We are happy to announce that Iris Classon is coming to Cheltenham on Tuesday 18th June. I would like to give you the opportunity to choose which talk you would be most interested to hear from her by Monday 3rd June.

Iris Classon website can be found at www.irisclasson.com, or you can follow her on twitter @IrisClasson

See the full detail of the session proposed below in this post.

Taking the Leap into the touch less future with Leap Motion

The motion tracking device that even Tom Cruise in Minority Report would envy back in 2002. With the air gesture controlled apps at our door step and the Leap Motion leading the way, this is a session you don’t want to miss. I’ll demonstrate the device, go through its inner workings, the API’s and the air store. But even more important- there will be code. Let’s bring the future to life for a Minority Report 2013 inspired session.

 

Portable Class Libraries for multiplatform targeting

Imagine a world where the .Net developer can create and compile code that will run on multiple .Net platforms. The same code runs on WP, WPF, SL, Xbox, Windows Store apps. A little hidden gem in Visual Studio 2012 allows you to do just that. In this session I introduce you to this modest but powerful gem, Portable Class Libraries, what they do, how they work, and even more important how you can make it work for you.

 

WinRT development in C#

Prepare for a rather intense and technical session where we go through what you need to develop for the Windows Store. While introducing you to the core concepts we will go through (among other things) the what is key for developing on the WinRT platform, possibilities and limitations, tools available, tools needed, terms and concepts.

At the end of the session you will have a good understanding for Windows Store App development and how to get started. 

 

Painting a perfect picture: Nutrition, fitness, programming and future tech

What would happen if you were to mix clinical nutrition, pro fitness, code and cool tech together? Since I took the step over from nutrition and fitness to programming I’ve dreamt up many applications that would leverage that knowledge. In this session I want to show you how what we do combined with the possibilities found in (for example) NFC and motion tracking devices, combined with domain expertise, can change people’s life forever- and more important actually save lives. Prepare for an inspiring session.

 

Cooking up a perfect question: 365 Stupid questions later

What can we learn from 365 stupid questions? And what does this have to do with cooking and food? Over a year ago I started asking a daily stupid question, to make sure no question goes unanswered and to learn something new every day. We go beyond the answers and take a look at the science behind asking questions, information gathering, why we have opinions and how they can affect us, and why some questions triggered bigger responses than others (and the top ten) while I explain how cooking, food and identity works in the same way. It’s about cooking up the perfect question, and that is exactly what I will be doing during this session (not only metaphorically, but for real).

 

iOS to WinRT: Windows Store App development for iOS developers

Prepare for a rather intensive and technical session where we go through what you need to know as an iOS developer to develop for the Windows Store. While introducing you to the core concepts we will go through (among other things) the main differences between the iOS and the WinRT platform, possibilities and limitations, tools available, tools needed, terms and concepts. At the end of this session you will have a basic understanding for Windows Store App development and how to advance.

 

The Windows Store Apps showdown - C# vs JavaScript

Join me on an intense live coding session where I create the same Windows Store App using two different languages, C# and JavaScript. We will cover everything from core concepts to more advances concepts while highlighting and comparing similarities and differences between the two implementations. Be prepared for an entertaining split personality type of technical session as the two languages show their way of doing things. You wouldn’t want to miss this showdown!

 

Near Field Communication in Windows Phone 8

In this session we answer the questions about NFC, what is it, and how does it work. How can we use it, how is it being used, and how does the C# implementation look like? 

 

Windows Phone 8- the advanced session for the creative child at heart

Now if kids and teenagers, the future customers, got to decide what kind of apps we would make, now what would that be? I asked a group of kids and teenagers, and put together an advanced session on Windows Phone 8 based of their responses, showcasing the cool advanced features of WP8 in a way that will hopefully bring out the kid in you. Be ready for a playful session! 

 

The survey will close 2 weeks before the event. Please response by Monday 3rd June.

The Talk

Metaphorically speaking, the world is shrinking every day. Ironically this means that it is getting less acceptable to brush aside cultural differences and pretend that all cultures are essentially English but with different words. Appreciating globalization is about achieving humility, understanding that the world is a lot bigger than most developers give it credit for. Most developers understand that different cultures use different date formats, number formats and currencies. However, how many developers do not know that postal code formats, phone number formats, address formats and person name formats also differ. Not to mention the issues of localizing for gender-based languages or languages with less simplistic plural forms. What about ordinal subscripts, ordinal words, alphabet character sets ? The intention of this session is to open eyes, provide globalization enlightenment and with luck it will scare the living bejeezus out of you enough to make you question every line of code you write. more

The Speaker

Guy is an ASP Insider and an MVP in ASP.NET. He is the author of NCLDR (www.ncldr.com), the .NET implementation of CLDR. He is the author of ".NET Internationalization" published by Addison-Wesley (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 (www.dotnetdevnet.com), a free .NET user group in the South West of England. He is the founder of DDD South West (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 www.guysmithferrier.com and catch him on Twitter at @GuySmithFerrier.

The Meeting The meeting will be on Wednesday, the  8th May 2013 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 and a quick pub visit afterwards. Please arrive in time. Details here.

Post Meeting Resources

 Guy's post about this talk.

Usefull links

• NCLDR
• .NET Internationalization Source Code
• Patrick Mezard's C# port of Google libphonenumber 

 

Congratulation to Catalin our lucky winner.

The Talk

An introduction to Agile software development and the Scrum framework. We take a look how Scrum teams are comprised, how they organise themselves and how to run a successful Sprint. After the talking is over we go "hands on" and run a "1 hour Sprint" aiming to deliver some working software live onto the internet using as many Scrum and Xp techniques as we can!

The Speaker

Chris Jones is an XP enthusiast and Certified Scrum Developer instructor who has been practising agile software development since 2003. His experience lies in designing and developing IT solutions built on Microsoft technologies.  As a strong advocate of agile methodologies, Chris has applied and introduced both scrum and XP on many projects in the financial, legal, insurance, education and entertainment sectors, and has in-depth experience in building large service oriented architectures, web services and n-tier web applications. Chris has a real desire for teaching and coaching XP to software teams to help get teams “buzzing’ about their work and the products they create.

The Meeting The meeting will be on Wednesday, the 17th April 2013 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 and a quick pub visit afterwards. Please arrive in time. Details here.

 Many thanks for Chris for coming it was a great talk

The Talk

In this session we’ll take a brief look at Windows 8 from the point of view of a user coming to the OS for the first time and the new Windows Store and WinRT apps that they’ll encounter. Then we’ll switch and look at Visual Studio 2012 and the options for building Windows Store apps whether you are a .NET, JavaScript or C++ developer. We’ll put together a simple example that touches all those technologies and we’ll even look at how we can combine them into a hybrid app. Along the way, we’ll wander into the Blend design tool and build up the whole picture of putting together WinRT apps.

The Speaker

Mike Taulty's Blog can be found at http://mtaulty.com , or you can follow him on twitter, @mtaulty

The Meeting The meeting will be on Wednesday, the 20th March 2013 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 and a quick pub visit afterwards. Please arrive in time. Details here.

Post Meeting Resources

Mike's flickR demo can be find on the following links:

• bit.ly/w8flickrdemo
• bit.ly/w8flickrdemojs

More generally

• Windows 8 Developer Centre http://dev.windows.com
• UK Windows 8 developers LinkedIn Group http://linkd.in/ukw8apps 
• Reward programme for UK app developpers http://www.appbuilder-rewards.co.uk

 Felicitation to Jon and Prashant the winners of our raffle and thank you to JetBrain and Telerik for the prices.

The Talk

Ian Russell gives us a pragmatic view of Dependency Injection. In the session, you will discover what Dependency Injection is, why you will want, and need, to use it in your projects, when it is and is not appropriate to use it and and how to get the best out of it. 

The Speaker

Ian's blog can be found at http://ijrussell.tumblr.com, or you can follow him on twitter, @ijrussell

The Meeting The meeting will be on Thursday, the 28th February 2013 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 and a quick pub visit afterwards. Please arrive in time. Details here.

Post Meeting Resources

Ian recommend the following books related to his talk:

• Dependency Injection in .NET by Mark Seemann.
• Brownfield Application Development in .Net by Kyle Baley and Donald Belcham

Go to Ian's blog for more detail. 

Felicitation to Kyle the winners of our raffle and thank you to Telerik for the prices.

The Talk

The new Async features come along with the very useful WhenAll and WhenAny methods to execute sets of tasks.
We will delve into how these work, the effect of exceptions within any individual task and cancellation. This leads to the creation of common patterns such as Redundancy, Interleaving, Throttling and Early Bailout.

The Speaker

Liam is an Application Architect at Huddle helping design the world's best collaboration software. Previous to huddle Liam was Head of Engineering at CriteriaMX leading at team of .Net developers, and worked as a consultant and still runs his own company Tiger Computer Services Ltd, specialising in software for Broadcast Television. His Niagara SMS moderation system has been used by QVC UK for the last eight years to display SMS messages from viewers, live, on screen.
Liam is also responsible for the ticketing system for Hat Trick Productions which provides e-tickets to shows such as Have I Got News For You, Room 101 and The Kumars at No 42B.
Liam has worked for chellomedia, GMTV, BSkyB, SmashedAtom and Original Thinking Group. In his time he created the first in house weather system for Sky News using Visual Basic 1.0, acted as architect for two general election systems, project managed the launch of the GMTV web site, was key to delivering the first interactive television chat service in the UK for BSkyB and helped launch the first live shopping channels in the Netherlands.
Liam's blog can be found at http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers, or you can follow him on twitter, @westleyl.

The Meeting The meeting will be on Thursday, the 17th January 2013 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 and a quick pub visit afterwards. Please arrive in time. Details here.

Post Meeting Resources

Liam have an article on his blog here with all source code of this presentation. If you like the music in the demonstration go to Silents on Bandcamp. 

Felicitation to Mike and Paul the winners of our raffle and thank you to JetBrain and Telerik for the prices.

I have the pleasure to announce than JetBrains have give us licences to raffle during our next meetings. Every other months, we will have a raffle for 1 personal license of any of the following JetBrains product.

• ReSharper - Productivity extension to Visual Studio
• dotCover - .NET unit test runner and code coverage tool
• dotTrace Performance Profiler
• dotTrace Memory Profiler
• WebStorm - IDE for professional JavaScript and front-end Web developers.
• AppCode - Objective-C IDE, for developers building apps for Apple devices such as Macs, iPhones & iPads.

Thanks JetBrains for your sponsors

Again thank you Jimmy for all his work over the last years.

Franck

After five or so years with the group it's for me time to say goodbye. In February I'm leaving Gloucestershire and moving to London in pursuit of a new opportunity. 

I would like to thank each and everyone of you. I would also like to give huge thanks to all speakers and sponsors for their continuous support. It's been enormous pleasure to be with you for those years.

But fear not, the group shall not die. I would like to welcome Franck Terray who will take over the group. I wish him all the best and I hope he will enjoy it as much as I did.

The Talk

The Raspberry Pi is a credit card sized computer developed by some Cambridge boffins. In this session I'll walk you through everything you need to get up and running with it, starting from taking it out of the box, then I'll show you how to build an internet radio using Mono C# and VistaDB.

The Speaker

Gary Short [MVP C#] joined the army upon leaving school and was put on stores duty, where he was responsible for handing out the camouflage paint for trucks and tanks. As the distinctive patterned paint only came it two sizes, small for trucks and large for tanks, he soon grew tired of this work and became a hit man for Chipperfield's Circus. His mission was to track down competing circuses around the world and to kill them. This was very dangerous work as it is hard to kill a Circus, the best way being to always go for the juggler. Seeing there was no future in this Gary then drifted into programming where he pretends to know a lot about Patterns & Practices and he intends to stay in this profession until found out.

The Meeting

The meeting will be on Thursday, the 13th December 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 and a quick pub visit afterwards. Please arrive in time. Details here.