Didn’t make it to the PDC in Los Angeles this year? Feeling overwhelmed by all the developments and announcements that went on that week? You’re not alone! Come join NIMTUG for rePDC, and you’ll learn all about the best of the best including Azure, Windows 7, Oslo the modelling platform, the new Silverlight Toolkit, Windows Live Framework announcements, OpenID support, VS2010 and .NET 4.0 and much more. We’ll have a look at what’s available now from the new platforms and where and how to get started. 

 

For more details see the event registration page http://nimtug.org/events/61/default.aspx

Unfortunately Jesse Liberty has had to cancel his Silverlight talk that was to be held on 23 Sep.

Indexes and indexing are huge topics and given half a chance, Kimberly and Paul could talk for days on this stuff! In this session, they've chosen their favorite indexing topics to discuss. The internals section will cover the structures and benefits of various kinds of indexes and show the 2005 feature "INCLUDE" and the 2008 feature "filtered indexes". Fragmentation is often mis-understood and so this section will explain the various forms of fragmentation, how they can occur when a schema or workload is poorly designed, then how to detect and remove fragmentation in a way that causes least disruption to the production workload.

Details

Thursday, 04 Sep 2008, 18:00 to 21:00
Cost: Free
Contact: ndflanagan@o2.ie

Location

The Auditorium in Microsoft Atrium

Block B, Carmanhall Road, Sandyford Industrial Estate
Dublin

Next Monday (28th April) we have Mike Azocar coming over from the States to talk about Scrum development with Visual Studio Team System.  Scrum is a incremental process commonly used with Agile software development.

Mike will be covering Scrum development and the community-based Light weight Scrum Process template for Team System.

This will be a great chance to catch Mike if you can't get down to Galway for DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! event on the 3rd May.

You can register for this free event here

Links

Mike's Blog

Code Project: What is SCRUM?

Wikipedia: Scrum (Development)

We've had to close registration for the Community Launch this Thursday because we've hit the limit on the number of attendees. Well actually, due to a small issue with the code in our events module, we've gone over it, :S.

We're having to email those people who registered last that they are actually on a waiting list and might not be able to get into the event.  We're also sending out an email to those people who will be able to get in asking them, if they are not able to make it, then please can they un-register themselves so we can free up some space for people who can.

The Launch kit will only be available to those people who actually turn up for the event.

Remember those who can't make it that we will be holding more detailed events later in the year.

Microsoft are also holding the Official launch event in Dublin on the 11th March and we're hoping that they will also be coming to Belfast sometime in April, though this has yet to be confirmed.

We'll like to confirm some of the details about this Thursdays event.

Schedule

The schedule will be as follows:

1:30 – 2:00 Registration

2:00 – 2:05 Intro

2:05 – 3:05 Windows Server 2008 Highlights (Part 1) – Dave Northey

3.15 – 4:00 Windows Server 2008 Highlights (Part 2) – Dave Northey

4:00 – 4:15 Coffee Break

4:15 – 5:30 Business Intelligence Highlights of SQL Server 2008 – Bob Duffy

5:30 – 6:15 Coffee Break

6:15 – 7:30 Visual Studio 2008 Highlights – Ronan Geraghty

7:30 – 8:00 Highlights of SQL Server 2008 for developers – Ronan Geraghty

From 8:00  Reception

Launch Kit

The following products will be made available to all Community Launch attendees.

• Vista Ultimate Edition with SP1 + subscription to OneCare.
• Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition.
• SQL Server 2008 CTP 5.0 plus a voucher for the full release of SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition when available later in the year.
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (64 + 32bit) for internal testing & evaluation only.

Unfortunately, the kits won’t be available on the day of the community launch – however, they will be posted out as soon as they become available. We’ll be mailing attendees in order to get postal addresses after the event. So please be sure to use an email address that you check frequently!

Links

2008 is going to be a busy year! - Events

Community Launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008

When: 21 February 2008
Welcome Time: 10:00am

Microsoft EPDC2 Auditorium

South County Business Park
Leopardstown Dublin D18
Ireland

Microsoft invites you to join them for the Windows Mobile Developer Briefing 2008

“A day of Windows Mobile Discovery”

The Microsoft Mobility Communication Business group is pleased to invite you to a day of Windows Mobile discovery! Attend this event to accelerate your ability to develop applications for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. Learn about the platform and tools that enable you to build powerful and rich applications - rapidly and effectively. Prior experience is not necessary as we will take you from step 1 and explore the many technologies you can leverage to make the next killer mobile solution!

Last year’s event was a huge success, visiting 13 countries around Europe including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Poland, Portugal and Spain to an audience of 2,400 people. Thanks to the success of the 2007 events, this year the tour will run again to visit 15 countries across EMEA. Added to this, an impressive line-up of speakers has already been confirmed.

As a valued Microsoft developer, the Microsoft Mobility Communication Business Group is pleased to invite you to attend this exclusive event.

OVERVIEW: The appetite for information anywhere, at any time, and on any device is growing. Consumers are increasingly relying on their devices for information, entertainment and keeping in touch. Enterprises are mobilizing solutions to increase productivity, cut costs and enable new capabilities. If you are interested to learn how the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform helps developers deliver effective solutions fast, this unique demo-packed technology day will show you how. You will also see many code samples, tips and tricks!

Why you should come to this exclusive event…

This is a completely FREE full-day event to answer your questions and help you improve the way you work with your Microsoft software. Join us for insights, tips, and real-world examples of what Windows Mobile solutions can do for you. At this event there will be many opportunities for you to network with your peers and to have your technology and business questions answered by the Microsoft team. We hope to see you there!

Agenda:

10:00 – 10:30           Registration

10:30 – 12:00    Session 1 – Windows Mobile in Practice

This first session sets the scene for the day and kicks off with a  look at and demos of the brand new Visual Studio 2008 development environment which promises even better integration and powerful new features for device developers. The session then takes a realistic scenario and shows how Windows Mobile 6 and the upcoming .NET Compact Framework 3.5 can be leveraged to provide a compelling Proof-of-Concept in very few lines of code. See a wide variety of features being demonstrated, from location awareness to making phone calls programmatically. The session will provide an understanding of how everything can be tied together in an end-to-end solution.

12:00 – 13:00    Networking Lunch

13:00 – 14:15           Session 2 - It's the Business

Enterprise solutions are increasingly being mobilized for the new technically-savvy workforce. However, these solutions need industry-strength quality and features that will support the complex requirements these organizations have. This session will begin by looking at SQL Server Compact Edition, the sophisticated data storage solution that allows data synchronization with back-end databases. We then show how you can leverage industry design patterns and application blocks to provide a lower-risk, tested approach to solve common problems. Finally, a quick review of the Microsoft Dynamics mobile offerings will round off the options available for enterprise use.

14:15 – 14:30    Summary, Q&A, close

Click here to register or find out more!

With the holidays quickly becoming a dim and distance memory and all we're left with is our belts being having to be fastened on the next notch up, it's time to get down to the technology.

As I am sure you all know that this year around March / April Microsoft will be running official launch events for this years 3 big new releases; Visual Studio 2008 along with .NET Framework 3.5, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 (codename Longhorn).

  

Belfast should be chuffed because on the 8th April Microsoft will be bringing the launch machine to Belfast. Keep an eye here at NIMTUG and we'll keep you posted with all the details as soon as we get them.

In the mean time to get you're all in the mood we're running with Microsoft Ireland a Community Launch Event on the 31st Jan 2008 at the Radisson SAS Hotel Belfast in the Gasworks site.

We're planning on started at 2pm and running it through to about 8:30pm, this we hope will mean that we can get a larger audience as you will not have to take the whole day off. The event will be targeting both IT Professional and Developers, though we will be running the content focused on IT Pros with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence from 2-5pm and then for the evening sessions will be more developer orientated. Though if you are like me then you will probably get a lot out of  all the sessions.

I'm not promising that these sessions will be deep and technical, I am sure that we will be covering these of the new products and features in more details later in the year in 'normal' NIMTUG talks, but the launch will give you all a chance to at least get a understanding on all the new features.

You can register for the event on the NIMTUG site here.

Here are a list of the top 5 features in each product as listed in the January Edition of the TechNet UK magazine.

Visual Studio 2008

1. Multi-targeting - using Visual Studio 2008 you can create applications that will target .NET versions 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 so no more switch between different versions of Visual Studio for support and development of older applications.
2. Language Integrated Query (LINQ) - LINQ simplifies the way that you connect and query to data sources, enabling you to use the same syntax to query any data source.
3. Office Development - New improved Visual Studio Tools for Office, providing support to create Office 2003 and Office 2007 applications and add-ins. Also improved experience in created applications which use SharePoint technology
4. Web development - Improved AJAX support, New data controls and improved WSIWG editor and CSS support within the IDE.
5. .NET 3.0 / 3.5 development. Better support in the IDE for developing application using WPF and WCF framework.

SQL Server 2008

1. Reporting - New Reporting designer as well as improved reporting visualisations.
2. Location intelligence - In built logic to ask questions such as 'Show me customers more than 50 miles from my warehouse'.
3. Unstructured Data - SQL Server is now able to store any type of instructed data above the previous file size limit of 2Gb.
4. Performance - New performance governor, allows a more granular control on how much resources a specific application uses.
5. Auditing - New inbuilt audit abilities enabled at the server or database, allows logs to be written to either a log file or application log.

Windows Server 2008

1. Read-only Domain Controllers (RODC) - Useful for branch offices, where you are wanting a local DC that branch office users can authenticate quickly against. Without having a full DC, which might be a security risk.
2. Network Access Protection (NAP) - Prevents clients that do not meet a level of security features (Firewall, Anti Virus etc) from accessing the network.
3. Terminal Services - The ability for Terminal Services to present a specific application rather than the whole desktop as well as the ability to tunnel RDP traffic over HTTP.
4. Task automation - The inclusion of PowerShell and a new scheduling engine.
5. Virtualisation - Windows Server 2008 contains Hyper-V, Hypervisor-based virtualisation with full 64-bit support for the host and guests.

 

Also Microsoft TechNet Ireland are bringing a "Deploying Windows Vista and Office 2007" event to Belfast on the 22nd January 2008.

For organisations considering the deployment of either Windows Vista or the 2007 Office system - or both, this interactive training session has been specially designed for Technical decision makers, IT implementers and Infrastructure architects, to show how straight-forward deploying these technologies can be.

The session will update participants on the proven business, management and technical benefits provided by both technologies, will address the issue of application compatibility with Windows Vista, and demonstrate how best to deploy in organisations of all sizes.

More details and registration information can be found on the Microsoft Event site at  http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032364100&Culture=en-IE

This week, Microsoft is holding it's launch event for it's Unified Communication solution using Exchange 2007 and Office Communication Server 2007 in Belfast.

What is Unified Communications?

"Unified Communications bridge the gap between telephony and computing to delivery real-time messaging, voice and conferencing to the desktop environment."

The Belfast event will be held on the 25th Oct 2007 09:00 to 16:00 at the Radisson Hotel on the Gasworks site in centre of town.

The event is free and you can register on the Microsoft Event site here.

Visual studio 2008 and .net 3.5 will be out shortly, and this session will showcase some of the forthcoming IDE improvements such as JavaScript Intellisense & improved debugging, the new HTML editor, CSS style management and .net version targeting, many of which can be used with your existing asp.net 2.0 projects. In addition we'll take a quick look at a number of language enhancements such as LINQ, lambda expressions, extension methods and automatic properties, as well as the new ListView, DataPager and LinqDatasource controls.

http://nimtug.org/events/42/default.aspx

 

Speaker: Cathal Connolly

Cathal works as a Principal Software Engineer for Liberty Information Technology based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Cathal has previously worked for IT companies in the UK, US and Austria, developing both Web and Client/Server applications using Microsoft technologies. His current focus is the development of secure Banking applications and bespoke Smart Client .net products. In his "free" time, Cathal is a Core-team member and trustee of the popular opensource asp.net portal product, Dotnetnuke (www.dotnetnuke.com).

http://blog.developers.ie/cconnolly/Default.aspx

 

 Come and experience all the changes and enhancements Microsoft have made to the developer toolset to make you even more productive when developing for Windows Mobile and CE based devices. Unit Tests, security configuration and battery emulation are just some of the features now available in Visual Studio 2008. This session includes some fun demos on how best to use the new features to increase your productivity. Visual Studio 2008 also includes a significant update to the .NET Compact Framework: Version 3.5. This version includes a compact version of the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Language Integrated Queries (LINQ), new and improved diagnostic and performance analysis tools, and many smaller improvements as well. This session will also serve as an introduction to the .NET Compact Framework for those not familiar with it.

 For more information see http://nimtug.org/events/39/default.aspx

 

Well June is defiantly hoting up with the Irish Community Conference, 2 Microsoft TechNet events (one being tomorrow) and 2 NIMTUG Developer events.

Listed in date order

31-May-2007  Microsoft TechNet: System Center, Forefront & Visualization (I know it's May before you say ;))

Hilton Hotel, Belfast 09:15 - 12:30

• Building the Infrastructure for a People Ready Business
• System Center and Forefront overview
• System Center Data Protection Manager 2007
• Windows Server Visualization
• Windows Vista Management Features

Registration

 

05-June-2007 NIMTUG: Introducing Windows CardSpace with Barry Dorrans

Wellington Park Hotel, Belfast 19:30 - 21:30 (with reception afterwards)

Windows CardSpace is a framework developed by Microsoft which securely stores digital identities of a person, and provides a unified interface for choosing the identity for a particular transaction, such as logging in to a website. This talk will cover how CardSpace works, how you can accept CardSpace logins in your own site and a discussion of trust and identity on the internet.

Registration

 

07-June-2007 Irish Communities: Irish Microsoft Technology Conference 2007

Cineworld, Dublin 09:00 - Late !!

The 2nd Conference run by the Irish Microsoft Communities (of which NIMTUG is a member of). For more information please head over to http://imtc.firstport.ie/default.aspx. If last year was anything to go by then this should be a really great event.

Registration

 

19-June-2007 NIMTUG: Visual Studio Tools for Office with Mike Hernandez

Wellington Park Hotel, Belfast 19:30 - 21:30 (with reception afterwards)

Summary to come

Registration

 

27-June-2007 Microsoft TechNet: John Craddock's End-to-End Infrastructure Security

Waterfront Hall, Belfast 08:45 - 16:15

Microsoft TechNet are bringing John Craddock and Sally Storey to Belfast, Waterfront Hall to present their Event on End-to-End Infrastructure Security, which was oversubscribed to in Dublin earlier in the year.

• Identifying business assets
• Threat modeling
• Security policy and response planning
• Deploying IPSec for domain and server isolation
• Building rules and filters
• Identifying protocol and port requirements
• Firewall configurations
• Managing server roles and lockdown policies
• Patch management and compliance testing
• Creating Software Restriction Policies (SRP)
• Least privileged user access
• Establishing client security and software policy
• Client and server attack vectors
• Managing through group policies
• Network Access Protection (NAP)
• Vista security enhancements

Registration

Hope to see you at some if not all of these events!

The slides from Dave Northey  Microsoft Virtualisation are now available for download

http://nimtug.org/files/folders/it_prp/entry1172.aspx

 

Microsoft TechNet are bringing John Craddock and Sally Storey to Belfast, Waterfront Hall to present their Event on End-to-End Infrastructure Security, which was oversubscribed to in Dublin earlier in the year.

Like many IT professionals, you’ve probably attended security seminars and sessions over the years and gained an appreciation of the various security technologies available. But when, where and how these technologies can and should be leveraged can often be confusing.  Infrastructure security is frequently only considered once server roles and network connectivity has been implemented, a problem made worse by inadequate training.  When security technologies are not deployed until late in a project, the result can be poor implementation, weak documentation and compliance testing.

John Craddock’s End-to-End Infrastructure Security

When: 8:45 – 16:15 June 27^th

Where: The Waterfront Hall, Belfast

Registration: Click Here To Register.

Agenda:

• 08:45-09:15        Registration & Light Breakfast
• 09:15-09:30        Welcome and Overview
• 09:30-11:00        Is Your IT Infrastructure Secure?
• 11:00-11:15        Break
• 11:15-12:45        Securing Your Network
• 12:45-13:30        Lunch
• 13:30-14:45        Locking Down Servers and Workstations
• 14:45-15:00        Break
• 15:00-16:15        Vista Technologies

Topics covered:

• Identifying business assets
• Threat modeling
• Security policy and response planning
• Deploying IPSec for domain and server isolation
• Building rules and filters
• Identifying protocol and port requirements
• Firewall configurations
• Managing server roles and lockdown policies
• Patch management and compliance testing
• Creating Software Restriction Policies (SRP)
• Least privileged user access
• Establishing client security and software policy
• Client and server attack vectors
• Managing through group policies
• Network Access Protection (NAP)
• Vista security enhancements

Biographies:

John Craddock has designed and implemented computing systems ranging from embedded high-speed industrial controllers through to distributed IT solutions. John works as a consultant providing services to industry leaders including Microsoft. He was a key player in the Government Gateway Project, has designed high-availability web portals and help companies build Active Directory solutions to support their business critical environments. In addition to his role as a consultant, he has written over 20 technical training courses that have been published worldwide. He co-authored 'Investigating and Managing Objects and Attributes for Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003' which is part of the Active Directory Forestry series. John lectures internationally and has written and presented technical sessions at MTB, MEC, Tech•Ed, Microsoft IT Forum, JDP and deployment conferences.

Sally Storey has worked in management and consulting in the IT industry for Novell, Microsoft and now, independently. Sally works as a consultant on enterprise infrastructure projects in operations, logistics and deployment roles. Sally is ITIL qualified and specializes in building process that keep systems highly available and secure. Sally co-authored the Active Directory® Forestry series with John Craddock.

For further details and registration please go to the registration page here.  I'd advise you to register ASAP as I know from experience that this one will fill up very fast.  **You are very welcome to forward this invite on to any of your colleagues or friends whom you think would benefit from this conference.**

I've just realised that we're not displaying the location of the events on the registration pages.

Currently we're holding all our events in the

Best Western Wellington Park Hotel 

21 Malone Road
Belfast
BT9 6RU
Tel: +44 (0)28 9038 1111