San Gabriel Valley .NET Developers Group

May 15th – NoSQL w/ Chander Dhall

Richard Trinh — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:16:45 +0000

Abstract: It’s an interesting paradigm where hybrid systems using Sql and NoSql databases are more a necessity than just good to have. With all these options around us Couch Db, Cassandra, Raven Db, Mongo Db, HBase et al. it is easy to get confused. Come and learn the strengths and weaknesses of the major NoSql databases. As a developer you will learn how to create features that may not exist in some of these databases in your app. You will see feature by feature comparison and performance in different business cases. You will understand what makes the most sense for your business case. All the examples will be based on Windows Azure and yes, it’s not a surprise that all of them run great on Windows Azure and it’s very easy to use them.

About the Presenter: Chander Dhall is a Microsoft MVP, INETA Board member, professional software architect/lead developer, trainer, open source contributor, community leader and organizer with years of experience in enterprise Software Development. He works in a goal oriented, technologically driven, fast paced AGILE (SCRUM) environment. He is the founder of Dallas day of dot net Conference and the world famous jsSaturday.

He has a Master’s Degree in computer science with specialization in algorithms, principles and patterns and is focused on building high performing modular software. He is the CTO of Ria Consulting, LLC and is known for saving millions of dollars to top Fortune 500 clients and had great success with making start-ups successful.

Chander leads the LA Nodejs/HTML 5 user group and .Net User group at UTDallas. Chander recently got recognized as “One of the top organizers by Eventbrite. Chander has been a featured speaker in numerous conferences and code camps all over US. He has been a featured presenter at reputed conferences all over the world.

Meeting Agenda
* 6:00p Mixer/Networking/Pizza
* 6:30p Presentation Starts
* 8:00p Raffle

Directions: Green Dot Corporation – 3465 E. Foothill Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91107

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

April 17th – An Introduction to ASP.NET SignalR w/ Troy Miles

Richard Trinh — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:28:46 +0000

Abstract: Your ASP.NET website needs SignalR, whether you know it or not. Users are no longer tolerant of stale data and guess what? As soon as a page leaves your server the data on it is stale. That where SignalR comes. It is an incredibly easy to use library for ASP.NET which gives your site real-time web functionality. Whether you use it for business or entertainment apps, you will be amazed how easy it is to work with SignalR. SignalR allows you to make DIRTy apps with the tooling you already love. What’s DIRTy? Data Intensive Real-Time(y). Image the kinds of apps you can create.

We will begin with a quick overview of why SignalR is needed and why it isn’t just syntactic sugar for WebSocket. Next, we will cover how to install it. Finally, we will dive into some code, beginning with a very simple example, move on to a more complicated examples.

SignalR from Troy Miles

About the Presenter: A designer and developer of software since 1979, Troy began his career writing games in assembly and C. Since then he has written code in C++, C#, Objective-C, Java, JavaScript and even a smidgen of Python. Along the way, some of his titles have won awards, he became a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, and in 2012, he won a developer challenge at a local Microsoft Windows Phone Unleashed event.

His passion since 2007 has been mobile and mobile web development. In 2011, he joined the mobile development team at Kelley Blue Book. His small team is responsible for the KBB.com application for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7 and the mobile versions of KBB.com. Troy also spends time talking to developer groups and maintaining his blog, The Rock n Coder.

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

March 20th – Dependency Injection: A Practical Introduction w/ Jeremy Clark

Richard Trinh — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:10:58 +0000

Abstract: What is Dependency Injection? The answers to the question seem to cause more confusion than help. We’ll take a look at what Dependency Injection (DI) is, when we should use it, and what design patterns we can use to help us implement it. Benefits range from extensibility to late binding to testability. We can implement DI with or without a container (such as Unity, Ninject, or StructureMap), but we’ll see how a container can do a lot of the work for us.

About the Presenter: Jeremy Clark is an application developer, technical speaker, and Microsoft MVP with over 13 years of experience in all aspects of the development lifecycle. After hours, he puts together demos and technical articles for JeremyBytes.com, a website focusing on .NET technologies. Other times he can be found shredding on a plastic guitar (or playing a real guitar fairly badly). He lives in Anaheim, CA with a seedling redwood tree and his cats, Amanda and Toby.

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

Feb 20th – The Rx Bus w/ Tony Abell

Richard Trinh — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:59:51 +0000

Abstract: Reactive extensions have long been used for controlling UI events and interactions [1]. Rx is also great for backend and middleware interactions. As illustrated by Netflix’s porting [2] Rx library to Java in their recently released port RxJava [3]. Rx is a great abstraction for handling concurrency, client side or server side. In my talk I would give a short overview of Rx and its capabilities. I will show a simple implementation of an In Memory Bus with Rx. I will show how Rx can help with common backend operations, like logging and testing. I will also show how an abstraction of Windows Service Bus [4] with Rx, this will simplify the api and use case scenarios.
[1] http://www.reactiveui.net/
[2] http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/02/rxjava-netflix-api.html
[3] https://github.com/Netflix/RxJava
[4] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj193022(v=azure.10).aspx

About the Presenter: Tony Abell has been working as a software developer for his entire professional carrier of 12 years. He has worked in a wide range of industries, such as insurance, health care, financial and human resource management. He has specialized in middleware development. He currently works at Cornerstone On Demand on the core platform team. Tony is also working on building a Machine Learning team at Cornerstone On Demand. He has a strong interest in functional languages and concepts.

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

Jan 16th – A Practical Graph-Computing Kickstart: a Shortest Path Algorithm w/ Nuri Halperin and Steve Bearman

Richard Trinh — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 16:27:13 +0000

Abstract: More and more computing today is built upon Graphs–network-style arrangements of interconnected nodes (called vertices and edges). We introduce graph computing, showing you how to represent graphs, how to navigate them, and how to compute over graphs. We will develop a simple, but one of the most important graph algorithms–computing the shortest path between two nodes (used for example, to determine routes, on social networks, robot motion planning, bayesian networks, the fanciful WunderGraph, etc.)

We’ll also show you examples of pretty graphs!

About the Presenter:
Nuri Halperin: Principal for +N Consulting Inc (Santa Monica, CA), Nuri brings over 15 years of development and leadership experience in internet, E-Commerce and corporate space. He currently serves as Solution Architect focusing on .Net technologies and platforms. Nuri has successfully championed initiatives in ASP.NET, database, data mining, E-commerce, integration projects and custom component development for specific business needs. In recent years Nuri has been active in the coding community, providing training, mentoring and contributing to the coding community, focusing on cutting edge technologies, C# and core framework programming. His passion for efficient computing and his SDLC perspective bring a unique and valuable contribution to every project he engages in. http://www.plusnconsulting.com

Steve Bearman is an independent software developer with his company, Suzy B Studios. He innovates and develops web and client software for all sectors from science and engineering through business and finance-especially the thorny, complex problems where architecture, algorithms, mathematics, innovation, and performance are critical. Always available to help develop software, he often leads development teams. Along the way he has managed both marketing and operations for a manufacturing corporation, taught graduate computer science, and published technical papers dealing with data. He has a special fondness for good algorithms and appropriate technology.

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

Nov 14th – Social Network Integration into Mobile Apps w/ Jeetu Maker

Richard Trinh — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 23:25:28 +0000

Abstract: Today Social Network integration into mobile apps has become the rule rather than an exception. Study says that over 80% of the mobile apps currently under development are integrating social network in one way or the other. It has been challenging for developers to keep up with this ever growing space and build solutions that cross all network boundaries seamlessly across various platforms.

In this session we will discuss how you could leverage these networks to its fullest potential and add value to your apps rather than a checklist item. The session will mainly focus on popular networks like Facebook, Twitter & Foursquare. The session will highlight the best practices followed & discuss strategies for reusability across multiple apps on various platforms.

In later part of the session we will take a close look at Push Notifications in mobile apps. Push notification is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your users and keep them engaged with your app. Unfortunately the implementation of Push Notification is completely different in each platform. This session will demo how to build a Framework for Push Notifications that will work with at least three mobile platforms – iOS, Android & WP7.

This is a 201 level session for someone already familiar with the basics of mobile app development & RESTful Web Services. Although most of the strategies discussed could be applied on any mobile/web/desktop apps, all samples and demo in the session will be in Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango).

About the Presenter:Jeetu Maker is a Solutions Architect based in Los Angeles with over 15 years of experience in building large scalable enterprise applications for several Fortune 500 global companies. He is a social media enthusiast with current involvement in building location based social mobile products.

He founded the South Bay .NET User Group in Torrance and is actively involved with local developer communities in Southern California.

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

Oct 17th – Native iOS programming for .NET developers w/ Jon Flanders

Richard Trinh — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:06:04 +0000

Abstract: Are you a long-time .NET programmer who wants to dabble in or move to iOS programming? Have you been scared off by talk of the evil IDE XCode, or the scary multi-headed dragon known as Objective-C? In this session we’ll debunk the myths, and look at how you can leverage your .NET development skills in an iOS world without selling your soul.

About the Presenter:Jon is a member of the technical staff at MCW, where he focuses on connected systems technologies. He is also a regular speaker and trainer for Pluralsight. Jon is most at home spelunking, trying to figure out how things work from the inside out. He is the author of RESTful.NET from O’Reilly, as well as Essential ASP for Addison-Wesley, and was a co-author of Mastering Visual Studio.NET for O’Reilly. Jon’s current major interest is helping people to understand the advantages of REST, but he sees a bright future for modeling as a way to build complex systems.

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

Sept 19th – Windows 8 Application Development w/ Alice Pang

Richard Trinh — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:43:11 +0000

Abstract: Apps are the heart of Windows 8, but what does that mean for developers? Find out by joining Alice Pang for an exciting night of development at the SGV.NET September 2012 meeting. See how Windows 8 and updated versions of Visual Studio and Blend make it easy to build your next app. Experience the capabilities of WinRT, charms, live tiles, and more! Web developers can leverage their HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript skills, and .NET developers can leverage their XAML, C#, and Visual Basic skills to build great Windows Store apps. After an introduction to Windows 8 and new developer tools, we will build exciting code snippets and an app that implements many of the elements important to a content-centric Windows Store app.

About the Presenter:Alice grew up in Louisiana and came out to sunny California after high school to attend Stanford University, where she received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering/Software. She then moved across the bay to get her M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and Management of Technology certificate through the Haas School of Business and College of Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. While at Stanford and Berkeley, she was heavily involved in various dance groups and enjoyed organizing networking, mentoring, and community outreach events for the Society of Women Engineers.In her free time, she enjoys traveling, discovering new places to eat, rock climbing, flipping upside down in aerial arts, riding motorcycles, and sharing Louisiana and Chinese culture with people. As a Microsoft Technical Evangelist in southern California, she focuses on WebMatrix and Windows 8.

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

Aug 15th – ASP.NET MVC4 & Web API w/ Hattan Shobokshi

Richard Trinh — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:02:31 +0000

Abstract: In this presentation we will go over ASP.NET MVC 4 RC. We’ll take a look at many new features including support for mobile web applications both with adaptive rendering and JQuery Mobile. We’ll also cover display modes, database migrations and the enhanced Razor parser. We’ll see how you can extend ASP.NET MVC 4 with Recipes and easily combine and minify static assets with the new Bundler. We’ll also look at Web API, Microsoft’s newest platform for building RESTful web service. Web API allows us to quickly build out a set of web services that can produce JSON and XML content. Web API has many powerful features that we will cover. We’ll go over a lot of demos including how to use Web API with JQuery and Knockout JS to retrieve and update data.

About the Presenter: Hattan Shobokshi is a Senior Software Engineer and is responsible for developing applications on a variety of platforms including web and mobile devices. He is a passionate software architect that is focused on delivering scalable applications that adhere to industry best practices. Hattan is experienced in .NET technologies, in particular ASP.NET MVC. He regularly presents at local user groups and code camps on the topic. Hattan is also an avid JavaScript developer and is experienced in building rich client side user interfaces using JavaScript and its supporting technologies.

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

July 18th – Better Unit Testing with ApprovalTests, an open source library w/ Woody Zuill

Richard Trinh — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:48:14 +0000

Abstract: Whether you are a developer, tester or manager, you’ll gain insight and actionable information on how to more effectively test both new and legacy code using the open source ApprovalTest library. Through both demos and explanation of theory, the presenters will show you how using ApprovalTests make testing many types of objects (from simple types to complex objects such as GUIs, arrays, database query results and more) more manageable. The library is available in many programming languages, including C#, Java, Ruby, PHP and more. Most demos will be presented in C#.

About the Presenter:Woody Zuill, an Agile team coach and software developer, got into programming for the same reason he got into music – to meet women. He has been focused on improving his skills and capabilities for the last 27+ years. His turn-ons include Clean Code, Testable Code, and Thrashing (but only in the right context). His turn-offs are the Waterfall Methodolgy, Death Marches, and Thrashing (but only in the wrong context). He has years of experience in providing custom graphics for televised sporting events where deadlines actually have meaning, and spends his spare time writing about himself in the third person.

This is a Green Dot sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.