Wednesday 15th September 2010 – NEBytes September 2010: It's All About Phones and Infrastructure Management

Posted by Ben Lee | Filed under Events

North East Bytes now steamrolls into autumn with our 10th event of the year. Why not register, come along and enjoy the show!

Managing an Enterprise Infrastructure Using SCOM 2007 R2 with Mark Robson

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is Microsoft’s enterprise monitoring and alerting tool. SCOM gathers server performance and status information using software agents; it then collates this information using pre-determined rules (Management packs) and produces a “health” report for the environment. SCOM can be a very complicated product to implement and needs to be handled carefully to ensure the information it is producing is accurate & relevant.

In this session Mark Robson will draw from his real world experiences implementing SCOM to show how it can be used as much more than just a server monitoring tool.

image Mark, a NEBytes local, is an IS Systems Manager for a Newcastle based housing association. In 2009 Mark was key in the managing the first UK implementation of a companywide SCOM 2007 R2 deployment that has since been used as case study by Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000006463).

You can follow Mark on twitter at: http://twitter.com/mark_robson

Introducing Windows Phone 7 with Matt Lacey

In this session Matt will give us a view of overview of Windows Phone 7 and an introduction to developing applications for it.

We'll look at functionality and features of the phone highlighting what's new and what's different in the interface, architecture and development experience.

Matt has been paid to develop software for the last twelve years. In that time he has worked with multiple languages & platforms and for companies of all types and sizes. He currently works for a company specialising in mobile and digital content solutions. He is particularly interested in developer productivity, mobile computing and providing excellent user experiences.

He also organises DevEvening (http://devevening.co.uk/) and the Windows Phone User Group
(http://wpug.net/).

Location

The event will be hosted in Room 120 of the Claremont Building at Newcastle University.  For a detailed campus map - http://www.ncl.ac.uk/documents/Campus-Map-Print.pdf

image

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList

NEBytes August 2010–Technical Debt and It’s Over to You!

Posted by Andrew Westgarth | Filed under Events | North East Bytes | Slides

We held our first ever August event last night and we were more than pleasantly surprised with the numbers despite being well into the holidays!  Thanks to all those who attended and to those who didn’t – well you missed one hell of an event!

We had three presentations from members of the NEBytes community – Peter Bull, Tim Mather and Justin Souter.  Interesting content covering Windows Phone 7, Cloud Computing and Open Source.Net primarily Umbraco.  Well done to the guys for their informative presentations – all in the space of 15 minutes too!  It takes bottle to get up from the chair and get in front of people and deliver so well done!

We were extremely delighted to also welcome Gary Short, to give us a great presentation on Technical Debt – a hugely important topic for all developers and managers alike!  I’d personally been looking forward to seeing this session for quite a while and was not disappointed!  Gary’s a great speaker, very eloquent and has an excellent delivery style, if he’s speaking at a user group or conference near you I very much recommend listening to what he has to say!  His talk went down very well and received great comments on Twitter.

We will post the slides for each of the presentations on this post so feel free to take a look at the content delivered.

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList

August Event: Gary Short and an open mic session

Posted by Jonathan Noble | Filed under Events

For this month’s event on Wednesday 18th, we’ve got C# MVP Gary Short coming to talk about “technical debt” – the cost of not following good practice in development. I’m not a developer personally, by I’ve still inherited code and had to further develop on stuff that has been basically a mess, and putting it right is certainly costly in terms of time and stress levels! Gary’s presentation will cover how to put a financial cost on this and cover some measures to identify problem areas in a code base.

In the other half of the evening, we’re doing something that we’ve planned since forming NEBytes – opening up the floor to the attendees. This month we’ve got four short talks planned, covering Windows Phone 7, Cloud Computing, Open Source .Net and ASP.Net MVC.

More details are available on the events page, or head straight over to Eventbrite to register.

Register for NEBytes August 2010: The Debt Is Over To You in Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom  on Eventbrite

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList

July Event: Virtualisation-o-rama!

Posted by Damien Foggon | Filed under Events

On Wednesday 21st July we have another two great speakers lined up for a virtualisation-o-rama! We have Liam Westley on Hyper-V and Tom Howarth on VMware. For full details check out the Events Page or go straight to Eventbrite and register now!

Register for NEBytes July 2010: Virtualisation-o-rama! in Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom  on Eventbrite

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList

June Event: WCF Data Services and Exchange 2010

Posted by Andrew Westgarth | Filed under Events | North East Bytes

On Wednesday 16th June we have another two great speakers lined up for our June event.  We have Iain Angus from Black Marble visiting to talk to us about WCF Data Services and we have our very own Ben Lee showing us Exchange 2010: A Product Overview and Sample Architectures

For full details check out the Events Page or go straight to Eventbrite and register now!

Register for NEBytes June 2010: WCF Data Services and Exchange 2010 in Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom  on Eventbrite

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList

May Event: A Developer’s Guide to Velocity aka AppFabric and Making Powerful Use of PowerShell 2.0

Posted by Andrew Westgarth | Filed under Events | North East Bytes

On Wednesday 19th May we have another two great speakers lined up for our May event.  We have Phil Pursglove visiting to give us A Developer’s Guide to Velocity aka AppFabric and we have our very own Jonathan Noble showing us how to make Powerful Use of PowerShell 2.0

For full details check out the Events Page or go straight to Eventbrite and register now!

Register for NEBytes May 2010 - The Need for Speed: A Developer's Guide to Velocity aka AppFabric And Making Powerful Use of PowerShell 2.0 Easily in Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom  on Eventbrite

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList

Three Great Events in The North East in April!!

Posted by Andrew Westgarth | Filed under Events | North East Bytes

header_td

As part of the Microsoft Tech Days UK 2010, a week of free events for Developers and IT Professionals, there are three great events of note running in the North East.  The Sharepoint User Group are hosting a great night at the Cinema in Stockton, and then NEBytes are pleased to welcome Jesse Liberty for a special evening of Silverlight in addition to the Monthly meeting covering Office 2010 and Preventing SQL Injection Attacks.  Best of all- all three events are FREE!!!!

Monday 13th April 2010 – SUGUK – Sharepoint 2010 and Free Screening of Clash Of the Titans at Stockton-on-Tees Showcase Cinema

sugukMicrosoft and Combined Knowledge have funded a great evening to celebrate the launch of Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2010.  Join the Sharepoint User Group at the Showcase Cinema in Stockton-on-Tees to see a short presentation on the new features in Office and Sharepoint 2010, followed by an Open Mic “Ask the Experts” session on general SharePoint topics such as business adoption, Sharepoint designer, VS 2010 and Office focussed development in general, before settling down with Popcorn to watch a free screening of the new blockbuster – Clash Of The Titans!

For more information and to register - http://suguk.org/forums/thread/23041.aspx

Friday 16th April 2010 – NEBytes – Jesse Liberty – Silverlight Geek – Newcastle-upon-Tyne

nebytes-logo-final On Friday 16th April 2010, We are pleased to welcome Jesse Liberty, the self styled Silverlight Geek and a Senior Program Manager in the Silverlight Development Team at Microsoft, to Newcastle as he makes his way round the UK as part of his UK Tour .  Jesse will be delivering the following session:

Building A Highly Extensible, Decoupled Silverlight Open Source Application with MEF and RIA Services using Lean, Test Driven Development, An International Team of Volunteer Programmers,  and lots of Advil.

This talk will use the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform open-source project on CodePlex as a case study in building highly extensible Silverlight applications. Among the topics we will focus on are:

  • New features in Silverlight 4 and how they made life easier
  • The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) added to Silverlight 4
  • WCF RIA Services for connection to a back-end db
  • Handling inter-module communication when the requirements are that modules cannot assume which other modules will be created, there can be no dependencies on order-of creation and unanticipated modules must be able to communicate with existing modules.
  • Using Markers, Injected Markers and polling to trigger events while viewing a video.
  • A Quick introduction to Lean, TDD and Kanban.

NEBytes are also looking at putting on a Geek Dinner afterwards, so if you’d be interested in attending let us know when you register for the NEBytes – Jesse Liberty – Silverlight Geek Event

Wednesday 21st April 2010 – NEBytes -  “Office 2010” and “Preventing SQL Injection Attacks” – Newcastle-upon-Tyne

nebytes-logo-finalOn Wednesday 21st April 2010 NEBytes will be holding their regular monthly event and will be covering the topics of Office 2010 and Preventing SQL Injection Attacks.  We are pleased to welcome Colin Mackay to cover Preventing SQL Injection attacks and we are very pleased to have NEByte’s very own Jonathan Noble and Ben Lee covering Office 2010 at the event:

Office 2010 - Ben Lee and Jonathan Noble

This summer Microsoft will release Office 2010. While this is more of an evolution from Office 2007 rather than the revolutionary jump from Office 2003 into the world of the Ribbon UI, there are still a number of new features in the desktop applications that make this release interesting. In addition, 2010 sees Office head into the cloud with the all-new Office Web Apps. In this session, NEBytes' own Ben Lee (@Bibbleq) and Jonathan Noble (@jonoble) will highlight their favourite new features across the whole suite and also demonstrate how to manage, secure and deploy Office 2010 to the desktop, including delivery using App-V.

SQL Injection Attacks and Tips on How To Prevent Them - Colin Angus Mackay

In light of some recent events, such as the man who was convicted of stealing 130 million credit card details through a SQL Injection attack, it is imperative that developers understand what a SQL Injection Attack is, how they are carried out, and most importantly, how to defend your code against attack.

In this talk Colin Mackay will demonstrate a SQL Injection Attack on an application in a controlled environment*. He’ll show you where the vulnerable code lies and what you can do to harden it.

Although this talk uses C# as the application language and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as the database engine many of the concepts and prevention mechanisms will apply to any application that accesses a database through SQL.

* Demonstrating an attack on a system without the owner’s consent is a breach of the 1990 Misuse of Computers Act, hence the controlled environment.

Colin Angus Mackay is a Software Developer living in Glasgow. He has been programming since the age of 9 starting with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. He became a professional software developer in 1994, using a Smalltalk based language called Magik. In 1996 he started using C++ commercially and in 2002 migrated to the emerging language of C#.

Colin has received a number of awards including Code Project MVP (for 5 years) and Microsoft MVP (for 3 years). He is a member of the British Computer Society and a Member of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers. He is currently the chairman of Scottish Developers and has organised the last two Developer Day Scotland conferences (with a third in the works).

You can find out more on his blog at: http://blog.colinmackay.net.

Go to the NEBytes April Event Registration Page and sign up now!

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList

March Event: “Visual Studio 2010” and “System Center in the R2 Wave”

Posted by Damien Foggon | Filed under North East Bytes | Events

Following the first two events we’re keeping up the momentum by diving into the forthcoming Visual Studio 2010 and System Center.

See all the details on the Events page or just head over to Eventbrite and register now.

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList

An April Special Event

Posted by Damien Foggon | Filed under North East Bytes | Events

We were going to formally announce this at the event tonight (spaces are still available so if you want to attend head to the registration form) but as Jesse blogged about it on Monday he’s beat us to it.

We have the pleasure of welcoming Jesse Liberty for a special event in April (in addition to the normal event on the 21st).  Jesse is the self styled Silverlight Geek and a Senior Program Manager in the Silverlight Development Team at Microsoft.  It promises to be an interesting and rewarding session.

As part of a UK tour Jesse will be with us on Friday 16th April.  With it being a Friday we’ll be starting the session a little earlier than normal to allow us to have a Geek Dinner afterwards.

Full session details can be found on Jesse’s site and there are three that we can pick from.  Rather than us picking one we’re going to leave the choice of session up to you.

Full details of the event and the registration page will be posted early next week.  To get a taste for what Jesse is about there’s an online event this evening from LIDNUG and it should be available for download after the event.

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList

February Event: Dynamic Consumption in C# and Direct Access

Posted by Jonathan Noble | Filed under Events | North East Bytes

Following our successful launch event, we’re hoping to keep up the momentum by diving a bit deeper into a couple of subjects on Wednesday 17th February. Oliver Sturm and Dr Dan Oliver have both been here before to speak at VBUG Newcastle and we’re glad to have them back to present at the 2nd NEBytes meeting. We’re also glad to welcome Conrad Sidey who is teaming up with Dan to cover Direct Access after Oliver has shared some new dynamic features of C# 4.0.

See all the details on the Events page or just head over to Eventbrite and register now.

Incidentally, if you were at the launch with your camera, or feel like bringing one along to future events, you can add your photos to the NEBytes Flickr Group.

Digg It!DZone It!StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditDel.icio.usNewsVineFurlBlinkList