NEBytes

The magic hour has been and gone… Microsoft pushed the big green "go" button in the cloud and have unleashed the Ninja-cat riding a Bacon-Narwhale on a Unicorn surfing on the back of a T-rex software (incase you were wondering) known to the rest of the world as Windows 10!

Come along to the second NEBytes in our new home at Campus North where Jon Noble and Ben Lee will cover their thoughts and experiences to-date with Windows 10. Also they will talk and attempt to demo more of the upcoming Windows 10 mobile release – hopefully with more success than last time!

We’d love to hear your tales and experiences so come along ready to contribute. If you have any particularly interesting or exciting tales you want to share drop us a line – events@nebytes.net and we can give you a proper slot in the agenda.

As it is summer holiday season we will only be running the one slot this month which leaves more beer & pizza time after the event :)

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Ben & Jon.

Date: Wednesday 19th August 2015

Time: 18:30-20:30

Join North East Bytes for the first event in our brand new home! We're very happy to be running our events at Campus North in the heart of Newcastle from this month. The format of our events won't be changing (but there will be added beer!).

We're welcoming a brand new speaker for our brand new venue. This sounds like a great session from Mark Thompson:

Session 1: Communications enable your software quickly and easily with Twillio (Mark Thompson)

For the uninitiated Twillio is an on-line service that makes it easy add support for SMS and phone calls to your web/ mobile apps.

Using a few lines of code you can have your application up and running, sending/recieving SMS messages or even making telephone calls for you.

Yes really! No hardware needed, no SIM cards and certainly no need to run any new cables to your premises!

During this talk I'll demonstrate how easy it is to get up and running with Twillio:

• Get a UK landline number with the area code of your choice for $1 a month
• Enable SMS based two factor authentication for your apps - Because we all know how secure email is...!
• Respond to an SMS message
• Respond to a telephone call
• Build your own PBX (i.e. Telephone menu and multi user voicemail) in under half an hour.

Everything I demonstrate will be easily ported to the language of your choice.

Mark is a Software Development Team Lead who has worked on software projects from Military Communications to printing best before dates on ready meals. He favours the Microsoft Technology Stack, C#, MVC and Team Foundation Server, and is a Certified Scrum Master and Professional.

When he isn't ranting about code or Scrum he is trying to convince his two young daughters software development is cool.

Session 2: Azure Service Bus (Michael Stephenson)

In this session we will look at an introduction to the Azure Service Bus and its capabilities to deliver low cost massive scale messaging.  We will also look at some demo's of how to use the service bus and some real world use cases.

Michael Stephenson is a UK based integration and cloud specialise who has worked with many consultancies and customers building hybrid integration solutions using Microsoft technologies such as BizTalk & Azure. Michael is also a Pluralsight trainer and blogger on integration and architecture related topics. Michael has been a Microsoft MVP for 6 years.

Date: Wednesday 15th July 2015

Time: 18:30-21:00

We look forward to seeing you at Campus North on the 15th!

Join North East Bytes for our fourth event of 2015.  In this event we'll be running a retrospective session covering all the news from BUILD 2015 and the inaugural Microsoft Ignite Event, so if you can't make it out to San Francisco or Chicago why not come along and catch up on all the news with us.

Date: Wednesday 20th May 2015

Time: 18:30-21:00

If you're following the Build and Ignite conferences and see something you think might be of interest to the wider group, please feel free to either point it out to us so we can include it or why not even stand up and discuss it with members in our session - they don't bite! :), either way let us know via Twitter/Facebook/Website of anything that is of interest.

We look forward to seeing you on the 20th!

Event Location The event will be hosted in Room 1.02 on the first floor of Claremont Tower at Newcastle University. For a detailed campus map - http://www.ncl.ac.uk/documents/Campus-Map-Print.pdf

Happy post-Easter everyone...

Better late than never we're pleased to be making live our April event for 2015...

Date: Wednesday 15th April 2015

Time: 18:30-21:00

Session 1: Microsoft Preview

It's that time in Microsoft's development cycle where lots of new things are just round the corner and prehaps unprecedented in Microsoft's history they are sharing more and more information than ever before. As a Joe Public you are able to sign up and get preview access to:

• Windows 10
• Windows 10 preview for phones
• Office 2016
• Skype for Business

In this first session, Jon Noble, Ben Lee and Andrew Westgarth will cover the key points from the above upcoming product releases. They break their devices so you don't have to! :)

Session 2: Universal app per day to help prepare way for Windows 10

Peter Bull is a local developer living in Gateshead and has worked on a variety of development projects from an online second-hand book store to his own Windows Phone apps, one of which got over a quarter of a million downloads. This month he’s releasing a Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 Universal Application Tutorial each day, in this presentation he’ll cover how writing universal apps now (for Windows 8.1 / Phone 8.1) will bring you a step closer to being ready for Windows 10. Now that the promise of truly universal apps is about to be delivered Peter learned a lot from the process with Windows 8 and will share his knowledge with the group.

Hello All,

We're delighted to put live our event for March where are are partnering with the SharePoint User Group once again :)

Welcoming back to the stage MVP John Timney

Date: Wednesday 18th March 2015

Time: 18:30-21:00

Session 1: Evolving the IT Pro

What does SharePoint IT Pro version 2 look like?  How will you transform your skills to retain employment in the new world of cloud, hybrid and damned confusing IT?  What indeed even is this new world we are facing? Are we more fragmented as individuals, what place is there for developers, and what planning roles can an IT Pro evolve themselves into to ensure a career in SharePoint? 

Demand has never been higher for SharePoint staff, and yet many IT Pro's and Devs are simply unemployable in this new world.  Come and learn what skills you need to thrive in this rapidly evolving world that we face and consider how to evolve yourself from the IT Pro of old to the in-demand leading edge Hybrid professionals sought by the SharePoint IT and consulting industry. 

While you are here, learn what kind of salary these new roles we can place ourselves into might actually pay. Plan your next IT Pro career opportunity by joining me on a holistic overview of what it takes to be the IT Pro V2, understanding how the world is rapidly changing, what the new market is seeking, what roles are in demand, how to avoid recruiter snake oil, avoiding unicorns and even gathering some tips on finding the right staff for your SharePoint projects.  If you want a career in SharePoint VNext as IT Pro VNext, this is a must attend session!

Session 2: Surprise!

Welcome back to a new year and an all new NEBytes event! Hopeful you will forgive our slight interruption to your normally scheduled NEBytes entertainment programming but I promise the wait will have been worth it!

We are very pleased to have along a great speaker from Xamarin themselves with not just a single talk but a double bill all about your favourite cross-platform mobile development platform...

Date: Wednesday 18th February 2015

Time: 18:30-21:00

Introducing Mike James (@micjames6):

The most recent addition to the Developer Evangelism team at Xamarin, Mike previously worked within the support department. Before joining Xamarin he worked within the entertainment control industry developing control systems for installations such as the London Eye. His passion grew for mobile when he was tasked with developing mobile apps for site engineers tocontrol the lighting on these installations. Currently Mike is responsible for engaging with the community in Europe and takes great pleasure in having the opportunity to meet customers face to face and present new technologies to them. Mike lives in the UK and enjoys music production, running and his Xbox One.

Mike will be presenting on two topics for us this month:

Building cross-platform native UIs with one shared codebase was once just a dream. With Xamarin.Forms, this dream is now a reality. Xamarin.Forms allows you to build a native UI for three platforms with one shared C# codebase. Simply put, if you know C# then you already know how to build iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps. Leverage the .NET Framework to build out your shared business logic including integration with web services and Azure Mobile Services and then build out your shared UI in C# or XAML. Xamarin.Forms also features a built-in two-way data binding, dependency service to help you implement platform-specific code, an advanced cross-platform animation system, support for custom controls, and lots of other powerful features to help you build the best apps possible in the least amount of time.

During this session we will cover the Xamarin platform and the brand new Xamarin.Forms library to share even more code across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.  Moreover, we will really focus on the code with several live coding adventures throughout the entire session. When you leave you will have the knowledge to create your first iOS, Android, and Windows Phone mobile apps in C# with Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms.

Session2: Automated UI Testing for iOS and Android Mobile Apps

An ever growing number of mobile devices with constantly advancing operating system releases are hitting the market at a lightning pace. Creating a comprehensive testing suite is imperative to success in the mobile market to ensure your app is of the highest quality with each and every release. Unit tests can only test your core business logic. How can you ensure your user interface is bulletproof and regression free on four versions of iOS on 20 devices or eight versions of android on over 18,000 device models! This is where creating automated user interface testing for mobile apps comes in.

Xamarin.UITest is a freely available testing framework that enables you to create user interface tests to programmatically interact with native and hybrid apps. Swipe, tap, or rotate any user interface element and then perform real world assertions and take screenshots for visual validation along the way. Learn how to create these tests and run them locally on your own device or simulator or take them to the Xamarin Test Cloud to automatically test your application on thousands of physical devices ensuring mobile success.

Now with your apps out in the wild how do you plan on monitoring your applications in real time for crash reporting and analytics? Xamarin Insights provides a fully cross-platform API for all of your mobile applications and even integrates into popular services such as GitHub and Visual Studio online for mission critical updates. Learn how to easily integrate Insights into your mobile applications and extend further with identity and service integration.

Event Location

The event will be hosted in Room 1.02 on the first floor of Claremont Tower at Newcastle University. For a detailed campus map - http://www.ncl.ac.uk/documents/Campus-Map-Print.pdf

Come along and join us for a rare festive NEBytes this December we are delighted to welcome DevExpress Analytics Program Manager, Seth Juarez to the region!

Date: Tuesday 9th December 2014

Time: 18:30-21:00

Come along and join us for a rare festive NEBytes this December we are delighted to welcome DevExpress Analytics Program Manager, Seth Juarez to the region!

Practical Machine Learning - Predicting Things

Machine Learning can often be a daunting subject to tackle much less utilize in a meaningful manner. In this session, attendees will learn how to take their existing data, shape it, and create models that automatically can make principled business decisions directly in their applications. The discussion will include explanations of the data acquisition and shaping process. Additionally, attendees will learn the basics of machine learning - primarily the supervised learning problem.

About Seth Juarez

Seth Juarez holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science where his field of research was Artificial Intelligence, specifically in the realm of Machine Learning. Seth is the Analytics Program Manager for DevExpress where he specializes in products dealing with data analysis, shaping, and presentation. When he is not working in that area, Seth devotes his time to an open source Machine Learning Library, specifically for .NET, intended to simplify the use of popular machine learning models, as well as complex statistics and linear algebra.

Event Location

The event will be hosted in Room 1.02 on the first floor of Claremont Tower at Newcastle University. For a detailed campus map - http://www.ncl.ac.uk/documents/Campus-Map-Print.pdf

This event is kindly sponsored by Scott Logic:

We're pleased to announce that for NEBytes this October we are delighted to welcome SUGUK North East's SharePoint Server MVP John Timney and Microsoft Integration MVP Michael Stephenson.

Date: Wednesday 15th October 2014

Time: 18:30-21:00

Goal Alignment in the Hybrid SharePoint Estate - John Timney

In any organization, employees represent the most valuable organisational asset, so ensuring SharePoint meets the collaborative challenges and productivity needs in using the platform will ultimately affect an organization’s profitability and overall success of a SharePoint program. As we move more towards Hybrid estates, or are considering Cloud based deployments for SharePoint, Office 365, SaaS or PaaS, aligning the people and the objectives becomes financially intertwined.

This session will focus on how to improve that critical aspect of SharePoint project incepetion and a key facet of Enterprise frameworks such as TOGAF; Goal Alignment. A lack of Goal Alignment in the inception phase is where many SharePoint projects fail before they start. It can be a very misunderstood Governance area outside of the familiar IT domain, and can pull kicking and screaming the mystical SharePoint Architect into the uncomfortable world of business. It is where we set the measures to prove we have delivered something of value, and one of the earliest facet of governance where the business and IT world collide head on. It is the tool for aligning IT and business goals.

Join honourary MVP for the day "Dilbert" and his work colleagues as they assist in explaining what Goal Alignment is, and the benefits it can bring, to stop your Hybrid SharePoint Projects failing before they even begin.

A veteran Microsoft “Most Valued Professional” award holder and a former MSDN “Regional Director” shows a respected and globally recognised technical background, supported by 25 years in Government and Telecoms IT. He holds current SC Clearance and is ITIL certified. John is co-author of several books and a regular speaker at conferences throughout the UK and Europe and a strong advocate for best practice.
John is an enthusiastic, technically diverse, well informed and forward thinking Senior Enterpirse Architect with a very credible market reputation based on global enterprise scale skills hard earned from the ground up.
John recently took on an assurance role to validate and assure the 300,000 seat global migration, approach, solutions design, platform and architecture of a Hybrid Office 365 Online Enterprise Wide SharePoint 2013, Lync and Exchange implementation for a Top 4 Global IT Consultancy.
He has spent a number of years in a leadership team as Enterprise Assurance and Strategy Lead Architect at the UK Department of Education’s flagship E-Cloud programme, specialising in Delivery Assurance and Strategy around the implementation of an enterprise scale IL3 compliant Private Cloud (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) SharePoint 2010 delivery.
His roles typically involve advising Project Directors and Managers, Client Directors and Technology Leaders, End Users, Technical Architects, Developers and Designers to deliver roadmaps for technology evolution and transformation.
John is a large scale Enterprise Architecture and Delivery Specialist with proven experience in architectural assurance, strategy, delivery and management of end to end Enterprise scale environments. Skills focus around people, process, environments and systems in the Microsoft Practice area related to all aspects of assurance and governance for Collaboration Programs of work.

Hybrid Connectivity Options with the Microsoft Cloud - Michael Stephenson

There are a number of ways to connect your on premise resources with services in the cloud.  What are these options and how do you choose the right ones for your organisation to invest in?  In this session Michael will discuss some of the options available if you wish to connect your on premise data centre with services in the Microsoft Azure Cloud.  This session will share some architecture experience from real world projects which used some of these various approaches. 

Michael is a highly experienced freelance consultant with lots of experience of architecting and delivering integration projects which leverage the Microsoft technology stack. He has deep, practical knowledge of delivering complex solutions with BizTalk, Microsoft .NET, Microsoft Azure and associated technologies. Michael has also been a technical lead on 25+ projects which have leveraged Microsoft's cloud platform.

Michael is heavily involved in the community activities around Microsoft technologies through the Microsoft MVP and Advisor/Insider programmes and also speaks at user groups on a regular basis. Michael is also an author for Pluralsight having produced a very popular courses on .net and RabbitMQ.

You can find out more about Michael at: http://microsoftintegration.guru/

Event Location

The event will be hosted in Room 1.02 on the first floor of Claremont Tower at Newcastle University. For a detailed campus map - http://www.ncl.ac.uk/documents/Campus-Map-Print.pdf