After a long battle Paul finally gave up and agreed to speak about OData. This is a subject many of you asked for.

Hello, I’m Paul

I'm a Principal Technologist and long-time Technical Architect with a love of graphic and information design, living and working in the UK. I develop software products and interactive information graphics by using WPF, Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, HTML5, ATOM/RSS and OData; I’m also a dab hand at ASP.NET MVC and WCF. I speak in public places—about all of the above—as well create developer-focused courseware and technical content.

I've had extensive development experience over the last 15+ years, using many programming languages and methodologies, but now I specialise in the .NET Framework and XAML based technologies. However, I still respect my roots and will work in the SaaS, security, and services space—focusing on architecture, service integration, and Web site development—but only for money!

You can find Paul’s visual CV here.

The Talk

Simply OData for beginners.

The Meeting

The date is 13th June 2012 in the Maxima Forum in Cheltenham. Start as usual at 6.30pm and end at about 9pm. There will be refreshments and hot pizza available. Please arrive in time. Details here.

Booking

We are now using Eventbrite for booking. Please go to gl-net-june-2012.eventbrite.com and book your slot now.

I’m delighted to inform you that Avelo kindly agreed to sponsor the group and cover the venue expenses. I would like to thank everyone who helped to build the case and negotiate the deal.

Also many thanks to everyone who offered help this or another way.

This is an opportunity you may never have again. When I asked Guy to show this to us a while ago he said “conference only”. Now he decided to show it to us and, even better, in the extended version. Director’s cuts?

About Guy

Guy is an MVP in ASP.NET. He is the author of ".NET Internationalization" published by Addison-Wesley (http://www.dotneti18n.com). He is a Microsoft Certified Professional developer, author, trainer and speaker, has spoken at many European and US conferences and is an INETA Speaker. He runs The .NET Developer Network (http://www.dotnetdevnet.com), a free .NET user group in the South West of England. He co-organises DDD South West (http://www.dddsouthwest.com), a free one day technical event in the South West of England. He has written over 50 articles for numerous magazines and has co-authored an application development book. You can read his blog at http://www.guysmithferrier.com and catch him on Twitter at @GuySmithFerrier.

The Talk

The world of neuroscience changed over the last 5 years. Neuroheadsets (headsets that read brainwaves) became affordable and accessible. Neuroscience is no longer confined the realm of huge research budgets and professors in lab coats. It is accessible to regular developers. This session illustrates a neuroheadset that reads brain waves and uses a C# API to allow developers to recognise facial expressions, emotions and cognitive thought – that is, the headset can read basic, deliberate conscious thought. Although the headset is aimed at the gaming market the potential for the physically impaired is considerable. Come and see the potential of today’s Brain Computer Interfaces.

The Meeting

The date is 16th May 2012. Despite problems we are still hanging around in the Maxima Forum in Cheltenham. Start as usual at 6.30pm and end at about 9pm. There will be refreshments and hot pizza available. Please arrive in time. Details here.

Booking

We are now using Eventbrite for booking. Please go to gl-net-may-2012.eventbrite.com and book your slot now.

About John

My background is in Point of sale for the retail sector, in particular petroleum.

I have been working as a developer as long as I can remember, in fact my first development job was as 15, while I was still at school!

I worked for 10 years at Wella GB as a developer developing systems for hairdressers before doing 4 years designing hardware for various platforms. I even had a hand in designing a 286 motherboard!

I then worked for Meggitt Petroleum Systems as a Technical Architect designing Point of Sale terminals and Back Office systems for major oil companies across the world. I have been lucky enough to visit 26 countries as diverse as South Africa and Japan doing this.

I developed some desktop and enterprise level applications using an obscure 4GL called Omnis.

Since then I have been working with .NET since its inception and was part of the beta program for 1.0 and have built a web site in ASP.NET

Numerous projects later I have specialised in media devices for XP and XP embedded and media centre, along with mobile applications for devices ranging from Symbian hardware through Pocket PC to Windows Mobile 6.1, the Vista versions and some Windows 7.

I am also a pilot and am fortunate to have an aeroplane at Coventry airport, at the flying club. I can usually be found on the airfield most Saturdays either flying the 'plane if the weathers good, or flying the bar if its not!

The Talk

So, many people will have seen the black box perched on top of TVs. The Balack box that is the XBOX 360 Kinect camera.

Its way more than just a camera, and its use isnt restricted to games. In this session we'll unplug it from the Xbox and connect it to a PC, and then play with the infterfaces available, what you can do with the various data streams and how to make a nodding dog out of it. There will be nudity, demos and audience participation. Dont Miss it!

The Meeting

The date is 11th April 2012. The meeting will be still in the Maxima Forum in Cheltenham, start at 6.30pm and end at about 9pm. There will be refreshments and hot pizza available. Please arrive in time. Details here.

If you’ve been on the yesterday’s meeting you’ve heard the news. Our venue sponsor, Maxima, has been acquired and had to withdraw their support. I’m currently looking for a new solution that will either allow me to stay in the current venue or find a new one and I need your help.

Cost of the venue is £120 per month. Assuming two months break in August and September it adds up to £1200 per year. There are multiple ways you can help, just look around.

1. If your company is in Cheltenham, and has a decent room, you can ask your management if we could use it once a month.
2. Maybe your company is willing to contribute in any part towards the venue costs I will be grateful for any sum. Of course all receipts will be provided.
3. If you know a pub, a restaurant, a school, a college or any other place that has a suitable room please speak with them and find out if we could use it.

You all know the value of the group and some great names we had in the past showing us amazing stuff. I’m certain your company benefit from you and your colleagues being a member. By keeping the group running you can ensure the great things will keep happening and you, and other developers will keep learning new stuff. And of course each sponsor will be listed on the website.

The GL.net is a free group and I’m proud of it. I want to keep it this way but I might be forced to consider a fee as a last resort. I really hope it will not end up this way. It all depend on you.

About George

An accomplished design architect, front-end dev and UX evangelist, George has tackled apps and web sites ranging from luxury travel to Doctor Who, getting immersed in all aspects of Information Architecture, Interaction Design and Ideation.

He strives to edge clients towards Institutional Usability.

From time to time George pops off to speak at conferences and user groups, typically on jQuery, responsive design and interaction design, about which he’s rather obsessive.

With his development head on, George spends his time with front-end HTML5, CSS3, hardcore jQuery and jQueryMobile. Historically, he has built on top of Microsoft tech at the back-end but during 2010 he moved to Ruby, Rails, Merb, NodeJS and GIT.

In addition to the creative stuff, George enjoys the agile world and is experienced in the full project life-cycle, having worked with a variety of development initiatives for major corporations, duelling the ever-present constraints of time and budgets.

The Talk

Getting a grip on Responsive Design

People are hitting your website with all sorts of gadgets these days, does it look the same on all of them? Does it work at all?

What is this Responsive Design malarkey? Do we have to design for every device now?

We'll explore techniques, css and principals for delivering your site to multiple devices. Bring your internet enabled fridge and settle down for some ui geekiness.

• What are we "responding" to anyway?
• Desktop is no longer the default
• So we just target iPhone yeah?
• Media Queries and breakpoints
• Orientation
• Responsive Design vs Adaptive Design
• Graceful Degradation or Progressive Enhancement?
• Your mobile test suite

Designing for mobile

• The mobile context: mindset and attention
• Native / Web / Hybrid
• Go on, just restyle your website to look ok on iPhone
• "Mobile First? No way, we've got too much to display"
• More TBC...

The Meeting

The date is 21th March 2012. It’s not the second but the third Wednesday of the month! The meeting will be in the Maxima Forum in Cheltenham, start at 6.30pm and end at about 9pm. There will be refreshments and hot pizza available. Please arrive in time. Details here.

About Jimmy

Jimmy has been writing .NET since the first version was available and he switched from Delphi. He is now working as a Principal Software Engineer in Symantec.cloud where he is responsible for web services and emerging identity management applications. Although his job requires more design, team leading, mentoring and endless meetings, he is still eager to make his hands dirty whenever he can. His favourite tools recently are MVC 3 and WIF. To relax after a hard day at the office he loves to fly a virtual space ship in EvE Online.

The Talk

Windows PowerShell is a great tool for system administrators and normal users alike. One of its design principles was extensibility. It provides powerful scripting mechanism but is also very easy for developers to create new tools and utilities to be integrated with PowerShell. It provides easy to use SDK that eliminates many tasks that typical command line tool would require.

The session introduces into PowerShell development from the ground up. You will learn how to start and the basics of argument processing, output and pipeline processing. We will also look at error handling and diagnostics to end up deeper in custom types and type conversion. After the session you will be able to sit down and write a tool your system administrator will love you for.

The Meeting

The date is 15th February 2012. It’s not the second but the third Wednesday of the month! The meeting will be in the Maxima Forum in Cheltenham, start at 6.30pm and end at about 9pm. There will be refreshments and hot pizza available. Please arrive in time. Details here.

About Matt

Matt is a freelance mobile software developer specialising in Windows Phone. He’s been developing software for a living since the 90’s and doing mobile since before it was cool and has developed a number of showcase apps for household names. When not building apps he’s helping other people do so on StackOverflow or getting people together to learn more about developing software as he runs DevEvening and the Windows Phone User Group.

Read his development ramblings on his blog (http://blog.mrlacey.co.uk/) and follow him on twitter (@mrlacey).

The Talk

You’ve probably heard that you can use lots of your .net development experience to build Windows Phone applications. But that still leaves lots of questions: What if you want to go beyond the basics? How do you make a great app? One that people will want to download and maybe even pay for?  How does the mango update help you create a great app? And how can knowing about developing for Windows Phone help with developing for other platforms, such as Windows 8?

These and other question will be answered to help you create awesome apps.

The Meeting

The date is 11th January 2012. The meeting will be in the Maxima Forum in Cheltenham, start at 6.30pm and end at about 9pm. There will be refreshments and hot pizza available. Please arrive in time. Details here.

The GL.net is looking for speakers for 2012. If you can and want to give us a talk you are the person we need. The list of the most desired topics is here but any topic is welcome.

Meetings are usually held on the second Wednesday of each month. It can be changed but Wednesday is by far the most popular day for most of our members.

Please contact me if you are interested either by commenting to this post or by any other way you can imagine, such as twitter @_jimmys.

Jimmy

About Marc

Marc is part of the development team for Stack Exchange (and a self-confessed Stack Overflow junkie), and has been a C# MVP for the last 4 years. He has a long history of open source projects, and tries to focus on high-performance, low-impact libraries (hiding all the "ugly" from app developers). Before his transition to Stack Exchange, his history is corporate / line-of-business (mainly on the Microsoft / .NET stack).

The Talk

We all know the common tricks for improving perceived performance, but often far too little emphasis is given on making the servers do their work more efficiently - otherwise all you achieve by scaling-out is distributed slowness. Here we take a hands-on look at some pragmatic ways to measure and improve the performance of your server-side code. The examples focus on ASP.NET MVC, but the themes should apply to most .NET web development, and beyond.

The Meeting

The date is 14th December 2011. The meeting will be in the Maxima Forum in Cheltenham, start at 6.30pm and end at about 9pm. There will be refreshments and hot pizza available. Please arrive in time. Details here.