Lightning Talks make it Yay for May!

Uggh! Terrible rhyming attempt.  Sorry.

Anyway, this moth is great for those of us with short attention spa... Squirrel!!!

Where was I? Oh, yes. Lightning talks.  Speakers and topics for this month are:

Wiryadi - Go Builds

Sean - Ruby Motion for native iPhone development

James - Lean Startup (and book give away!)

Sergey - Mixins in C# 

Pawel - Using Less/Sass in a project, the right way

It should be a fun night, and with beer and pizza on offer why wouldn't you come?! Just RSVP so we know how much food to get and don't forget to tell your friends!  We'll see you there.

May 29 - Lightning Talks: Call for speakers!

Some of the most interesting and fun ALT.NETs are the lightning talks. Each presenter speaks for 5-10 minutes. We have 6 or more interesting, and usually very different topics on the night, all presented at snappy pace!

Without further ado, we'd like to put out the call for speakers for the 29th! Want to talk about something but don't have the time to prepare a full length presentation? Got some useful tips or new tech to share? Want to do your first presentation to the group?

Let us know your topic by either tweeting @rbanks54 and @jtcrisp or adding a comment to this post.

So, what do you want to talk about?  We want to hear what you have to say!

April Date Change

Our April meeting, scheduled for the 24th, is now going to be on May 1 due to a late venue scheduling clash.  If you RVSP'ed for the original date, could we ask you to re-RSVP for the May 1 date so we know if you can still make it.

Apologies for the late change and we'll see you on May 1.

May 1 Duo - Nemerle and VS11's new bits

NOTE: Meeting date changed to 1 May due to venue unavailable on 24th. Please RSVP again. Sorry about this.

This month features we've two talks.  One on Nemerle that will also be delivered at NDC later this year (yes, this is a dry run) and one on the new bits in Visual Studio 11 and why you should be all over it, like a rash.

I Can't Believe It's Not Roslyn: Using Nemerle Macros to extend the C# Language
- Philip Laureano (@philiplaureano)

Nemerle is a powerful .NET language that allows its users to extend its syntax and add new language features to suit their target domains. It also holds a powerful secret: it also has extensions that allow it to compile native C# source files as if they were originally written in Nemerle.

Philip will show you how to use Nemerle's rich macro syntax to add language features to the C# language, and unlike Roslyn, Nemerle's metaprogramming features are available for use today in production environments. This is one mind-bending session that you won't want to miss!

It's not as grey as it looks. Cool stuff in the Visual Studio 11 Beta and .NET 4.5
- Richard Banks (@rbanks54)

Visual Studio 11 beta is out and in this session you'll see some of the new goodness in the IDE and .NET 4.5 that makes your development life better.  To keep things current, we'll stay away from Windows 8 specific features in this session so you can see what you can take advantage of right now.


Don't forget to RSVP using the poll on the right and we'll see you on the night!

27 March - High-scale web performance & Devops

Two fun talks this month, hard-core web performance and continuous deployment.

Making fast websites - a deep dive into high scale web performance
Sam Saffron of StackOverflow (@samsaffron)

Sam strides boldly into the murky waters of performance, and reveals essential steps to improve your own sites, armed with tools such as MiniProfiler, HAProxy logging and analysis using Data Explorer and even a bit of Dapper!

Powershell - last mile deployment scripts
Nick Drew of ThoughtWorks (@nick_s_drew)

What happens when you take an occasional .net dev with some Linux experience, combine him with a popular australian online portal using ad-hoc processes, and ask 'what does continuous deployment look like?'.

We'll have a look at some of the slightly fantastical features of powershell that make it useful for deployment and orchestration, and how that should scare old hand unix admins and .net die hards alike!

Feb 28th - February Fun

This month we have a variety of talks:

1. SignalR - Justin King

In this session I will show you how to use SignalR, a Microsoft Async library for building real-time web applications. SignalR creates a persistent connection between the server and client(s) allowing data to be pushed from server to the client. I will do a practical demonstration of how to setup an existing solution to take advantage of SignalR and ways to enhance the client experience for your customers.

2. MiniProfiler 2.0 - @samsaffron
Lightning talk

3. Improv, or Nick Drew with a taster on DevOps @ ninemsn

(Sorry, Leo's talk on Javascript has been postponed as he's now on a plane to New York!)

As per usual RSVP using the poll on the right of the site -or- via the February event on Facebook, and don't forget to Like the new Sydney Alt.Net Facebook page as well.

January Meeting - Kinect and Improv

It's a New Year and it's time to fulfil that New Year's resolution you made about getting to more community events. What better way to do that than getting along to this months meeting where we're looking at something new and trying something new.

Our two sessions this month are as follows:

The Technology behind Microsoft Kinect - Lewis Benge
This session will spend some time looking at how the popular Microsoft Kinect actually works, its limitations, and competitors. We’ll discuss the various libraries that are available for use, and the pros and cons of each – as well as getting in to some code around getting up and running using this unique technology.
What we’ll cover:

• Introduction to TOF sensors.
• How Kinect differs between other hardware.
• Overview of Kinect for Windows, Kinect for Xbox 360, OpenNI/NITE, and Omek platforms
• Getting started with the KfW SDK using a Kinect sensor.

Improv Session - Various Artists
Yes, this session one is an experiment!  It could be really successful, hilarious and fun or it could be a complete, utter and abject failure. You'll just have to show up to find out which it will be.

The idea here is that someone volunteers to talk for 5 minutes or less on potentially any topic at all.  The audience then suggests a topic at random.  The volunteer/victim then talks on it.

When the 5 minutes is up, we go to the next volunteer and try it again.


As per usual RSVP on the site for catering purposes, spread the word and we'll see you on the night.