November 26th - Google Glass and Neo4j Graph Database

To wrap the year up, we've got two talks for you. Both should be really interesting.

Developing for Wearables (Google Glass) - Lewis Benge

The emergence of wearable devices is accelerating rapidly in the majority of first world economies. Born out of our passion for mobile devices, we are now placing more technology on our person than ever before. So how do we as developers tackle this technological evolutions? This session will look at how things have progressed from fitness and health, to smart watches, through to Google Glass – and as a .NET developer how we can take advantage of this emerging trend… And yes you get to try out Google Glass.

A talk on Neo4j - NeoTechnology

One of the NeoTechnology team members will be in town to give us a run through of Neo4j and answer all your questions, so if you've ever wanted to get to grips with graph databases and the problems they can help you solve you should come along.


Personally I love graph databases and I'm itching to see how Glass works in real life so I'm excited by both talks.

RSVP using https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/sydney-altnet-nivember-2013-tickets-9352247825, and yes, that's a typo in the EventBrite link. #sigh

October 29th - MVVM Cross and Advanced Async with Boiling Eggs

This month's talks come to you from topics suggested by people at last month's meeting. I love it! And just like these topics, we'd love you you to suggest your own too, either in person or using the UserVoice site. What's stopping you? :-)

On to this month's potential awesomeness:

MVVM Cross - Michael Ridland (@rid00z)

It's clear that the future of applications is multi device and multi platform. Not only are users demanding high quality applications,  they also want them to look and behave like their other native applications. Visual Studio and Xamarin allow developers to easily create native apps for Windows Phone/8/Store, iOS and Android in c#. Now thanks MvvmCross developers can easily have the code nicely separated and shared between all platforms using the Mvvm design pattern. 

Michael will be giving a introduction to MvvmCross and talk about some things he's learnt in 2 years of building mobile apps.

Advanced Async and Egg Boiling - Filip Ekberg (@fekberg)

This is an in depth async talk by Filip, covering some of the problems and fun you can have with it. As for the title? Well, that comes from this short explanation of the difference between parallel and async: "If you boil eggs, you have multiple eggs boiling at the same time, they're boiling in parallel to each other. While the eggs are boiling you stroll around the kitchen and clean up, you're doing this asynchronously to the egg boiling because as soon as the egg timer goes off you're going back to the boiling process to get the eggs off the stove." Let's get cooking!

UPDATE: Filip posted a recording of his talk on his blog - http://blog.filipekberg.se/2013/10/29/advanced-async-talk-alt-net/

This will be a fun meet up so don't forget to RSVP by getting a free ticket, tell your friends about it and then turn up on the night :-) We're looking forward to seeing you there!

Wed 2nd Oct - Co-Hosting a YOW! Night with Joe Albahari

In addition to our normal meeting (it's on tomorrow night - go RSVP if you haven't done so already!) we're having an extra get together on Wed 2nd October in conjunction with YOW! Australia.

We've got Joe Albahari (creator of LinqPad, author of C# in a Nutshell, and all round good guy) in town talking about functional programming. Get yourself a ticket from https://ynsydoct2013.eventbrite.com.au/ and we'll see you there!

Sep 24, Meet OWIN and Nancy

We've got two web talks for you this month, both talking about alternatives to the standard way of  building and running ASP.NET MVC and WebForms web apps.

Meet Nancy - Richard Banks (@rbanks54)

Richard will be showing off the Nancy framework and proving that you don't need ASP.NET WebForms or MVC in order to build a great web application in .NET.

Video: http://t.co/f6igu3W4bG
Code: https://github.com/ColinScott/HappyPath

Meet OWIN - Aaron Powell (@slace)

Aaron will be doing much the same, and introducing OWIN; explaining what it's all about and how it works. He may even explain why Microsoft is getting on board and supporting a project that lets people run ASP.NET web apps without using IIS.

Video: http://t.co/qT7elKiQBB
Screencast: http://youtu.be/50Nqom-Zpuo
Slides: https://presentboldly.com/aaronpowell/owin/

Don't forget to RSVP at Eventbrite so we know how much food to order and we'll see you there :-)


UPDATE: Links to videos from the night have been added.

Aug 27 - Testing in JavaScript land and the Azure Puzzle

This month we've got two talks. One on JavaScript and the other on Azure (but I figured you guessed that from the title of this post!)

Testing in JavaScript Land - Gareth Stokes (@garrydanger)

Battle scars and lessons learned when testing JavaScript with Jasmine, PhantomJS and Casper, all of it being held together with Grunt. What more could you want?!

Update: Slides and code available here: https://github.com/garethstokes/presentation-javascript-testing

Windows Azure Aint What It Used To Be - Justin King (@zerohash))

With all the changes to Azure over the past 12 months, the way you build apps with it has certainly changed. What do you need to know if you're trying to puzzle out how to effectively build an app on Azure and avoid reinventing the wheel? This talk may just tell you :-)


If either of those interest you then go ahead and get yourself a free ticket for the night from the eventbrite page and we'll see you on the night. Oh, don't forget to tell a friend or colleague as well!

July 30th Double Bill - Reactive Extensions and Moving to HTTPS!

Good news! We'll be bringing you yet another exciting ALT.NET evening this month. We have a confirmed venue of the ThoughtWorks office and two fun talks.

Applications of the Reactive Extensions framework - Niall Connaughton (@nconnaughton)

Despite the fact that the Reactive Extensions framework has been around for almost four years, its uptake is still patchy and often confined to niche applications. Yet its ability to manipulate and react to flows of in-flight data is seriously powerful.

There's a lot of material out there about learning Rx from scratch, and covering this topic in half an hour isn't going to get too far. Instead, we'll focus more on what Rx can do for you and how it can apply to many different types of applications.

We'll also go through a few examples of some neat applications of Rx to give you some inspiration, and cover some design pointers to help you get the most out of Rx while avoiding pitfalls.

If you're new to Rx, come along and learn why it's worth investing time in learning, and how thinking about the event flows in your application can open up the potential for new functionality. If you're already using Rx, come along and hopefully pick up some new ideas.

Moving to HTTPS - James Crisp (@jtcrisp)

After recently moving the Getup site fully to HTTPS, James will share with you security pitfalls, the justification for the move from mixed HTTP/HTTPS, lessons learnt, and performance tips. A romp through the protocols of the web with riffs on status codes, HSTS, domain verification, and interesting headers. This talk could save your bacon.


RSVP by getting yourself a free ticket from EventBrite and we'll see you there!


UPDATE

Videos of these talks were posted on YouTube. Thanks @Meligy

Moving to HTTPS - http://youtu.be/WMH7ebXH1CQ
Reactive Extensions - http://youtu.be/0SumokkY-6w

Sad Panda is Sad. No Meeting For June.

Sorry folks. Our venue availability just got worse we now can't use the venue at all next week, and I haven't been able to get anything organised at this late hour.

As such we're going to have to cancel this months meeting. The silver lining to this means you can all have the night off! Go spend some time with your family, catch up on Game of Thrones, come up with a talk for next month, play games on your console or write some awesome code for an open source project.

You could also amuse yourselves by posting sad memes on the facebook page.

Next month, we should be back to normal. See you then!

May 28 - Practical DDD and Code Perspective

We have two talks for you this month, and without further ado here they are:

Practical Domain Driven Design - Mohammed Abed (@moh_abed)

Mohammed will be sharing simple, yet practical, practices that can help you to gradually move toward a richer domain model and as a result create a more understandable and maintainable application.

CodePerspective - Brendan Forster (@shiftkey)

CodePerspective is an open-source tool for inspecting your .NET applications (both web and desktop applications) and viewing their behaviour in real-time with some great and some crazy visualisations. I’ll show you how to get started with it, explain how it works and the various things it can teach you about your application. And even more.


Get yourself a free ticket for the event and we look forward to seeing you and your friends on the night!

April 30 - Talking Weinre and Xamarin 2.0

Puns and innuendo ahoy! Well, maybe just little one's (sorry!) This month we've got a small talk about Wienre, as well as a returning guest all the way from the US of A for a chat about Xamarin 2.0 and the goodness it brings for cross platform dev.

Also, as mentioned at the last group, we're trialling Eventbrite for RSVP'ing so click away and book yourself a spot for this months meeting.

Come and Check out Wienre - Craig Richards (@richardscraig)

weinre stands for WEb INspector REmote. Pronounced like the word "winery". Or maybe like the word "weiner". Who knows, really.

weinre is a debugger for web pages, like FireBug and Web Inspector except it's designed to work remotely and, in particular, to allow you debug web pages on a mobile device such as a phone.

So come and check it out! (cue childish giggling)

Xamarin 2.0 - Craig Dunn (@conceptdev)

All your mobile app development in one language (C#), in one place (Visual Studio). iOS, Android & WinPhone+Store: What's not to love?



So there we have it and with double the Craig's it'll be double the fun! RSVP and we'll see you there!

March 2013 - Scripting and Glimpsing

This month we have a double act for your entertainment, and maybe even for you education and enlightenment, though the promoters accept no responsibility for this actually occurring :-)

RSVP via the poll on the web site, tell your friends and colleagues to come along, spam Twitter and Facebook about it and don't forget to get your best Hawaiian shirt ready for the night. We'll see you next week!

Oh yeah, here's the talks you'll have coming your way:

Glimpse - Aaron Powell (@slace)

Diagnostics aren’t the sexiest of topics to cover but at some point in every project they become invaluable. This is when it’s Glimpse to the rescue. Come learn what you can do if you want to have a glimpse under the hood at your ASP.Net application.



Scripting for evil and profit - Luke Drumm (@lzcd)

Adding scripting support to your windows / web / phone application is (almost) always a winning tactic.
Not a believer? Join Luke as he gesticulates wildly on the subject, citing extremely convincing hearsay and rumor, displaying a wide selection of vaguely inappropriate examples (with matching hand gestures) and generally being disgustingly optimistic about the whole subject.
Learn how the addition of scripting support to your applications can lead to happier users, developers, puppies and businesses.
Be amazed at how passionate you too can be about adding scripting support to *everything* upon seeing this presentation.
(Disclaimer: May require additional caffeine and sugar to attain scripting passion. May not be legal in all states).

February Meeting

Due to travel commitments Richard has been a bit behind on getting the word out about this month's talks.

Never fear though for we have the following talks this month for you:

Developer Productivity with CodeRush by Justin King (@zerohash)

This talk is a nonstop demo fest of all  the great (well as many as we can cover) features of DevExpresses best tool CodeRush and Refactor Pro. Most developers I meet use Resharper (R#) however I've used CodeRush for over 7 years. It's been around a lot longer and every major release has added some kick ass features. Here are some of the great features will cover on top of the refactoring and coding assistance - Debug Visualiser, Code De-duplication, Code Metrics, Unit Test Runners and Code Analysis. Get your game on and get productive!

Angular JS by James Sadler (@freshtonic)

[no blurb - expect a general introduction, followed by some examples in code and then a section on testing and dependency injection]

RSVP via the site as per usual, and if you could help us out be spreading the word before Tuesday that would be great!!

See you there.

Jan 29 - Soft Skills and NServiceBus New Bits

A big welcome back for the New Year to everyone. To kick the year off for you we have the following topics for your entertainment so RSVP via the poll on the site and we'll see you on the 29th!

What's New in NServiceBus? - Hadi Eskandari

This talk is about NServiceBus, an open-source enterprise service bus on .NET platform. With all the web services around we'll see why and where it is relevant to use a service bus. We'll quickly create a solution based on NSB which would get you up to speed with the technology and also see new features and functionalities introduced in the latest version and have a sneak peek at what would be available in next versions.

Soft Skills for Technical People - Richard Banks

Sometimes you need to communicate with people using more than a keyboard. Sometimes you actually have to go and talk to someone in person. Egads! I know! What are you going to do when that happens?
All joking aside, we'll be running through of some of the soft skills and techniques you need to improve your interactions with other people. Skills that will help you better understand what they want and skills to help you convey your thinking, ideas and opinions to others in a way that they will 'get'.


Don't like the talks here? That's fine, this group is for you, so why don't you submit a topic idea on UserVoice and we'll see what we can do for you.