While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/

And, our appreciation goes out to Useable Concepts Incorporated for providing pizza for this additional meeeing:

Useable Concepts Incorporated - http://www.useableconcepts.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - August Meeting

WHEN: Tuesday 08/10/2010
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at On The Border

WHERE: Intel Ronler Acres 1 (RA1) Auditorium (map)
2501 NW 229th Ave.
Hillsboro, OR 97124-5506

WHO: Adam Kinney & Karl Shifflet
Adam Kinney is a creative developer with a strong focus on UI technologies including HTML, CSS, Canvas, Processing, Flash, WPF and Silverlight. He enjoys working in the space between design and development teams enabling the best results from both sides. Having spent the last five years as an Evangelist for Microsoft, Adam also enjoys sharing his knowledge and helping others learn new UI technologies and tools. Recently leaving Microsoft, he is currently working on a variety of interesting projects and experiments with the crew at Pixel Lab and posting tutorials on his personal site: http://adamkinney.com.

Karl Shifflett is a Program Manager at Microsoft working on the WPF and Silverlight Designer since August of 2008. Before Microsoft, Karl was a software architect, former Microsoft MVP and Code Project MVP. He has been designing & developing business applications since 1989 and transitioned to .NET in March of 2003. In April of 2007 he joined the list of WPF fanatics & evangelists. He is a member of Team Mole that delivered the Mole Visualizer for Visual Studio to the world. He is the author of the very popular XAML Power Toys; loves WPF and Silverlight LOB and is developing a passion for Windows Phone 7 and ASP.NET MCV. You can read his blog at: http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/.

TOPIC: Building toolable Silverlight applications that enable the designer developer workflow
Warning: We won’t be 20 seconds into this session before mashing the gas pedal to the floor. After looking at the XAML tools Blend & Cider, we’ll dive deep into toolable application design. Toolable applications not only enhance the initial development experience but also provide benefits to long term application maintenance. An additional benefit is the enabling of the designer developer workflow. See the two roles played out in the presentation as they collaborate without clobbering each other.

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com
• Intel - http://www.intel.com

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/

And, our appreciation goes out to Z-Tech Staffing for providing pizza for this additional meeeing:

Z-Tech Staffing - http://z-techstaffing.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - July Meeting

WHEN: Tuesday 07/13/2010
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at TBD

WHERE: Webtrends (map)
851 SW 6th Ave.
Portland, OR 97204-1337

WHO: TBD

TOPIC: Windows Phone 7

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - June Meeting

WHEN: Tuesday 06/08/2010
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at TBD

WHERE: Webtrends (map)
851 SW 6th Ave.
Portland, OR 97204-1337

WHO: Erik Mork
Erik Mork is a Silverlight Consultant and Trainer. He is a Silverlight MVP and Silverlight Insider who has been working professionally with Silverlight since the 1.0 release and is best known as the creator of the popular Sparkling Client Silverlight Podcast. He is an active contributor to community screencasts and Silverlight Open Source projects.

TOPIC: Silverlight 4 Boot Camp
Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline. Erik will be discussing the skills necessary to create powerful Silverlight 4 applications. He'll start with basic platform capabilities and tools, and show how to build media applications, rich applications with MVVM, and out-of-browser support.

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Portland Code Camp 2010

This spring, the Portland, Oregon, development community is coming together in a way never experienced before.

Portland Code Camp and SQL Saturday are combining and coordinating efforts to bring 700–800 regional software development professionals together for the opportunity to immerse themselves in seminars, presentations, group exploration, and networking.

Participants will be able to engage in their preferred technology, as well as to sample other options, with a focus on extending information exchange and enhancing the cross pollination of ideas.

Mark your calendar!

Portland Code Camp and SQL Saturday 2010 are scheduled for May 22, 2010, at the University of Portland campus. The event is scheduled from 8:00 AM until 10:00 PM. The University of Portland facility offers a great venue – including large fully equipped and air-conditioned meeting rooms, excellent parking, access to public transportation, and easy bike commuting. A few deep dive sessions (2.5 hour) will be scheduled for 7:00 PM, after evening snacks and refreshments.

Register for Portland Code Camp at: Portland Code Camp 2010

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - May Meeting

WHEN: Tuesday 05/11/2010
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at TBD

WHERE: Webtrends (map)
851 SW 6th Ave.
Portland, OR 97204-1337

WHO: Jeff Paries
Jeff Paries is the lead Silverlight developer with Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, a leading integrated communications company. Jeff has a strong background in 3D graphics and animation and is also an accomplished author and instructor in that area — he has authored several books and numerous magazine articles related to 3D.
An early adopter of Silverlight, Jeff’s interests lie in developing animation concepts and methodologies within Silverlight. As a developer with design experience, Jeff’s mission is to help bridge the gap between design and development. His latest book, “Foundation Silverlight 3 Animation” works to further this goal through a scenario-based approach.

TOPIC: Procedural Animation in Microsoft Silverlight
Come and see how trigonometry and trigonometric functions can help us create movement in Microsoft Silverlight. Trigonometry is the study of how the angles and lengths of sides of triangles relate to one another, and is quite useful in programming Silverlight applications.
We'll talk about how to apply trigonometry within Silverlight to create free-form rotations, calculate the distance between objects, use Sine curves to create oscillating movement, and more. The math will be demonstrated in a scenario-based approach in order to make it easier to understand, even if you slept through math class.

Warmup - Smooth Streaming w/ VideoRx
At the beginning of the meeting (6pm) Robert Reinhardt, co-author of the Microsoft Expression Blend 2 Visual Quickstart Guide and the Flash Bible series, will present his latest online encoding service, videoRx.com. This service makes it easy to compress your video content at the highest quality and lowest file size. videoRx.com analyzes your uploaded source video and delivers the best compression for your content. videoRx.com can also create adaptive streaming content for Silverlight Smooth Streaming for playback on devices and the web.

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Scott Hanselman, a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, will be speaking on .NET and other technology topics.

Many of you know Scott or have heard him speak. He is always both informative and entertaining. If you don't already subscribe to his blog, you should.

WebMD is hosting this event and will be providing lunch. It would really help our planning if you could send a quick e-mail to rgarrison@webmd.net if you plan to attend. This will help us plan for lunch.

The meeting will be in the large ballroom on the first floor. Parking is available on the west side of the building. Carpooling is encouraged.

General Schedule:
9:00 - start
10:00 - break
10:15 - restart
11:15 - end talk, open for questions
11:45 - break for lunch
1:00 - done and out

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - January Meeting

WHEN: Tuesday 01/12/2010
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at TBD

WHERE: Webtrends (map)
851 SW 6th Ave.
Portland, OR 97204-1337

WHO: Mike Downey
Mike Downey is Director of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft where he focuses on platform adoption of Microsoft Silverlight and related technologies. Mike was formerly the Principal Evangelist for the Platform Business Development team at Adobe Systems focusing on promoting Adobe’s platform technologies including Flash, Flex, and AIR. Mike joined the AIR team as Senior Product Manager in December of 2006 before moving to his role in business development. Prior to joining the AIR product team Mike spent four years as Senior Product Manager for Flash.

TOPIC: A Flash Evangelist Goes to the Dark Side
Mike Downey was deep in the Flash world (Principal Evangelist/Senior Product Manager on the AIR/Flash teams) before switching to Silverlight. Now, he works for the devil (er... Microsoft). On Tuesday, January 12, 2010, we hear his story.

• How does Silverlight stack up against Flash?
• How does Silverlight Out Of Browser measure up to Flex?
• How does media work in Silverlight?

Warmup - MVVM in Practice
At the beginning of the meeting (6pm) our own Alexis Jasso will be giving a short MVVM demonstration. It will be an example of how to convert non-MVVM code into the MVVM pattern.

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference Early Bird Registration ends October 10

NOTE: This is a three day event. We only get to show one date on the site.

We are in our 27th year in the Portland area and have always provided an outstanding event. We have over 40 authors (papers were written and will be published at our conference) presenting on Software quality issues that are relevant to today's businesses.

Our keynote speakers and invited speaker list this year includes (links to Google TechTalks):

Erik Simmons
Johanna Rothman
Scott Barber
Elisabeth Hendrickson
James Bach
Karen Johnson

WHY ATTEND PNSQC 2009?

• Diverse group of peers to interact with – software quality professionals, developer-testers, tester-developers, managers, Agilists, contractors, consultants, customers, and maintenance engineers.
• An excellent learning environment for professional growth where you interact with peers and industry leaders.
• Tracks include – Testing, Automation, Tools, Soft Skills, Retrospectives, Process Improvement, Requirements, Agile, and Software Quality. See the Conference program preview.
• Networking for collegial support, including a Kick Off Social, Birds of a Feather Luncheon, and evening activities.
• PNSQC extends an invitation to all Quality professionals to attend a public poster session featuring informal discussion, the opportunity to pass out resumes, and learn what colleagues are doing.

DISCOUNTS are available for early birds, groups, poster presenters, and students – see the Registration Information page for details.

Get PNSQC on your calendar. We have a deal that will work for you! www.pnsqc.org

PNSQC - a focus on Moving Quality Forward where over 40 technical papers covering best practices and valuable experiences that include: Reducing Test Case Bloat; New Challenges to Quality in the 24×7 Enterprise I.T. Shop; Score One for Quality - Using Games to Improve Product Quality.

PNSQC - a non-profit organization that passes savings back to your company with Early-Bird, Group and Student Discounts. This conference is essential and a high return-on-investment for any serious professional.

World Trade Center Portland
121 SW Salmon, 2WTC
Portland, OR 97204

Early Bird Registration Prices until October 10th!

Attend PNSQC 2009 - Online Registration Open

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

As many of you know, Mr. Mauer is about to head out on his 1,300+ bicycle journey to San Diego.

Well, before we lose him to the wilds of California, he's going to share some tidbits from the new Windows Workflow Foundation 4 and related technologies.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Nick Muhonen discusses the new language features of C# 4.0 and of course, demos for the faithful!

Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.

What is SQLSaturday?

It's a free one day learning event for SQL Server professionals, loosely patterned on the well known Code Camp model, organized by the Portland SQL Server Users Group (pdxSSug).

Date and Location:

SQL Saturday Portland will be held June 6, 2009 at Mt. Hood Community College, 26000 S.E. Stark St., Gresham, Oregon 97030. The event follows the standard conference model. There are 12 sessions across 2 tracks. Most of the sessions will run 60 minutes. Check in will open at 8:00 am and sessions begin at 9:00 am. Lunch will be provided on site, and the day will close out around 5:00 pm. The after event will be held at McMenamins Edgefield, 2126 S.W. Halsey St., Troutdale, OR 97060 beginning right after the last session. Registration is at http://www.sqlsaturday.com

When will the schedule of sessions be posted?

The call for speakers is closed, and the schedule is finalized.

Can I sponsor this event?

More sponsors are needed to help subsidize the incidental costs of running the event and this is a great event to meet SQL Server professionals or to just give back to the community. If you are interested or want more information, please visit the sponsor page. You can view all of the great sponsors there and it is hoped that most of them will be at the event.

What else can you tell me about the event?

This event is free to anyone that wishes to attend. Check in for the event opens at 8 am.

Be sure to register at http://www.sqlsaturday.com

A production environment is likely different than the developer's machine. This means that the system's load pattern and timings will be different and it makes reproduction of bugs in test difficult or impossible.

Too often, bugs end up in the, "It works on my machine," unreproducable pile.

The goal of this presentation is to introduce the audience to tools and techniques to determine the root cause of common production debugging issues. The techniques and tools shown in the demos are based on real production issues. We will discuss the issues and debugging steps required for ASP.NET applications hosted on IIS 6/7. We'll also discuss debugging Silverlight applications on a customer machine when no development environment or source code is available.

Prashant Sinha has over more than 11 years of work experience including software development in finite element analysis, telecommunication, investment banking, Check Imaging, Remote Deposit Capture and enterprise services. He has led, consulted and trained developers in software development, performance analysis and production debugging on Microsoft technologies. He has also prepared coursewares on Advanced .NET debugging to conduct debugging workshop. His debugging blog is http://www.debuggingblog.com

Portland Code Camp, May 30, 2009, Reed College

The 2009 Portland Code Camp is a free mini-conference that is a community-driven event by, and for people who write software. The event features sessions on all kinds of software and technologies, regardless of language, vendor, or platform. Code camp brings the software development community together, focusing on the common act of creating software. It is designed for all interest, all levels, and all ages.

Be a Presenter! The 2009 Portland Code Camp is a great opportunity to present a session on a piece of code, a technology, or a project that excites you. Share your knowledge and experience with others. If you've never presented in public before, code camp gives you a opportunity in a warm, friendly setting.

Get more information, register, submit a session, or contribute at:
http://PortlandCodeCamp.org

Process improvement without adequate metrics is shooting in the dark - you might hit your target, but it's impossible to aim and difficult to determine how close you were to hitting your goal. In this talk we'll look at several candidate metrics that many real world organizations have used to achieve real improvements and get an excellent return on investment in process improvement initiatives. We'll also look at how to collect the right data, including the right steps to identify process changes to collect the right data.

Steven Borg, co-founder of Northwest Cadence, is the Visual Studio Team System Practice Lead at Northwest Cadence. In addition to being a Visual Studio Team System MVP, Steve holds several other credentials including MCP, MCSD, MCT and Certified Scrum Master (CSM). Steven has helped hundreds of organizations, both large and small, adopt Team System successfully, improving their software development process, reducing costs, increasing quality and speeding delivery dates.

Steven Borg is the Visual Studio Team System Practice Lead at Northwest Cadence, a Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Inner Circle partner focused on helping organizations improve their software development process. He has helped several organizations improve their development process, reducing costs, increasing quality and speeding delivery dates. In addition, he assists the Team System community as a Team System MVP, an author, and a speaker. Visit his blog at NWCadence.com to learn more about process improvement and Team System.

Stuart Celarier
Stuart Celarier is Chief Software Architect of Aivea, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Connected Systems. His career spans more than two decades of development, architecture, writing, and training, with a focus on new and emerging technologies. His professional interests include the current and next generations of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), “Oslo” modeling platform, “Dublin” application server extensions, “Geneva” claims framework, .NET Framework 4.0, and Windows Azure. Stuart is co-founder of Portland Code Camp and frequently speaks at .NET user groups, conferences, and community events. He is a member of the Software Association of Oregon’s Development SIG committee. Stuart is an INETA Speaker and has volunteered with INETA since 2003, including co-chairing the community-led Birds-of-a-Feather track at Tech•Ed 2005–2009 and PDC 2005.

WCF Best Practices with Unit Testing
Stuart will present a simple, effective strategy for unit testing Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services — as services rather than as objects — and then use unit tests as a means for exploring several best practices programming with WCF and service-orientation. Topics include understanding the relationship of services and objects, test-driven development (TDD) for services, contract-first service development, consuming services defensively, how exceptions and faults work (or don’t), and more. If you have been using WCF to work with services, this session will help you identify areas where you might improve your practices. And if you are just getting started with WCF, this session will help jumpstart your effort.

Wayne will be speaking at the Group about using the using agile techniques for software development with a particular focus on using the Kanban board.

He'll be covering different project management approaches to product line development that include:

• Reduced meetings
• Clear priorities
• Minimal multitasking
• No estimating

You can read more at these locations:
http://weblogs.asp.net/wallen/archive/2008/02/01/no-more-iterations.aspx
http://www.infoq.com/articles/hiranabe-lean-agile-kanban
http://www.agilemanagement.net/Articles/Weblog/KanbaninAction.html

• Form a team. You can come to the meeting with your team already formed. Not everyone from your team has to attend PDXUX.Net, but everyone should be willing to present once the project is complete. :-) Please don't be scared about joining a team with people you don't know. You can always be on mine or Erik's team.
• Pick a group leader. This is the person who I will be following up with to help make sure your team isn't getting stuck. As teams get stuck we'll have special meetings in March and May devoted to Q&A or pair programming, basically whatever is needed to help you out. If an unscheduled meetup is needed then we can always schedule a nerd dinner where others could also attend and perhaps benefit.
• Decide on a project. If this is your first Silverlight/WPF project then you shouldn't pick anything longer than 8-10 weeks or you may get burnt out. Bring your ideas to the meeting. These projects can be open source or not. Remember, you'll have a team you'll be working with. The purpose of these projects should be to help you learn the technologies but also be real world applications. Save your million dollar idea for your second or third project.
• Start working on your project.

I realize that this may seem hard cord, and the format may not appeal to everyone. One of the goals of PDXUX.Net this year is to help our members get actual experience and grow their skills with regard to finding that next hot job opportunity developing truly rich applications. If you think this is for you, please show up and be a part of this.

"A succinct, type-inferred, expressive, efficient functional and object-oriented language for the .NET platform."

Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.

Steven Borg of Northwest Cadence (Microsoft Team System MVP) will be covering some of the great new features of Team Build 2008, an inherent and powerful part of Visual Studio Team System 2008. You’ll learn to use Team Build 2008 to radically improve your code!

Come see real unit and functional tests being built, real code metrics being generated, and real work being done in an automated build. You’ll learn how to build legacy code, run tests and code metrics, rebuild your database, update your documentation, and even deploy your application into various test environments; all coordinated by a single command.

This seminar is intended to provide demonstrations that will be most relevant to developers, testers, build and release engineers.

Please register at: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=132684

WHO: Ben Strakany
Ben Strackany is a speaker, author, and web consultant who moved to Portland in 2005 after leading software development for ShopLocal, a web startup and top 5 comparison shopping site. Ben is currently the president of DevelopmentNow, a web consulting firm focused on social media and the mobile web. You can read more about his projects and experience at www.developmentnow.com.

TOPIC: ASP.Net Development for the iPhone
With the rapid proliferation of iPhones, smartphones, and other mobile devices, it is increasingly important for today's applications to target or accommodate small screens and mobile users. Ben will discuss the iPhone user experience, how it differs from traditional browsers, how you can make your current applications iPhone-friendly, when and why you should develop an iPhone-specific web or native application, and tips, pitfalls, and resources on iPhone development. He will also review how you can leverage your existing skills to build an iPhone web application using ASP.NET.

ASP.Net Dynamic Data is a new feature in the Microsoft .Net 3.5 SP1 release. Dynamic Data extends the data models expressed through LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework into a template-based website in seconds.

In this presentation, I'll start at File, New Project and cruise into how the System.Web.Routing namespace works. The Routing stack has crossed the boundary of the .Net MVC Framework and is finding niches in other technologies like Dynamic Data. From there, I'll tour the data driven site using standard display and edit controls for a variety of data types. Finally, I'll show how to implement specific behaviors, business logic and 3rd party controls that adhere to DRY principle.

Andrew Hay is a developer, speaker and author with 15 years of industry experience. Andrew started his career programming in Assembly language on a IBM OS/360 Mainframe computer in Chicago and leapt into the online experience in the late 90’s. Over the past five years at Pop Art, Inc, Andrew has been a champion of adding visibility into complex business processes. As Director of Software Development, he specializes in ASP.Net and its adjacent technologies including AJAX and Silverlight. Andrew earned a B.S. in Computer Science from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.

This presentation will discuss the growing importance of the asynchronous programming, particularly focusing on Microsoft’s PLINQ Technology- and of course, demos for the faithful.

Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.

SQL Server 2008 will include two new data types, GEOGRAPHY and GEOMETRY, and a spatial library that is compliant with OpenGIS SQL standards. This library not only applies to geographers, but permits you to "spatialize" your line-of-business data in any application. At the meeting I'll show you how to populate, query, and optimize spatial data, and how to integrate SQL Server 2008 data with applications such as Virtual Earth.

Bob Beauchemin is a Developer Skills Partner with SQLskills. He is a database-centric application practitioner and architect, instructor, course author, writer, and has worked with computers since 1977. He's been an application developer and DBA with relational databases like Microsoft SQL Server™, Oracle, Sybase, and DB2 as well as non-relational databases including IMS/DB, IDMS, and others. Over the past two years he's been teaching his SQL Server 2005 course to premier customers and Microsoft personnel worldwide through the SQL Server 2005 Ascend program. He's provided SQL Server 2005 training to over 500 developers through this program.

Bob is lead author of two books on SQL Server 2005, A Developer's Guide to SQL Server 2005 and A First Look at SQL Server 2005 For Developers, and sole author of Essential ADO.NET and has another book, SQL Server 2005 Developer's Guide, in the works for Addison-Wesley publishers. A First Look at SQL Server For Developers has also been made available in a custom CD format. He's written articles on database, data access and XML technologies for MSDN magazine, MSDN online, SQL Server Magazine, Visual Studio Magazine, Java Developer's Journal and others. His latest articles include a pair of articles on SQL Server 2005 XML topics and a series of six articles on ADO.NET 2.0 for MSDN online.

Bob has devoted as least part of his time training developers, DBAs, and administrators since 1992, when he presented a course on the Kerberos security system for Open Computing Security Group (now Cybersafe). He's written courses on Microsoft technologies since 1994 including courses in Active Server Pages (ASP), Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), and SQL Server for Microsoft internal training. His latest courses have been database and data access focused, including OLE DB, ADO, ADO.NET, Java Data Access, SQL Server 7/2000 for Developers, Oracle for .NET Developers, SQL Server Notification Services, SQL Server 2005 for Developers, and Programming Scalable Applications with SQL Server 2005.

Bob's has presented lectures and day-long seminars at a variety of conferences including Microsoft's Tech Ed, DevDays, ITForum, and PDC as well as internal Microsoft conferences, SQLPass, WinDev, WinSummit, VS-Live, Oracle World and others. The talks are consistently highly rated. Bob has been assisting customers and providing consulting services related to the implementation of technologies such as SQL Server 2005, Biztalk and Web Services, Web development, and assisted in computer security audits. You can contact Bob at bobb@SQLskills.com.

WHO: Erik Mork
Erik Mork is a speaker, consultant and Silverlight enthusiast in the Portland area. He specializes in Smart Client/RIA application development with Silverlight, ASP.NET AJAX, and other technologies. He's focused on making the web V.Next, and his consulting company can be found at http://www.silverbaylabs.org/.

TOPIC: What's new in Silverlight 2 - Beta 2
What's the big deal with Silverlight 2? What's the story with the latest beta release? Is it ready for primetime? Erik tackles these questions by reviewing what Silverlight 2 is and where it's going. If you're new to Silverlight, this is an opportunity to understand it, and if you've already played with Silverlight, it's a chance to further learn about the platform. Applications will be presented for 1) fighting corporate greed and 2) mindhacking with Silverlight. Erik will have the mindhacking source code available for all attendees.

The inside scoop on how to get the most out of the new ReportViewer control and how it's evolved in Visual Studio 2008. This discusses how to leverage your Reporting Services skills and RDL reports to create application-based reports and how to manage the myriad of issues that come up when trying to emulate Reporting Services functionality like parameters, connections, pick-list population and much more. This session previews the SQL Server Reporting Services technology coming with SQL Server 2008.

William R. Vaughn retired from Microsoft (in 2000) after 14 years to focus on mentoring, speaking, and writing. His specialty is data access application design especially when connecting to SQL Server. Bill has worked in the computer industry since 1972. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Mary Hardin-Baylor and a Master's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Texas. He's also been awarded an Honorary PhD. from the University of Advancing Computer Technology in Tempe Arizona. Bill spent his early years working in the mainframe data processing industry and transitioned to the personal computer side in the late 70s. Along the way, he worked for the Texas DPS Narcotics Service, EDS (where he was recruited by and worked for Ross Perot), at Mostek/United Technologies, Challenge Systems, Digital Research, and CPT Corporation. After having surfed the PC industry for many years, he began his Microsoft years in 1986 working for the Windows developer liaison team at Microsoft in 1986. For the next 14 years, he worked in various divisions at Microsoft including Microsoft University, the Visual Basic documentation and Visual Studio marketing and Internal Technical Education teams before retiring in 2000 to form his own company, Beta V Corporation.

Bill has written seven editions of the popular Hitchhiker's Guide (the 4th, 5th and 6th published by Microsoft Press) and books for APress, including the bestseller ADO and ADO.NET Examples and Best Practices. Peter Blackburn and Bill also coauthored the Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services (Addison- Wesley). His latest work is Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server Everywhere-his first e-Book. He writes lead articles for SQL Server Magazine where he is a contributing editor, MSDN, and others. Bill also writes a bi-weekly editorial for Processor.COM magazine. Bill is a top-rated speaker at conferences worldwide, including keynotes and sessions at TechEd, DevWeek, Dev Connections, SQL Connections, VBUG, and many others - where his wit and no-holds-barred technical insights win him rave reviews. Bill is a Microsoft MVP.

Call this a Public Service Announcement. On the heels of publishing his new book, Code Leader, Patrick Cauldwell will be presenting at the monthly SPIN seminar at OGI.

You must sign up - so visit http://www.cpd.ogi.edu/course.asp?n=08-SPIN-0612 and register. It may seem like it is asking you to pay, but in the end, there is no cost for the event.

Details are as follows and posted on the site .

There is a lot more to delivering a software project on time and within budget than just writing code. In fact, in many modern software development efforts, the code is the least challenging part. The hard part is setting up a build, test and deployment infrastructure that allows developers to work together effectively and efficiently.

Working efficiently with your source control system, and establishing a Continuous Integration process can go a long way toward achieving those goals. We'll look at how to organize your team and use the right tools to make the development process as efficient and effective as possible.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 brings a host of new features and improvements for smart device developers with an updated emulator, new version of the .NET Compact Framework, on-device unit testing, and more. As a software architect and Microsoft certified trainer, as well as SoftSource's subject matter expert on mobile device application development, Steven Gray will walk through the practical steps for building smart device applications quickly as well as how to leverage existing investments by bridging those mobile applications to your current web service architectures. Time and interest permitting, Steven will also contrast invoking web services from other mobile platforms besides Windows CE-based devices as well.

We are invited... [From Ben Hickman]

The monthly Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group meeting will be held on Wednesday May 28th in the Microsoft office.

I am very happy to announce that we will have Jason Noble from Neudesic presenting on Master Page development. I saw Jason’s presentation earlier this year at the Office Developer’s Conference and it was excellent. Don’t miss this one.

Developing Master Pages with SharePoint Designer
The Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies stack provides amazing out-of-the-box capabilities for enterprise and web content management, search, and business intelligence solutions. These capabilities can be further extended using custom .NET solutions developed in Visual Studio or using the no-code approach offered by Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007. In this discussion we will put forth a predictable process for creating master pages using SharePoint Designer. This will include the creation of wire frames, and provide clear direction on the various content regions available in SharePoint.

About Jason Noble
With over fourteen years of experience in building complex, mission critical applications, Jason Noble brings extensive knowledge in advanced enterprise applications, specializing in web, database and portal application development using SharePoint. Moreover, Jason has spent a number of years working with C# and ASP.NET, creating a variety of business applications, and has been actively involved with Microsoft’s .NET environment since it was introduced at the Professional Developer’s Conference in 2000. Lunch will be provided and begin promptly at 11:45AM. The presentation will be from 12:00PM to 1:00PM. A meeting invite is attached.

We will have a drawing for some give aways immediately following the meeting, so bring your Business cards to participate in the drawings!

Please register so we get an accurate head count for lunch. Click here to register. Please specify in the mail if you have any special dietary needs.

For questions or comments please contact Ben Hickman, SharePoint Technology Specialist, Microsoft NorthWest District.

Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) was released in November of 2006, yet very few developers that I talk to are using it. Learning WPF can be a daunting task, and really who wants to subject themselves to learning this when it is unclear what the reasons and benefits are for moving to this platform.

This presentation will briefly explain the Whys and then show how you can start learning and developing for what has become the new standard for Windows Client Development.

While you're at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:
White Horse - http://www.whitehorse.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/store/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

For the latest information, go to the PDX Webfoot Website

Items and people already on the agenda and absolutely subject to change at this point:

• Safe Internet Browsing
• Silverlight 2
• Internet Explorer 8
• XNA
• Adobe Flex/Air

• Scott Hanselman
• Adam Kinney
• Tim Heuer
• Jason Mauer
• Ryan Miller

There will be good food (not pizza) and there will be games and activites for spouses and kids (think Rockband and Mindstorms, though I can't promise either of those yet).

Join us at the Portland Area .NET User Group (PADNUG) where we run through the newest technologies to emerge from MIX08, including Silverlight 2 Beta 1, Internet Explorer 8, SQL Server Data Services, Windows Live, and more.

More info at The Code Trip site.

Come out and here first hand war stories and tips & tricks on .NET 3.5 from Matt Davis, Architect at Earth Class Mail. ECM recently converted their bread and butter application to .NET from PHP on Linux, and went live on .NET 3.5 Beta2. Matt will share real world stories and demos about what works and what doesn't, using WCF 3.5's new Web Programming model, LINQ, Compact Framework 3.5, and others recent Microsoft technologies.

ASP.NET MVC provides model-view-controller (MVC) support to the existing ASP.NET 3.5 runtime, which enables developers to more easily take advantage of this design pattern. Benefits include the ability to achieve and maintain a clear separation of concerns, as well as facilitate test driven development (TDD). The ASP.NET MVC Toolkit provides HTML rendering helpers and dynamic data support for MVC.

If you would like to get a jump on things, download the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions from <here>.

NOTE: Location and Time are Special for this Event.

Also, you need to sign up for this one. Sign Up Here!

ATTENTION DEVELOPERS! Are you ready to be one of the first to get their hands on Visual Studio 2008? Join Microsoft and the Portland Area .NET Users Group (PADNUG) for a Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest and Holiday Party on December 4th, 2007 at Corillian in Hillsboro.

Visual Studio 2008 is HERE and this event is your opportunity to get your hands on the released version before anyone else. Every person that installs Visual Studio 2008 on their computer at the event will receive a FREE fully licensed copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional in the mail shortly after public release. Don’t miss out on a great evening of food, fun, and your very own copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional!

Space is limited so register today.

Storms of Fall are upon us!

This means it's time for another Nerd Event. This will be the third Nerd Event at the Cinetopia Theaters this year.

One of the extra special things about this event is that Cinetopia has installed the new 3D Digital Cinema system from Dolby Labs. They were one of just five theaters worldwide to launch this new system.

Note that we will not be going to the Living Room Theater for this event as the 3D system is only installed in the Grand Theater.

To that end, consider buying your tickets early. I'd imagine that there will be a pretty good turnout for this movie.

What: Portland Nerd Dinner Movie
Where: Cinetopia Theaters - 11700 SE 7th St, Vancouver, Washington
When: Saturday, November 17, 2007, 4:30PM Showing
Why: It's Freakin' Beowulf! In Freakin' 3D!

Let any and everyone that might be interested know. And of course...

...Be There and Be Square!

Scott Vandehey is a web developer and CSS Ninja working at Pop Art who has been making websites for over ten years. He lives in NE Portland with his wife and baby daughter, and is probably not a Cylon.

Scott will be introducing sIFR 2.0, a method of inserting rich typography into web pages without sacrificing accessibility, search engine friendliness, or markup semantics. sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash. It is this technology which provides the nice looking custom type headlines you see on sites like Nike, ABCNews, Aston Martin, and others.

LINQ to SQL is one of Microsoft’s new OR mapping tools that aims to bring a more object oriented mechanism to accessing data. This talk introduces LINQ to SQL and some of its features and shows how it works and what you can do with it . The focus of this discussion is on using LINQ to SQL in the middle tier for proper data abstraction which requires some additional considerations to be made beyond the ‘quick demo’ usually shown for LINQ to SQL. I’ll share my impressions and thoughts as well as the beginnings of a small light weight business framework built around LINQ to SQL that simplifies data access, provides a few additional required DAL operations and facilitates the process of creating an abstracted data layer.

Technical knowledge and skills are essential, but your business and financial success may equally depend on your business savvy. In this information-packed session, you'll find out how you and your software development business efforts can be more successful. Learn about sales and marketing of software products and services, setting your fee, negotiation strategies, handling customer objections, getting paid and other business issues. 100 business and legal documents will be provided with the session materials.

Tom Howe is a principal in two companies, Control Center Computing, Inc. and the Legal Technology Group. Both companies offer products and services to law firms, corporate legal departments and state attorney offices throughout the United States. He specializes in application development using ASP.NET and SQL Server. He is a regular speaker at Developer Conferences around the world.

Tom also co-authored "Access 2000 and 2002 Development Unleashed" by SAMS Publishing and “Electronic Discovery Technologies and is the technical editor of the Advisor Media .NET journal. He is also been a practicing attorney for 20 years.

John Lam, creator of RubyCLR, will discuss IronRuby, an implementation of Ruby on the .NET platform that will be released under the MS-PL licence (BSD-style license). We will look at the implementation of IronRuby on top of the recently announced Dynamic Language Runtime to better understand how the DLR deferred compilation model can be used to obtain excellent performance and cross-language interoperability. We will also look at different scenarios where IronRuby can be used, including the recently announced Silverlight platform.

The Portland User Experience Group (PDXUX) will be having its July meeting. We have a group from Tektronix who has implemented a pilot project using Expression and will be presenting on their "Expression Experience". This includes, but is not limited to:

• Steps in the UXD Design Process
• Tips and Tricks
• How the Usability, Graphic Designer, and Implementer roles worked together using the Blend and Design.

Stuart Celarier is a staff software engineer at the Corillian Corporation, a leader in online banking software located in Hillsboro, Oregon. Stuart has 25 years of professional software development experience. He received the Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) award for Connected System Developer in 2006. He is a director of the Portland Code Camp v3.0, and has served on the SAO Development SIG committee since 2005. He has been a speaker at user groups and Code Camps throughout the Pacific Northwest. Stuart is co-chair of the Birds-of-a-Feather track at TechEd 2007, and has co-chaired this community-led track at three previous national conferences.

Kelly will be opening up both Expression Blend and Expression Media, giving a couple demos, sharing what he learned from MIX and discussing the insights he got from talking to to the creators of Silverlight (e.g. Mike Harsh) about what advantages and disadvantages it has over other technologies like Flash.

Scott Hanselman

TOPIC: Silverlight - It's Here
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

If you've managed to avoid seeing this information on Scott's weblog, we've have made this meeting an opportunity to help Scott with his fund raising effort for the American Diabetes Association!

You can read a lot more about this on Scott's blog, but in short, if you can help out, bring a check made out to the "American Diabetes Association" or visit http://www.hanselman.com/fightdiabetes/donate to give a gift online.

You will see on his entry that there are several people that have stepped up to match donations from Noon today until Noon on Friday. This makes it an even better time to donate.

Stop writing data access code! One reason for Ruby on Rails' popularity is that it frees developers from the drudgery of hand-coding data access. Sure, Visual Studio's TableAdapter Wizard is nice, but it takes a lot of clicks to generate a complete data access layer, and you get to do it again each time the database schema changes. This session will introduce you to some open-source ActiveRecord implementations that give you the benefits of Ruby on Rails without requiring you to abandon the comfort of ASP.NET.

With nearly 20 years of software development experience, Phil Weber's client list includes Intel, Kaiser Permanente and Wells Fargo Bank. He has worked with VB since 1993 and .NET since 2001. In addition to serving on the INETA Speaker Bureau, Phil is a Visual Basic MVP and has spoken at numerous conferences in the U.S. and abroad. He currently works as a technical instructor for Corillian Corporation, an e-finance enabler.

Just a couple of months ago, Microsoft launched Windows Vista, Office 2007, and .NET 3.0. These new products have several implications for developers, not least of which are the new W*F technologies. Join us for a demonstration and discussion of the Windows Communications Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Visual Studio Tools for Office.

Adam Cogan, all the way from Australia, is the Chief Architect at SSW, a Microsoft Certified Partner specializing in Office and .NET Solutions. At SSW, Adam has been developing custom solutions for businesses across a range of industries such as Government, banking, insurance and manufacturing since 1990 for clients such as Microsoft, Quicken, and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation.

Managing a team of coders can be a tricky experience, especially as most coders like to do things their own way. During this session we go through a list of rules that help make the development process as smooth as possible. These rules govern the creation of specifications and schedules, best methods for testing and fixing bugs and even the employees working conditions.

He'll also likely cover some of his tools like SSW Code Auditor that can help you write better code.

See how the integrated library of “patterns & practices” application blocks has evolved, and learn how you can make effective use of them in your enterprise-scale applications

Keith Pleas is one of the founders of Guided Design and has worked for more than two years on the team developing the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET. Keith is an internationally known writer and speaker and is the Editorial Chair for VSLive 2003. He is also a Contributing Editor to "Visual Studio Magazine", has developed Microsoft Professional Certification Exams. Keith also serves as an advisor to the INETA board and is the liaison for the INETA Speakers Bureau.

XNA is the future of game development with all the comforts of managed code, and it's here today for the PC and Xbox 360. Come see how much easier XNA makes it to build a game for Windows, and run it on your 360 in the living room.

Based on Bill’s latest book, this session walks you through a series of live code examples that illustrate how to connect to SQL Server and other backend servers—including the new 2005 Express and other versions. The session includes examples of the new SqlConnectionStringBuilder (and why it makes sense), the new User Instance feature of SQL Express, the new Session variables and other connection options that can help your application connect quickly and stay connected as well as encrypt your connection string. We’ll illustrate how and when it makes sense to use the new Visual Basic .NET Using statement to manage SqlConnection instances and how the connection pooling mechanism has been reengineered to make your exception handlers easier to write. We’ll show how to setup, monitor (and for the first time) flush the connection pool so your applications won’t leak connections. We’ll show how to manage the SqlConnection instances to prevent connection pool leakages by using new ADO.NET and language features. We’ll also demonstrate the new factory classes in the .NET Framework used to discover and manage the services used to support SQL Server and its adjunct functionality like FullText Search, Reporting Services and Analysis Services.

William (Bill) Vaughn is an industry-recognized author, mentor and subject-matter expert on Visual Studio, SQL Server and data access interfaces. He’s been in the computer industry for over thirty years—working with mainframe, minicomputer and personal computer systems as a developer, manager, trainer, marketer, support specialist, writer and publisher. In 2000 after 14 years at Microsoft, Bill stepped away to work on his new books, mentoring and independent training seminars. He primarily specializes on data access and especially Visual Basic and SQL Server and more recently SQL Server Reporting Services. He’s written six editions of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server” (and working on the 7th edition that covers Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005) and two editions of “ADO.NET and ADO Examples and Best Practices for Visual Basic (and C#) Programmers”. He and Peter Blackburn also wrote the best-selling and critically acclaimed “Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services”. Bill is a top-rated speaker and frequents conferences all over the world including VSLive, Developer/SQL/VSLive Connections, DevTeach and VBug. He’s also written a wealth of articles for magazines such as SQL Server Magazine, Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal, .NET Magazine and many others. He writes a bi-weekly editorial on developer issues for Processor magazine. Bill spends considerable time answering questions on the data-centric public newsgroups and speaking at user groups. He’s available for consulting, mentoring or custom training.

This talk covers a bit of history of MS CRM 3.0 in terms of product origins and roadmap. Then the talk moves into a few use cases for the product across various business scenarios. The most significant portion of this talk then focuses on a detailed discussion around development for Microsoft CRM 3.0. Key topics include extending Microsoft CRM 3.0 solutions via:

• CRM API's
• SQL Server Reporting Services
• DOM
• Third Party Integration
• Workflow

Sean Campbell currently works for Ascentium’s Portland office. His previous positions include being the founder and chief sales officer for 3 Leaf a company he grew over a period of 6 years and then successfully sold to Aeshen LLC. 3 Leaf worked directly for Microsoft and Intel on a variety of technical marketing efforts around large product releases for well known products such as Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2005, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2002, 2003, and 2005. Previous to his experiences at 3 Leaf Sean also had various roles in technical training and technical sales.

Sean has a M.A. in Communication from Purdue University where he taught Public Speaking and Interpersonal Communication. He has also obtained the MCSE, MCDBA, MCT, and MCSD credentials in his career and has been lead author of three books, two by Microsoft Press, and one by Intel Press which was recently published in 2006.

Caleb is responsible for doing development and data migration on many of the top CRM implementations at Ascentium. Caleb has deep experience in Microsoft CRM with over 20 projects to pull experience from and has done some complex data migrations into Microsoft CRM including 100,000’s of records with multiple dependent tables. Prior to Ascentium Caleb was a senior CRM consultant for RightWare Solutions, a company whose activities was based specifically around Microsoft CRM implementations when the product was still in beta and built the business to 12 customers in less than two years. Recent CRM Implementations include Memories by Design, Moeller Design, RW Beck, Preliant Funeral Planning, LGI International, Nucor Steel, Microsoft, and Everest Consulting. Caleb is responsible for developing and implementing the business processes that are defined in our requirements workshops into CRM.

The proper use of SQL Stored Procedures provides increased developer productivity, increased server performance, improvements in application maintainability, greater data storage flexibility, tighter control over data integrity, decreased network traffic, and increased security.

The Sessions "Stored Procedures -Getting It Right the First Time" will provide Developers with the background and understanding for successful use of SQL Stored Procedures -especially the design and creation of easy to maintain and robust SQL Stored Procedures. While Microsoft SQL Server will be used as the demonstration database storage engine, most demonstrated concepts will apply to the major database storage engines.

Series Topics will include:

• Handling Input AND Output Parameters
• The @RETURN value
• That Pesky 'NULL' thingy
• Handling Transactions
• Handling Errors
• Calling Stored Procedures from a Stored Procedure
• Using Source Control with Stored Procedures
• Naming Conventions
• Handling SQL Injection Attacks
• 'Active' Generation
• When is Dynamic SQL the best choice?
• Auditing SELECT statement usage for HIPAA

Arnie Rowland is president of Westwood Consulting, Inc. in Portland, Oregon. During his career as a outspoken architect and application developer dealing using very large databases, he realized that most issues between Developer and DBA comes from incomplete communication and a misunderstanding of each other's primary directive. As a frequent Trainer and Mentor for Developers and Database Administrators, he has nurtured a knack for helping to 'bridge the gap'. Arnie is a rare mix of expert developer and gifted database administrator, bringing both sets of skills to better communicate with development teams to create a working solution. He also is a Microsoft Certified Trainer, and a technical editor for several publishers, including several recent SQL Sever 2005 titles in the Microsoft Official Curriculum. Currently, he is a Visual Studio and SQL Server Instructor for Portland State University, and previously for Portland Community College. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, several federal and state agencies, nationally recognized training facilities, and local companies and agencies. In addition to being a pilot and flight instructor, he holds post-graduate degrees and is an avid bicyclist and sailor.

This session presents ATLAS, Microsoft's new client side/AJAX extension for ASP.NET slanted for release as an Add-on for ASP.NET 2.0 later this year. ATLAS introduces a rich framework for remote scripting with a wide variety of tools and approaches available to build rich client applications. In this session he'll overview the features available in the framework and show business oriented examples of how to utilize the various features. We'll look at the server centric approach with ATLAS Server controls like UpdatePanel, and a client centric approach relying on core ATLAS network features and the client side ATLAS framework and contrast the two approaches..

Rick Strahl is president of West Wind Technologies on Maui, Hawaii. The company specializes in Web and distributed application development, training and tools with focus on ASP.NET and .NET in general. Rick is author of West Wind Web Connection, a powerful and widely used Web application framework, West Wind HTML Help Builder and West Wind Web Store and Business Framework for .NET and Visual FoxPro. He also collaborates with Kevin McNeish on the Mere Mortals Framework for .NET. Rick is a Microsoft C# MVP, a frequent contributor to magazines and books and speaks frequently at professional developer conferences all over the world. He is co-publisher and co-editor of CoDe magazine. In the summer months, Rick spends his time in beautiful Hood River, Oregon to play on the river, forests and mountains.

We’ll discuss source control best practices, and how those practices apply to some common SCC packages. The emphasis will be on practices and procedures, not the mechanics of a particular SCC solution. Specific attention will go to how source control fits into an agile development process and continuous integration.

After completing a Bachelor's degree in the unlikely field of East Asian Studies, Patrick Cauldwell fell into the software industry. Since then he has written tools that helped Intel localize software into 17 languages; architected large E-Commerce web sites like 800.com and gear.com while at STEP Technology, and spoken nationwide about how to build large scalable applications. Patrick is currently an architect/developer at Corillian Corporation, where he designs and develops software for online banking.

This session demonstrates some re-usable tools, classes and components that every Web Application should integrate. Every application needs a core set of features, like managing configuration settings, handling and reporting errors consistently, logging requests, providing application status information, displaying consistent error and information message pages, managing application cookies consistently and more. In this session I'll demonstrate a handful of useful utility classes and processes that accomplish these tasks in a reusable fashion and show how they work under the covers.

Rick Strahl is president of West Wind Technologies on Maui, Hawaii. The company specializes in Web and distributed application development, training and tools with focus on ASP.NET and .NET in general. Rick is author of West Wind Web Connection, a powerful and widely used Web application framework, West Wind HTML Help Builder and West Wind Web Store and Business Framework for .NET and Visual FoxPro. He also collaborates with Kevin McNeish on the Mere Mortals Framework for .NET. Rick is a Microsoft C# MVP, a frequent contributor to magazines and books and speaks frequently at professional developer conferences all over the wor