One of my colleagues at Tyson Foods arranged to have Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo give a Nothin' But Dot Net Training class. I saw the opportunity to have him present at our use group since the training was the same week as our meeting. Jean-Paul was gracious enough to agree to present on Generics: They're no just for collections. He has also agreed to help me launch a Podcast I have been wanting to start called Let's Talk Code!. Thanks, JP for helping get this started. Generics: They’re not just for collections In this session participants will be introduced to advanced usages of generics outside of the realm of just strongly typed collections. They will learn about how the focus of generics in the realm of collections has clouded the fact that generics can be used to introduce powerful capabilities into your application frameworks and solutions. Practical demonstrations will be utilized to showcase how developers can immediately start harnessing the power of generics in their applications today.
Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo is an independent consultant who spends most of his days helping teams realize success through the adoption and application of agile practices. He has a passion for sharing information with the development community which he often tries to do on his blog at http://www.jpboodhoo.com/blog. He can be reached at jp@jpboodhoo.com. When not developing, he can be found relaxing with his amazing wife and their four beautiful kids.
I just finished talking with David Walker of the Tulsa .NET User Group and confirmed I will be presenting to them on February 25. I will be giving a presentation on the Model View Presenter Design Pattern. I am very excited to be able to present in Tulsa. Since the Northwest Arkansas .NET User Group formed because a member from Tulsa moved to Northwest Arkansas it feels good that we can complete the circle. If you live in the Tulsa, OK area please check out you local user group Tulsa .NET User Group.
I am proud to announce that the date has been set for the next MSDN Express event in Northwest Arkansas. The MSDN Express events are designed to deliver high quality MSDN like topics and training to a smaller venue and as always free. I would like to personally than Zain Naboulsi (Microsoft Evangelist), Randy Walker (INETA Membership Mentor), and Rob Farinholt (New Horizons) for their hard work and help organizing these events. I am currently working with Zain to get the sessions. So, mark you calendars on February 27th, I look forward to seeing you there. Sponsored by NWA DNUG, New Horizons, Microsoft
Jeff Julian from Geeks With Blogs interviewed myself and Zach Young about our efforts in the We Are Microsoft - Charity Challenge Weekend.
Our project was to help the Texas Discovery Garden build a brand new web site to teach people effective ways to restore, conserve and preserve nature in the urban environment through the use of native and adapted plants that illustrate the interrelationship of Butterflies, Bugs and Botany.
Texas Discovery Gardens had a web site in the past that was approximately 10 years old, but it was so under-maintained and antiquated that they were forced to pull it down. This event is enabling them to make their presence known once again, and by taking advantage of the latest development tools available. We chose to use DotNetNuke primarily for the implementation, which will allowed for a fast and clean implementation, but the great advantage it will bring is the long-term ease of use for the charity itself.
Read Jeff Julian's blog post
Listen to our Interview on Jeff Julian's blog
Check out the temporary new site for the Texas Discovery Garden, we will working with the Texas Discovery Garden to get this moved to a permanent hosting solution in the near future.
It was a great experience and I will be involved with this again. There were 4 members of the Northwest Arkansas .NET User Group that traveled 5 hours to Dallas, TX to be part of this event. Randy Walker, Zach Young, and Ryan Magnusson all worked some very long hours and had a great time. It was very interesting to see the enthusiasm each team had for their charity and the feeling that we really could make a difference to these organizations was awesome.
Thanks to everyone that helped organize the event, it was awesome. When is next year?
If you haven't made the jump to Visual Studio 2008 cause you don't have the bits, give a virtual PC a test drive. Microsoft is offering pre built virtual PC with several Visual Studio configurations. These are a perfect way to get a look at Visual Studio 2008 and not have to install it on your local machine. This can also be great for creating presentations.
Check out the full listing of Virtual PC Microsoft has made available pre installed with Visual Studio 2008 here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx These Virtual PC images will work until April 1, 2008, so that should give you plenty of time to play around.