge Matos

Derick Bailey

Eric Hexter

John Teague

Jorge Matos

Meeting Info:

When: 5/10/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CDT (Microsoft Office Austin)

Topic: Reading Sql Server Execution Plans

Reading Sql Server Execution Plans

Speaker: Wes Brown

Wes Brown is a PASS chapter leader and loves to teach others about SQL Server. Wes is Currently serving as Chief Database Architect for eScan Data Systems during the day and SQL Server tools developer for Nitrosphere Inc by night. He specializes in HA, disaster recovery, and very large database performance tuning.

Meeting Info:

When: 4/12/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CDT (Microsoft Office Austin)

Topic: Git Branching and Workflows

Common Git branching techniques and workflows Jason
has experienced and seen in his 2 years of using Git as a distributed
source control tool.

Speaker: Jason Meridith

He is a continuously learning software developer currently getting
paid to code in Ruby for Rackspace in San Antonio, Texas.

Meeting Info:

When: 3/8/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CST (Microsoft Office Austin)

Topic: “Communicating Domain Models with Object-Role Modeling”

Object-Role Modeling (ORM) is a fact-based and unambiguous modeling approach based on first order predicate logic. ORM's power to clarify meaning has many potential uses. However, so far, the main use of ORM has been to help computer application developers to design databases. For example, from an object-role model, you can automatically derive a fully normalized relational data model.  You can also derive other artifacts such as a class model and an entity relationship diagram. These artifacts can then be transformed into usable artifacts such as a physical database.

Speaker: Joshua Arnold

Bio

Joshua is the Director of Engineering at ProAce Technology Services, Inc. He specializes in software architecture and design, information modeling and project management. He is particularly interested in information modeling, building systems that are designed for change and the principle of “zero friction” as it relates to development and business processes. He is also interested in agile and lean development principles.

Meeting Info: Meeting Sponsored by Incisent Technologies

When: 2/24/2010 6:30 - 8:30 PM CST (Microsoft Office Austin)

Topic: What's new in ASP.NET MVC 2

Lets see all of the goodness that is in ASP.Net MVC2

Speaker: Phill Haack

By day, I am a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft. By night I lead the Subtext Project, an Open Source blog engine.

Meeting Info:

When: 2/8/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CST (Microsoft Office Austin)

Topic: Adding Dynamica Features to MVC apps with Jquery

In this talk Rod Paddock will demonstrate how to add interesting dynamic features to your ASP.NET MVC applications using Jquery. Time will be spent demonstrating how to use the ajax and other cool jQuery features.

Speaker: Rod Paddock

Rod Paddock is president and founder of Dash Point Software, Inc. DPSI is an award winning software company based in Seattle, WA . Dash Point Software specializes in application architecture, development and software training. Clients include Six Flags, First Premier Bank, Microsoft, The US Coast Guard and US Navy.

Dash Point specializes in Visual Studio .NET (C# and VB.NET), Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro, and SQL Server development. Rod has been a very popular speaker at a wide variety of developer conferences in North America and Europe since 1995. His most recent speaking appearance was at the DevTeach 2005 conference in Montreal Canada . Rod was made an MSDN Canada speaker in 2004 and is currently a Microsoft VB.NET MVP.

Rod is also editor in chief for Code Magazine (www.code-magazine.com) and has written numerous articles and books on software development.

Meeting Info: Download the samples

When: 1/11/2010 5:30 - 8:00 PM CST (Microsoft Office Austin)

Topic: 2010 Planning and Business Meeting

We are holding a round table to discuss the direction of the User Group and looking for volunteers to help keep us focused on the need to the community. Including CodeCamps, Meeting, ect....

Speaker: .

.

Meeting Info:

When: 12/14/2009 5:30 - 8:00 PM CST (Microsoft Austin)

Topic: Integration Patterns - Panel Discussion

Integration is a challenge for everyone, and there still isn't a good answer for most people.  The products and frameworks available today are in constant flux with the new techniques being touted to overcome the shortcomings of the old techniques.

Speaker: Local Austinites

.

Meeting Info:

When: 11/9/2009 5:30 - 8:00 PM CST (Microsoft Austin)

Topic: Testing the Last Mile with UI Testing

The ASP.NET MVC framework greatly improved the web testability story in .NET, allowing for testing of the various components of MVC including controllers, filters, binders and more. But testing these components in isolation still doesn't prove that your site works as a whole. Action methods tested by themselves don't prove that the view shown has the correct information on it, or that links work as expected. For these types of tests, an end-to-end, browser-based test is needed. But just as it is difficult to test APIs not designed for testability, views not designed for testability can lead to brittle, difficult to understand tests.

Speaker: Jimmy Bogard

Jimmy Bogard is a senior consultant at Headspring Systems. He is an agile software developer with six years of professional development experience. He has delivered solutions from conception to production for many clients. The solutions delivered by Jimmy range from shrink-wrapped products to enterprise e-commerce applications for Fortune 100 customers. He is also a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and is an active member in the .NET community, leading open-source projects, giving technical presentations and facilitating technical book clubs. Currently, Jimmy is the lead developer on the NBehave project, a Behaviour-Driven Development framework for .NET, AutoMapper, a convention-based object-to-object mapper and the facilitator of the Austin Domain-Driven Design Book Club. Jimmy is a member of the ASPInsiders group, and received the "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional" (MVP) award for ASP.NET in 2009

Meeting Info:

When: 10/12/2009 5:30 - 8:00 PM CST (Microsoft Office)

Topic: Agile and Software Engineering History

In many circles, Agile is seen as a recent replacement for Waterfall software development. The reality however is that Agile ideas, in one way or another have always been part of software development practice. What has changed that made them so relevant? Understanding how the Agile movement became what it is today is important to ease its introduction in places where waterfall is still prevalent, as well as avoiding it to ossify into traditions and rituals which would render it as ineffective and obsolete.

Speaker: Clementino de Mendon

Clementino is an ALM Architect with 16 years of experience in Software Development, from ISVs to Consulting companies to IT development shops. Clementino just joined Notion Solutions, a consulting company specialized in providing services based on Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server.

Meeting Info:

When: 9/14/2009 5:30 - 8:00 PM CST (Microsoft Office)

Topic: While all the focus these days is on RIA platforms like Silverlight, there are still tons of new features coming in ASP.NET 4.0 that are going to make it easier than ever to build high-performance, standards-based websites that give RIAs a run for their money. In this session, you'll learn about the new client-side features coming to ASP.NET 4.0, such as client-side templates, client-side controls, and even a client-side data context, that make it possible to build an application that completely cuts-out unnecessary page PostBacks. Using the techniques presented in this session will enable you to build highly optimized web applications that maximize the power of Ajax and deliver unprecedented interactiveness in the browser- no plug-in required

.

Speaker: Todd Anglin

Todd Anglin is an active .NET community member, President of the North Houston .NET User Group, an O'Reilly author, Microsoft MVP and Telerik's Chief Evangelist. At Telerik, Todd is responsible for educating Telerik's global community of developers and helping ensure Telerik's products serve the needs of .NET developers around the world. In the general .NET community, Todd is an active author and speaker, focusing primarily on ASP.NETand Silverlight. Before joining Telerik, Todd worked as a developer in a Fortune 200 financial services company supporting applications on a wide range of platforms and technologies. He also is an avid entrepreneur with previous experience running a small .NET software studio. You can find him online at http://telerikwatch.com

Meeting Info:

When: 8/10/2009 5:30 - 8:00 PM CST (Microsoft Office Austin)

Topic: Deep Dive Into Microsoft Velocity There are several external caching engines that are available. Now Microsoft is busy developing their own caching engine called "Velocity". This promises to provide the ability for application developers to horizontally scale their applications across numerous servers by providing unified cache across all application instances. This presentation will give an overview of "Velocity", the basics of requirements & installation, and an explanation of the basic areas of interest within "Velocity" such as Named Caches, Regions and Cache Items. The samples in this demonstration include code for accessing cache, and how this can integrate with the ASP.NET Cache.

.

Speaker: David L. Penton

David lives in the Dallas, Texas area and has a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, LA. He currently is a Lead Software Development Engineer / Performance Lead at Telligent Systems, Inc. Before that, he was a technical lead for the International Systems Group and then in Merchandising Systems at JCPenney, Inc., in Plano, TX. Before that, he was a senior business and analysis analyst for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control in Grand Prairie, TX. During that time he has worked on various technologies. He currently spends most of his time with C# and SQL Server. Database platforms he has dealt with (development and admin) include but not limited to SQL Server, Oracle, DB2. David is a member of the ASPInsiders and was formerly a SQL Server MVP for several years and is now an ASP.NET MVP.

Meeting Info:

When: 7/13/2009 5:30 - 8:00 PM (Microsoft Office Austin)

Topic:

Speaker:

Meeting Info: Monthly Meeting

When: 6/8/2009 5:30 - 8:00 PM CST (Microsoft Office Austin)

Topic: At some point in the past year we finally realized that we can really apply the design concepts from Ruby on Rails to .Net development. A plethora of OSS projects in the .Net space are exploiting "Convention over Configuration" to reduce friction in tool usage. In this talk I'd like to discuss some examples of CoC usage, how Conventions are applied, lessons learned, and a bit about creating your own conventions inside your application architecture.

.

Speaker: Jeremy Miller

Jeremy began his IT career writing "Shadow IT" applications to automate his engineering documentation, then wandered into software development because it looked like more fun. Jeremy previously worked as a systems architect building mission critical supply chain software for a Fortune 100 company and learned agile development practices as a .Net consultant at ThoughtWorks, one of the pioneers of agile development. Jeremy is the author of the open source StructureMap (http://structuremap.sourceforge.net) tool for Dependency Injection with .Net and the forthcoming StoryTeller (http://storyteller.tigris.org) tool for supercharged acceptance testing in .Net. Jeremy's thoughts on just about everything software related can be found on his weblog "The Shade Tree Developer" at http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller , part of the popular CodeBetter site. Jeremy is a Microsoft MVP for C#.

Meeting Info: June 8th 5:30 pm

When: 5/30/2009 8:30 - 5:00 PM (St. Edwards Professional Education Center)

Topic:

Speaker:

Meeting Info: Austin Code Camp the Central US Developer Event

When: 5/11/2009 12:00 - 12:00 AM (Microsoft Austin Office)

Topic:

Speaker:

Meeting Info: Rod Padock - 5:30 pm

When: 4/13/2009 12:00 - 12:00 AM CST (Microsoft Austin Office)

Topic: .

.

Speaker: Eric Anderson

I landed my first development job in 1997 and stayed with that company through my graduation from Texas A&M University in 2000. Since that time, I have come to appreciate Agile development practices and love to share the Agile love with those around me.

Meeting Info: Monthly Meeting - Monday 5:30 pm