This presentation will cover the most important aspects of .NET assemblies:

Bruce Davis is a senior consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services in the MS PacWest Portland Office.

Scott Stanfield is the founder and CEO of Vertigo Software, Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for eCommerce Solutions. Scott is a proud member of the MSDN Regional Director community, covering Silicon Valley, and participates in the .NET Partner Architect Council. His company has built the Windows DNA "Rosetta Stone" sample application Fitch & Mather Stocks 2000 and the .NET sample IBuySpy.com. He is a frequent speaker and has delivered keynotes at Microsoft events including TechEd, PDC, DevDays and VBITs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We'll show you specific techniques (with code!) that you can use immediately to reduce complexity for your users and improve your presentation layer's efficiency and maintainability.

Rory Blyth will introduce you to some of the new membership features in the upcoming ASP.NET 2.0, with particular emphasis on the Provider Pattern and how it makes it extremely easy to abstract away a data store for consumption in your application. Bonus content to be included as time allows.

Rory Blyth is the Pacific Northwest Microsoft Developer Community Champion, which is a fancy title for "geek who goes around at talks to people." He gives MSDN Events throughout the Pacific Northwest. In his spare time, whatever that is, he also co-hosts .NET Rocks, the Internet radio talk show for .NET developers. In the rest of his even sparer time, he writes a blog at www.neopoleon.com.

Ben will cover the platform, the UI oddities, and the .NET compact framework support. He’ll demonstrate an app that caches data on the phone and then uploads the data periodically via a Web service.

Click Here to add a reminder to your calendar.

At PDC05, Microsoft announced the newest component of WinFX, the next generation Windows API – Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). WF provides a workflow engine at the platform level that you can utilize in your own applications. Microsoft is building on WF as well, integrating it into future versions of SharePoint and BizTalk. This session will provide an overview of WF and demonstrate how you can leverage it in your own development efforts.

Jason Mauer is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft covering the Pacific Northwest. He presents frequently at developer events and user groups about topics related to software development. Most of his four years at Microsoft have been as a development consultant with Microsoft Services, specializing in application development with .NET, SharePoint, and XML technologies. Find him online at www.jasonmauer.com.

A Presentation on the LINQ tool-set and the upcoming .Net C# 3.0 language extensions. The topic will compare current methods of Data retrieval in ADO.Net 2.0 with the new LINQ Tools. And of course- DEMOS for the faithful!

Nick Muhonen is a Portland area consultant with over 5 years experience in the .Net Framework. He is currently certified as both an MCT and an MCSD.

Why should people care about Atlas (Microsoft's upcoming implementation of AJAX)? The reason is that although the hype around AJAX is sure to fade, the technology itself will be around for a long time. That is, AJAX/Atlas helps solve a long-standing problem (avoiding server round-trips), and this allows web applications that are (potentially) more responsive. While Microsoft has only released a preview of Atlas, it is becoming increasingly clear what the final bits will look like and how important they will be. In fact, it behooves all developers to investigate Atlas: when the next-generation of web applications are made, they will be made (at least in part) with Atlas.

Erik was trained as a biochemist. Although he has always loved programming (since the Apple IIc days), it wasn't until 5 years ago that he made programming his full-time job. The allure of code (and the glamorous .COM boom) was too much to pass up. And while his arrival in tech field coincided oddly with the ensuing market crash, it's thought that this was entirely coincidental. Currently, he works for Tranxition Corporation where he is heading up development of a secret application that will change how users manage their personal data. In general, he's most happy working on low-level details (disassembling binaries with IDA, writing a garbage collection module, etc.), but he has also worked on the high-level aspects of managed, unmanaged, desktop, web and mobile applications.

Rory Blyth began coding by programming a Timex Sinclair in 1983. He has experience with many different platforms and languages, but his passion lies in using and helping people understand .NET technologies. Rory also works as an author, co-hosts the .NET Rocks Internet talk show, writes a blog, and keeps an eye on Longhorn.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ADO.NET, rather than merely offering the ability to persist to an XML file, actually uses XML as the native format for representing its multi-table Datasets. We'll look at how the ADO.NET objects map to various elements in the Dataset's XML schema and how to use XML from any platform to create, read, and modify ADO.NET Datasets.

Andrew Brust is President of Progressive Systems Consulting, Inc., a New York City-based company specializing in the development of, and developer training in, custom applications using .NET, SQL Server, and other Microsoft technologies.

Andrew is Microsoft's MSDN Regional Director for New York and New Jersey, a contributing editor to Visual Studio Magazine and a regular, highly rated speaker at VSLive and other conferences throughout the U.S. and internationally. Andrew has over 15 years of experience programming and consulting in the Financial, Public, Small Business, and Not-For-Profit sectors. He is a member of the INETA Speaker Bureau.

Such a build process makes developing medium to large .NET application much easier, and it is essential to the eXtreme Programming practice of "continuous integration".

Bio:
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 nation-wide about how to build large scalable applications. Patrick is currently Software Architect at Serveron Corp., which makes monitoring devices and software for the utility industry.

Chris Sells’ grandmother says that he is related to the original Sells circus performers that came across on the boat after the Mayflower. That might explain his sense of the unusual. He gave a talk on SOAP from a bathtub in Barcelona (naked) and his logo is based on a picture of himself working on a computer (naked).

It’s not his reputation though, as the most publicly naked developer that keeps people coming back for more. Chris is a well-respected writer with his 9th book coming out in September. He’s had countless articles published, has consulted for many large companies and spends a good deal of his time training developers at Developmentor.

And on top of all that -- he is a member in good standing in the International High IQ Society.

Learn more at SellsBrothers.com.

David Chappell
.NET Illuminator

David Chappell has given keynote speeches on four continents; his books have been translated into ten languages; his popular seminars have been given in over thirty countries; published articles number in the hundreds; and his talks have been attended by tens of thousands.

It’s pretty rare to find a single person who is as comfortable talking to developers as he is to IT Managers, but David switches it on and off with no trouble at all. He brings the latest .NET technologies to light, plus, he’s the best-dressed man in software!

Learn more at DavidChappel.com.

Each of these strategies has pro's and con's. The architecture of web applications is completely different than client-server applications, requiring new design thinking as well as new skills. Web applications are used by several internal departments and can be customer facing, where on the other hand client-server applications were usually created for internal use by one department. This enhanced design can mean months of additional development work, and the inclusion of new kinds of critical features like user authentication and dozens of unique user interface features and page controls. Using an application generation approach, however, lets developers jump-start the web application development cycle, even if they don't know how to code HTML pages or write SQL queries.

Not a panacea of course, but application generation is gaining ground among enterprise IT professionals because it allows web applications to be rapidly and easily built specifically to the web environment, instead of just re-tooling client-server applications.

This presentation will include:

Presenters:
Michael Compton is a consultant to companies developing web applications on the Microsoft .NET framework. His 25-year development career includes leading the development of a knowledge-based expert system to fly on board the Space Shuttle while working at the Artificial Intelligence Research Branch at NASA Ames Research Center. He has also built development tools and expert systems for Teknowledge Corporation and Unisys. Michael has taught graduate courses and lectured at the University of San Francisco, Stanford University and Sonoma State University, and has written an introductory book on Robotics.

Alan Fisher is Chairman of Iron Speed, Inc., and a venture capitalist working with enterprise software companies. He is a five-time entrepreneur, and was co-founder and CTO of Onsale (now Amazon), the first online e-commerce auction engine, which he helped build to a $650 mm publicly traded company. Despite all this, he remains in close touch with his "inner programmer.'' The pain of building enterprise-class web applications from scratch inspired Alan and his partners to launch Iron Speed and simplify and accelerate web application development. Working with customers of Iron Speed puts Alan squarely on the pulse of the today's enterprise developer -- he is working with the folks on the bench every day -- figuring out how Microsoft .NET best applies, and helping developers streamline their development efforts.

Background on Iron Speed, Inc.
Iron Speed opens a whole new category of web application development, called Application Generation, which specifically addresses the need for greater productivity, better resource allocation and more rapid development.

• Use page templates and inheritance to give your site a consistent look and feel;
• Employ usercontrols and data binding to separate content from presentation;
• Use ASP.NET's object persistence capabilities to easily store and retrieve XML content.

Continuous Integration is more than just a fad; it's darn near required to survive anymore.

Join Patrick Cauldwell and Scott Hanselman as they talk about one of Corillian's product's build processes. They will explore NUnit, NAnt, custom NAnt Tasks, automatic reporting of errors, and unit test failures as well as Cruise Control.NET which can enable you to create an Enterprise Wide Build Dashboard for all the pointy-haired bosses to oogle at. It'll be fun, informative, and fast pace.

How does the dispose pattern differ from just implementing the IDisposable interface and only the Dispose() method?

You may already be familiar with the IDisposable interface, but in some situations, garbage collection may not be sufficient. Particularly when trying to release unmanaged resources.

Larry uses a real life example to demonstrate how the Dispose Pattern can better manage memory in your applications.

Larry has been developing for approximately 15 years with the last 8 years as a senior engineer/mentor. He has been developing the past four years on DotNET, specifically C#. Larry spends time answering questions on Experts-Exchange for C# and has attained the Master level certificate.

In this presentation we will cover different opportunities for developers to build on top of the SharePoint platform. We will walk through the SharePoint stack, demonstrating different means of customization and why you may (or may not) want to adopt a certain approach. Come and learn about how you can make SharePoint a part of your development arsenal.

About the Speaker
Jason Mauer is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft covering the Pacific Northwest. He recently switched to his current role from his previous one as a development consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services, where he specialized in .NET application development and SharePoint development for the past four years. Jason has extensive experience with customizing SharePoint and has worked on some of the largest SharePoint deployments in the world.

You’ve heard the buzz about Indigo, Microsoft’s unified programming model for building distributed applications. Attend a FREE event and learn how Indigo technology will simplify your life.

With Indigo, you use the tools and language you’re familiar with, and a single programming model with all the functionality you need. And Indigo is built on standards, so the applications you write will work with applications on all participating platforms.

Join us as we build Indigo demos from scratch and see firsthand how it works. Stop struggling with the dirty work. Indigo makes it easy to develop secure, reliable, interoperable web services, so you can focus on what really matters.

Register Today! Space is limited.

Every guest will walk away with:

• An inside look at Microsoft's next-generation web services platform
• The ability to quickly build secure, reliable web services
• David Pallmann's Programming Indigo Beta1 book
• A special DVD of the latest Indigo bits, content, labs and demos
• The chance to win T-shirts and an Xbox

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 vision, 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 contracts and business issues, sales and marketing of software products and services, setting your fee, negotiation strategies, handling customer objections, and getting paid. 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 including Microsoft Tech*Ed, Microsoft Exchange Conferences, DevConnections, Informant Conferences, Advisor Conferences and others. Tom also co-authored "Access 2000 and 2002 Development Unleashed" by SAMS Publishing and is the technical editor of the Advisor Media .NET journal. He is also been a practicing attorney for 20 years.

There is a huge movement in the software industry towards Web services and service-orientation. What is the essence of a service? What values do services provide to a software organization? How do you organize and combine services into systems that realize the full benefit of service-orientation?

These are increasingly important issues for developers and architects working on the .NET Framework. Today you create Web services using ASMX. Looking forward to Indigo - the communications pillar of Longhorn - service-orientation is at the core of all communication. That will profoundly change on how software is architected, designed, implemented and deployed. Service-oriented architecture can guide your use of Web services today, and prepare you for understanding and creating tomorrow's software.

Stuart Celarier is a consultant, course author and instructor. He recently served as technical lead and author of a Web services course for Microsoft. Stuart is also editor for the Longhorn Developer FAQ on MSDN.

• Web Services Enhancements WS-Security, allowing secure authentication from the Windows Forms application to a Web service for data access
• Microsoft Data Access Application block
• Microsoft Exception Management application block
• Microsoft Application Updater application block
• Multithreaded Windows Forms application for data access
• Structure for implementing online and offline data access without using Datasets
• XML Web Service data access or data access directly to SQL Server

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.

Script Callbacks in ASP.NET 2.0 are Microsoft's first step towards providing AJAX functionality in ASP.NET 2.0. The mechanism provides the ability to have client script code call back on the ASP.NET server page and provide content to update the client page without refreshing the entire page. This session introduces the basics of the technology and then delves into how you can utilize this ASP.NET 2.0 feature realistically in your applications. Some issues covered are determining which format to use to pass data, when to use Postbacks vs. Client Script Callbacks and how to avoid excessive complexity managing code both on the client and the server. We'll also look at ways to implement similar functionality in ASP.NET 1.1 and cover an overview of the underlying AJAX technology that sits underneath script callbacks.

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.

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>.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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).

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.

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.

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!

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.