Dallas DNUG Speaking Tour This Week

I've trekked north from my home-base near Houston and I am in Dallas this week for a quick series of .NET User Group sessions. Three nights, three different groups, and three very different talks. Here's the schedule for the week:

• Dallas XAML Users Group (Tuesday, May 3rd)
  "State of Silverlight + What's New in Silverlight 5"
  
• North Dallas .NET Users Group (Wednesday, May 4th)
  "The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5"
  
• Dallas C# SIG (Thursday, May 5th)
  "Building a Testable Data Access Layer"

Obviously, the XAML talk is already in the history books, but you still have time to attend the fun HTML5 and useful testable DAL talks this week. All of the meetings occur at the local Improving Enterprises offices, and all seem to start around 6:00 PM. I've got some extra Telerik swag for each meeting, of course, so clear an evening and come join me and the rest of the Dallas .NET community for some fun this week.

What's New in ASP.NET 4, Today on LIDNUG

Sometimes blogs go silent longer than they should. Such has been the case with Telerik Watch recently. I've got 1,000 reasons why, some of which I'll try to enumerate over the coming weeks, but for now, there is more "urgent" news to share.

Today, Tuesday, October 5th, I'll be presenting at the "virtual" LinkedIn .NET User Group (also known as LIDNUG). At 11:00 AM Eastern (use this handy link to parse that time to your local timezone) I'll be presenting "Getting the Most Out of What's New in ASP.NET 4.0" via Live Meeting to a global audience of hundreds.

If you're interested in learning more about the latest release of ASP.NET, join me for this quick overview. You can register for the free event on EventBrite and then tune-in with Live Meeting from any computer. We'll be focusing on the WebForms features of ASP.NET 4.0, so if you're more interested in MVC, hopefully you can join me in Canada on Wednesday for a conversation on that topic!

See you online soon.

(NW) Arkansas DNUG Road Trip

In the midst of a busy Telerik Q2 release week, I’m multi-tasking and doing a .NET User Group Road Trip in Northwest Arkansas. Visiting 6 DNUGs in 4 days and delivering 3.5 different talks, this week is definitely busy! At this point, there is one more major “public” stop left on the DNUG Road Trip (a few stops are “private” corporate DNUGs in the area), and so far all stops have been great. Northwest Arkansas has a great .NET community and it’s been fun talking about Silverlight 4, HTML5, and Building Testable Data Layers with this group of smart developers.

The “public stop” schedule this week was (and is):

1. Forth Smith .NET User Group on Monday
   Talk: The Rich Standard: Getting Familiar with HTML5
2. Northwest Arkansas DNUG on Tuesday
   Talk: Building a Testable Data Layer
3. Northwest Arkansas SQL Users Group on Wednesday
   Talk: What’s New in Silverlight 4 (with a “data twist”)
4. Ozark DNUG on Thursday
   Talk: Building a Testable Data Layer

I’ll update this post with slides and code soon, but in the mean time, if you’re in the area, why not join us for the last stop of the road trip tonight, Thursday, at 6:00 PM at the Ozark .NET User Group? It’ll be a fun talk and there will be some more great Telerik swag to give away.

Thanks to all of the community leaders in the area for helping make this Road Trip a success, and for doing a good job growing an active .NET community. I look forward to coming back!

Louisiana DNUG Road Trip wrap-up

Last week, I spent three days crisscrossing Louisiana on a .NET User Group Road Trip. I made stops in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette, and I had a great time interacting with the LA .NET community (that’s LA as in the state, not the city). We packed the house and talked about what’s new in Silverlight 4 and ASP.NET 4. It was a lot of information to cover, but we managed to get through it all, and hopefully there are 100+ developers in Louisiana more ready for .NET 4 this week than there were last week. Thanks to everyone that came out for the events!

The slides from my Louisiana talks are available below, but most of the demos I used were borrowed from other great minds in the .NET community. As promised, here some some direct links to the original demo source:

• Silverlight Issue Tracker by David Poll (Multi-page printing)
• Simple SL4 Printing Demo by Tim Heuer
• Simple SL4 Drop Target Demo by Jesse Liberty
• Photo Drop Target Demo by Jeff Prosise
• Simple SL4 Web Cam Demo by Tim Heuer
• ScottGu PDC Keynote Demo (WebBrowserBrush)

Of course, one final reminder, make sure you’re following/subscribing to these people in the Microsoft community to keep-up with all of the Silverlight 4 news:

• Tim Heuer, Silverlight Program Manager
• Jesse Liberty, Silverlight Community Program Manager
• Adam Kinney, Silverlight Technical Evangelist
• Brad Abrams, Silverlight Program Manager
• Nikhil Kothari, Software Architect (RIA Services)

What’s New in Silverlight 4 and ASP.NET 4
[Slides (PDF)]

Join me at the Austin DNUG tonight!

Are you in the Austin, Texas area? Got plans tonight? Break them.

Very soon I'll be hitting the road and making the trek over from Houston to Austin to present at tonight's Austin .NET User Group meeting. I've been to Austin a few times this year to talk about various Microsoft technologies, but this time I'm focusing on my home turf: Ajax.

Specifically, we'll be talking about how you can (and should) maximize "real" Ajax performance in ASP.NET. "Real Ajax?" you say. Yes, real Ajax. If you're using UpdatePanels and you think you're using Ajax, think again. All will be explained at tonight's DNUG (and again at the Houston TechFest, DevReach, and DevConnections if you miss tonight's presentation).

Things get kicked-off at 5:30 PM at the Microsoft offices in Austin. Check out the ADNUG website for all the details and directions. See you tonight!

Survey Says: Most .NET developers not attending User Groups

In yet another completely unscientific, non-representative straw poll run on this site, I asked how many of you, dear readers, attend a local .NET User Group (or DNUG). It turns out, most of you don't attend DNUGs. I found the results of the survey a little surprising considering the audience. You represent developers passionate enough about technology to spend time tracking down and reading a very niche blog like this. You are exactly the type of people I'd expect to find attending DNUGs.

So that begs the question, why don't you attend a DNUG? Are there no well organized DNUGs in your area? Do you prefer to spend your evenings as far from technology as possible? Or do you simply not find DNUGs appealing? Whatever your answer, I want to know. Sound-off in the comments and let the world know your opinion of .NET's little social learning clubs.

And, of course, if you're in the Houston area, don't miss the premier of the North Houston DNUG in early January. I promise it will at least be an okay time.