Nov 27 - Security and Responsive Layouts

It's our last meeting for the year, so make sure you come out for it.  This should be good!

We have two talks as follows:

Breaking the Interwebs - Troy Hunt

Building the next generation of web apps is great, but you know what’s really interesting? Breaking them! In a nice way of course, which is entirely different to the very unfriendly ways we see web apps being broken at what seems to be unprecedented frequency these days. But it’s no wonder when you look at how these exploits are happening and that’s what I’d like to show you. In fact I’d like to show you not just how well publicised exploits have taken place, but some of the massive vulnerabilities and simple exploits that are yet to really hit the news. This will be a pretty candid look at direct risks and exploit techniques that you take home and apply right away (in a nice way, of course!)

Responsive Layout with HTML5 - James Crisp

Want to build a web application which dynamically changes layout to best suit the client, be it mobile, tablet or desktop with the same HTML? Fun times with HTML5, Bootstrap, HAML and Sass. You'll get to see it in action, and the code behind the magic.

Soft skills for technical leaders 

Due to work related travel, Richard's had to pull out this month.  Look for this talk to happen early in the new year.

RSVP

Let us know you're coming by responding to the poll on the right hand side of the site, or by responding to the event in Facebook.

We'll see you there!

October 30 - Typescript

For the month of October we have scoured the far corners of the interwebz to find you something special, just for you. We bring you subjects designed to create and endless supply of hyperbole, tim tams and coconuts and to provide for your personal edification, education and entertainment! Maybe we're overplaying it a little, maybe we're not. The only way to know for sure is to come along on the night!

This month we have a full length talk:

Something, something, Typescript

Aaron Powell

TypeScript is Microsoft's answer to the new-age problem of Something-to-JavaScript compilation, or as Brendan Eich calls it, transpilation.

Through all the fluffy words like "application scale" is there anything that's really going to make you excited? What problems is TypeScript going to solve for your average web application project and more importantly what problems is it going to introduce?

Remember to RSVP

No need to register to come but we would appreciate you RSVP'ing via the poll on the site so we can get the right amount of food ordered. Oh, don't forget to keep those UserVoice ideas coming! Submit one now :-)

September 25: Node.js, Dashboards & Builds

Exciting stuff this month with a super pluggable dashboard with extra Node.JS goodness, plus a comparison of different build systems.

Taming the Node.js wilderness - building an open source dashboard framework

Romain Prieto & Andrew Jones

When we start a new project, we usually want a dashboard so the whole team can see our key metrics at all times. We want something that is easy to configure, supports multiple (and arbitrary) external systems, and is cheap (or free!). This product doesn't exist, so we set out to make an open source dashboard using Node.js.

None of us knew much about Node.js before we started this project, so in this session we'll take you through our journey through the Node.js wilderness, and what we've learned so far. We'll also take you on a tour of the current state of our dashboard project and the tech stack we've chosen (including Express.js and CoffeeScript).

Builds - TFS Build vs TeamCity

Jason Stangroome

It's obvious that TFS Build is still behind but the real question is how big the gap is. 

Don't forget to RSVP!

Google polls are still not working, so please RSVP on Facebook or comment below if you'll be coming.

Cheering a killing and getting Pi in your face

Based on your User Voice suggestions we've selected two talks for this month:

How to kill an open source project and have everyone cheer

Aaron Powell (@slace)

Umbraco did an interesting thing in June, they killed the new version they'd been developing for close to 2 years and it was met by excitement and celebration.

So how do you do that, how do you kill your product at the start of a conference and have virtually all attendees cheer at the decision?

C# on the Raspberry Pi – Dot Net on a $35 ARM system

Andrew Stone (@drivenlogic)

Embedded systems aren't new... but a $35 price point is.

The Raspberry Pi from the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory is an affordable credit card sized computer, capable of basic computing tasks such as browsing and email but it is also capable of HD video playback and physical computing applications such as robotics.

This session will take you through the basics of the system followed by some hardware IO code written in C#, closing with a quick demo of the super popular Xbox media center (XBMC) running on the RPi

You can read more here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/about

Don't forget to RSVP

Given the great turnout last month, let us know you're coming via the poll on the web site so we can organise the logistics for the evening and make sure we don't have to sit on each others laps! :-)

Update: Technical issues mean there's no RSVP poll on the site yet - you can use the Facebook event as an alternative for now.

July is Cloud Month

Due to popular demand, this month we're making it all about the cloud.  More specifically how to use AWS from .NET land and the low down on all the new stuff that's been announced with Azure.

Russell Sayers - AWS
Amazon Web Services for .NET peeps
A very quick spin thru 26 services on offer from AWS.  A more detailed look at the three services I've used in anger: EC2, S3, and Mechanical Turk.  Some live samples with the REST APIs and the .net wrappers.

Justin King - Azure
Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh, my!

In this session we will cover not only all the new Microsoft Azure features released last month but how to take advantage of the entire Azure stack. With new functionality such as running Linux virtual machines, publishing directly from source control via git (appharbor model) or TFS with a checkin automatically triggering a build and deploy. We will take a look at the new Azure Websites, Azure Virtual Network to build hybrid on premise and cloud offering as well as the extensive updates to the new Management Portal and Web Apis for managing your deployments. If time permits we will take a look at a real world website and how I took advantage of Azure to build a scalable and multi layered site to ensure redundancy and speed.

Invite anyone who might be interested and then let us know you're coming by responding to the poll on the right hand site of the site or via the Facebook event page.

June - DDD Sydney Sneak Peek

What better way to prepare for DDD Sydney than by getting a sneak peek at some of the presentations coming on Saturday. You can maximise your time on Saturday and deal with some of those inevitable timetabling clashes when ALL of the sessions you want to see are on at the same time!

Andrew Stone is doing his Nefarious Web Robots talk, and we'll update this post once we have final confirmation from the others we "vounteered" for a talk.

We've also got Joshua Roth doing the lightning talk on Uppercut he wanted to deliver last month, so there'll be plenty on to keep you interested.

RSVP via the poll, as per usual and we'll see you on the night!

Lightning talks follow up

Pawel has posted the slides and code from his Less/Sass lightning talk this month..  You can find them on his blog.

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.