July 2007 - Posts

• Running for President

  Well, I am not running for president of America, for which elections will happen early next year. I am not even runing for President of India, for which the elections concluded recently. I am running for President of Jacksonville Developers User Group. Yesterday, I had sent Dennis Bottjer, the current president of the group answer to three questions - Who am I?, What I will do as  President? and Why I would like to be the President? I wanted to share those responses with everyone here. Who am I? Technical I have more than 8 years of experience in designing, developing, and architecting enterprise scale applications using Microsoft Technologies. I am a passionate software developer / architect and love to venture into cutting edge technologies. I am a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in Visual C#. I am a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer in .NET and working towards MCTS. I did my Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science from a prestigious university in India. I graduated with M.S. in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Dallas. Community - Technical Currently, I serve as Secretary and Special Interest Group (SIG) Coordinator for Jacksonville Developers User Group (http://www.jaxdug.com) (Since October 2005). I was instrumental in organizing last year’s Jacksonville Code Camp. I am a strong proponent of knowledge sharing and community development. I have spoken extensively in Code Camps in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.  Last year, for few months, I was also part of INETA’s Technology Committee. Community – Non Technical I love working with the community and helping them. Apart from my association with JaxDUG, I have been associated with Hindu Society of Jacksonville for the last 4 years and served as Chair of Youth Committee from 2004-2006. Since, 2005 I am also the Regional Coordinator for North South Foundation. This non-profit organization organizes spelling, math, essay, geography bee and other contests for kids of Indian origin. In 2005-2006, I was associated with a local toastmasters group as Treasurer and VP of Education as well. What I would do as president? We have done really well as a user group over the past years. There are some things I would like to see more structured and execute my ideas around. These items are in no particular order. Speakers -    Develop local speaker pool by giving them structured opportunities -    Get UG Members feedback on which speakers they would like to see and present Meetings -    Explore different meeting styles – Discussion based, 2 speakers in one night, Bring your own presentation, Interactive debate on technology -    Meeting reminders and communication -    Feedback on meeting, future topics -    Attendance Events -    Keep Code camp as an yearly event -    Organize 1 day technology focused events on a weekend. These events can be based out of the need of the community / local businesses Web Site -    Shows meetings and events for the next 3 months preferably -    Refinement Collaboration with other User Groups -    Other User groups in the area in different technologies -    User groups in Florida -    INETA Collaboration with local businesses -    Assess needs of organizations from a training perspective (brought up by Marshall Harrison) -    Get speakers on those topics Newsletter -    Have a weekly newsletter with all events coming up locally and in Florida Special Interest Groups -    Encourage and support people who want to start focused groups -    Try to get financial support -    Raffle prizes UG Meetings and Events Sponsorship Structure -    Structure around how organizations can sponsor meetings -    Associated benefits and costs matrix UG Organizational Structure -    Role based organization -    Advertise opportunities to get involved -    Recognize all people involved -    Prepare for sustainability and growth of user group Actually, these are the items that came to my mind while thinking about it. I would take every suggestion as an opportunity and evaluate it with an open mind along with the group. We have to do things that make our user group one of the strongest knit communities not only in Florida but all over the nation. Why I want to be the president? •    To serve the technical community •    Bring ideas and refreshing changes for growth and betterment •    Develop my own leadership and communication skills The president is only a facilitator that guides the leadership team and the community. I certainly look forward to the support of able volunteers and advisors. By being a president, I would be the torch bearer, however it is the community and the team that will strive for excellence. Given the opportunity to serve, I'll do my best to implement the above mentioned ideas. If you would like to support me, or have any questions or comments, please reply to this post or come to the User Group meeting tonight - July 25th, 2007. More information on JaxDUG Web Site. Actually, I just noticed that Dennis has posted a blog entry regarding elections. Posted Jul 25 2007, 02:35 PM by Vinay Ahuja

• Microsoft E-Learning - Free Courses

  There are several developer clinic courses available for free on Microsoft E-Learning Site on various technologies. You just need a passport account to login. Most of these clinics can be downloaded and viewed offline using Microsoft Offline Reader. I knew about this link and thought I would share it. Here are the courses that are free: Collection 5134: Developing Rich Experiences with Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.0 and Visual Studio® 2005 Clinic 5135 : Introduction to Developing with Windows® Presentation Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005 Clinic 3402: ASP.NET for PHP Developers: Introduction to ASP.NET Clinic 5230 : Developing Enhanced Web Experiences with Microsoft® ASP.NET AJAX Extensions Clinic 5045: Inside Look at Developing with Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 Clinic 5046: Inside Look at Building and Developing Solutions with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 Enjoy Posted Jul 17 2007, 02:53 AM by Vinay Ahuja

• Tampa Code Camp – Resources – Power Tips for Orcas IDE for C# - July 14th, 2007

  Here are the resources for my Power Tips for Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) IDE for C# session from Tampa Code Camp. I had some problems with the Orcas VPC and could not show my Linq examples. Ryan Morgan was very helpful and let me use his laptop that had Orcas installed. We did lose some time in this changeover. However, I am satisfied that I was able to show some very cool tips for Visual Studio IDE for C#. Presentation Slides – Power Tips for Visual Studio Orcas IDE for C# Currently, I am working on a reference sheet for all the tips and would be posting it in few days. I’ll also be posting a list of resources for C# IDE Tips and Tricks. - Vinay Posted Jul 16 2007, 02:44 AM by Vinay Ahuja

• Tampa Code Camp – Resources – Design Patterns - July 14th, 2007

  Tampa Code Camp was a very well attended event. I presented couple of sessions. One of them was on Design Patterns. I talked about some of the Gang of Four patterns. It was in one of the first slots in the morning. There were about 50 people in the room, some of them standing too. Honestly, I did not expect so many people to show up. Thanks to everyone who came to this session. I hope you liked the session. I tried to get feedback from people who had used Design Patterns in their projects. Thanks to those who shared their experiences and scenarios. It’s always good to learn from others’ experiences. Here are the presentation slides and demo source code:   Resources Presentation Slides – The Art of Design using Design Patterns in C# Head First Design Patterns - Book Home Page C# Code Examples C# Code Examples with Class Diagrams in VS 2005 You would need NUnit to run the unit tests from the project. There were couple of questions that came up during the talk. I’ll be posting the answers in a separate blog entry. - Using Composition over Inheritance - Singleton Design Pattern in Distributed Scenarios Thanks once again for attending this session. Please feel free to contact me for any questions. Vinay Posted Jul 16 2007, 02:26 AM by Vinay Ahuja

• Follow up to Jacksonville Developers User Group Meeting - July 11th, 2007

  It was nice to present at JAXDUG meeting on Wednesday It was a small group that attended this meeting. We had some interesting discussion. I talked on Design Patterns and demonstrated some of the Gang of Four Patterns from the classic design patterns book - Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series). My talk was based on the code examples from the book - Head First Design Patterns (Head First). This book takes a look at various design patterns in a very lively manner with fun examples. I would strongly recommend this book. Although the book is in Java, the fundamental principles of OOAD are the same and explained very nicely. Resources Presentation Slides – The Art of Design using Design Patterns in C# Head First Design Patterns Book Home Page C# Code Examples  The above C# code examples are written using Visual Studio 2003 version. In my demo, I showed several class diagrams from this code for various patterns. You can download the updated package from the link below. C# Code Examples with Class Diagrams in VS 2005 The code examples solution contains a project that has unit tests written using Nunit. You’ll need to download NUnit for .NET 2.0. Thanks to everyone who attended the session. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Posted Jul 16 2007, 12:37 AM by Vinay Ahuja

• Jacksonville Developers User Group - July Meeting

  This month's meeting is on July 11th. Joe was supposed to speak on Silverlight, however he won't be able to make it. Instead, I'll be speaking on Design Patterns in .NET.  Here are the session details: The Art of Design using Design Patterns in .NET Have you worked on a design problem and thought if there was a standard solution to that? Have you thought of enhancing your design vocabulary to add factories, facades, proxies, decorators, visitors, mediators, and bridges etc? Come to this session to learn about design patterns. A Design Pattern is an elegant, tested, well documented, and reusable solution to standardized software design problem. This session will look at some of the standard Gang of Four (GoF) Patterns. GoF patterns are divided broadly into creational, structural, and behavioral categories. We'll discuss when, why, and how to use them with real world scenarios. The demos would be in C#. I have missed last few user group meetings due to travel. I am looking forward to this one. It should be fun. See you all. Jacksonville Developers User Group  Posted Jul 08 2007, 02:15 PM by Vinay Ahuja

• Speaking in Tampa Code Camp - July 14th, 2007

  Tampa Code Camp is on Saturday, July 14th, 2007. I am presenting two sessions. Here are the abstracts. Session 1: The Art of Design using Design Patterns in .NET Have you worked on a design problem and thought if there was a standard solution to that? Have you thought of enhancing your design vocabulary to add factories, facades, proxies, decorators, visitors, mediators, and bridges etc? Come to this session to learn about design patterns. A Design Pattern is an elegant, tested, well documented, and reusable solution to standardized software design problem. This session will look at some of the standard Gang of Four (GoF) Patterns. GoF patterns are divided broadly into creational, structural, and behavioral categories. We'll discuss when, why, and how to use them with real world scenarios. The demos would be in C#. Session 2: Power Tips for Visual Studio Orcas IDE for C# Visual Studio 2008 (code named Orcas) IDE for C# introduces many new developer productivity features. This session will introduce you to those new IDE features and some of the advanced existing features (from Visual Studio 2005). We’ll create an end-to-end application using new features of C# 3.0 and LINQ to demonstrate various developer tips and tricks. This would be a demo based presentation. Although, code examples would be in C#, most of the IDE features are applicable for VB.NET development as well. Developers of all levels will learn something new from this session. You’ll be able to use the tips and tricks and be more productive in your development right away. Come prepared for an interactive session and enjoy the double sundae (C# and Visual Studio). Tampa Code Camp - Main Site Tampa Code Camp - Agenda I hope to see you all there. Vinay Posted Jul 07 2007, 06:30 PM by Vinay Ahuja