Hi Coders,

The December meeting – 1st December 2010 – is imminent. I’m pleased to announce that it will mark the 5th anniversary of the Newcastle Coders Group. We are running a special competition from now until then.

Paul Stovell (a favorite at the Newcastle Coders Group) has given us a 12-Month MSDN subscription to give away. This is an amazing prize, worth a great deal of money and gives the winner development access to licenses to the full range of Microsoft applications, servers and developer tools.

Rather than just holding a raffle on the night, we decided it would be a good idea to give it away to the project that will most benefit the Hunter Region. In order to be considered you will need to do the following:

1. Send in your application with a 50 word (max) explanation of your project and how it will benefit the community.
2. Attend the December meeting.
3. Be prepared to answer questions from the judges on your intended project on the night.

The judges will be selected from the organising committee of the Newcastle Coders Group. The projects will be scored on the criteria of worthiness, value to the local community and likelihood of the project getting off the ground. The judges decision will be final.

The projects we’re looking for might be: startup business plans, open source projects or could even be related to a charity or educational institution. The project could even be underway already – you just need to explain how the license will support your project.

So, get cracking. We have many talented people in the Hunter and I can’t wait to see what they come up with!

Hi Coders,

The Newcastle Coders Group is back at the newly renovated Forsythes IT and Training rooms for the August meeting. Two great presenters, Eliminating no-repro bugs with MS VS Team Test 2010 and Flash/Flex and Silverlight from a management perspective. PLUS – a chance to win a full retail copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite with 12 month MSDN Subscription courtesy of Enhance ALM and Microsoft. The full details are available here.

When: 6.00pm Wednesday 5th August 2009 (tonight!)
Where: Forsythes IT and Training Rooms – 9 Denison Street, Newcastle West
Cost: FREE!

For those of you who haven’t been before, the Newcastle Coders Group is a great place to learn about the latest technologies in software development. It’s also a great place to meet your peers in the local area. Everyone is welcome, so bring your friends and colleagues.

We order pizza and soft drink on the night for those who want to chip in $5. Pizza is purely optional. If you plan to come along, please RSVP so that we can plan for numbers and indicate if you want to chip in for the pizza (by 4pm today).

Hi Coders,

March is already upon us and it’s time for the Newcastle Coders Group meeting.

When: 6.00pm Wednesday 4th March 2009
Where: Forsythes IT and Training Rooms – 9 Denison Street, Newcastle West
Cost: FREE!

This Wednesday we’ll be asking the question Windows 7 – How can you be sure you’ll be ready?

Windows 7 is just around the corner and you can be sure that some of your users will have it on their machines. This session walks you through the things you need to be aware of as a software or web developer to make sure your application or site runs well under this new OS. The second part of the session will cover the things you can do to really make your applications shine by taking advantage of this broad platform.

Andrew Coates is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft in Australia. Before joining Microsoft, Andrew was an independent consultant specialising in database applications using Microsoft technologies including SQL Server, Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office. Andrew’s wide range of experience includes telecommunications, SMB inventory, dispatch and accounting systems, using both web and rich client front ends. He has developed and delivered class room training and has mentored a number of developers in Visual FoxPro and SQL Server technologies. Andrew blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com/acoat. If you’ve been to one of Andrew’s presentations previously you’ll know he’s a passionate advocate of technology always entertaining.

We haven’t yet found a pizza sponsor for March but those of you have recently visited the website you would have seen CSA’s logo proudly displayed on the front page. If your company would like to help support the group, if only for one month, please contact me!

All are welcome and there’s no cost so bring along your friends and collegues who have an interest in learning more about software development. Please RSVP if you plan to attend so that we can plan for numbers.

See you there.

Hi Coders,

The next Coders Group meeting will be:

Date: 6.00pm Wednesday 1st October 2008
Location: Forsythes IT Training Room – 9 Denison Street, Newcastle West
Cost: FREE!

This month the topic will be the Lua programming language … And how to expand the World of Warcraft.

Lua (Portuguese for “Moon”) is a modern lightweight scripting language. In this talk, you will see the syntax and control structures that make Lua work – and then put it together to write add-ons for possibly the most famous Lua implementation – the engine for the World of Warcraft. Using Lua you can enhance your WoW experience, taking advantage of information happening around you in the world that you might otherwise miss. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how similar it is to familiar and more conventional event-driven programming.

By day, David M Williams is the Chief Information Officer for ResCo Services, a national mining support company. By night, he writes for iTWire and is a level 70 warlock.

For those of you who haven’t been before, the Newcastle Coders Group is a great place to learn about the latest technologies in software development. It’s also a great place to meet your peers in the local area. Everyone is welcome, so bring your friends and colleagues.

It should be a great night.  I hope to see you there.

iTWire: The much-hyped “year of the Linux desktop” may still not be with us but there’s no doubting the free open-source operating system has gained significant traction in the last year. One reason for this is, with equal certainty, the mess that is Windows Vista. Here’s how it’s actively driving new interest in Linux.

Hi Coders,

The first Wednesday of April is fast upon us. It’s time for another social gathering, so we’ll hit the town this Wednesday 2nd April starting at our usual time of 6pm-ish. At our meetings we often don’t get the chance to properly meet each other and chat amongst our peers in the industry. Our previous social nights have been well received and included winning trivia competitions and I’m sure this will be no exception.

To make things simple, we’ll visit the Cambridge Hotel on 789 Hunter St, right near our regular meeting spot of Forsythes IT. So – go into town like you normally would, with only a small navigational variation.

We’ll send out another reminder just beforehand. Hope to see you all there! Regards,
David M Williams
Newcastle Coders Group

Hi Coders,

Just a reminder that the March meeting is tomorrow evening.Date: 6.00pm Wednesday 5th March 2008
Location: Forsythes IT Training Room – 9 Denison Street, Newcastle West
Cost: FREE! 

This month’s presentation is titled “Techniques of Test-Driven Development” (TDD) and will be presented by Stephen New. Stephen will present some of the key ideas behind TDD and will provide a very practical demonstration of the tools and techniques that can be used to get started with this approach to programming. Expect this presentation to generate some lively discussion about the role of unit-testing with software development.There will be food available on the night (provided by Microsoft), so please RSVP to assist us in planning for numbers.See you there!

Just a reminder that the first meeting for the Newcastle Coders’ Group 2008 is on tomorrow evening.

Date: 6.00pm Wednesday 6th February 2008
Location: Forsythes IT Training Room – 9 Denison Street, Newcastle West
Cost: FREE!

This month Yi Su will be talking to us about the Spring framework. Having originated in Java the Spring and Spring.NET framework is an open source application framework that makes building enterprise applications easier.

Don’t forget to RSVP if you’ll be attending so that we can plan for numbers.

See you there!

The Newcastle Coder’s Group is having its second birthday tomorrow night, Wednesday 5th December.

We’ll have two great speakers, Joe Schwetz from MS HQ in Seattle talking about Team Foundation Server, and Adam Cogan from Sydney talking about Performance Point! We will also be giving away a full year subscription to Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 with MSDN Premium. This is a fantastic prize courtesy of Microsoft. Thanks Finula!

Date: 6.00pm Wednesday 5th December 2007
Location: Forsythes IT Training Room – 9 Denison Street, Newcastle West
Cost: FREE!

Bring yourself and any of your friends and colleagues that have an interest in coding. Please RSVP if you plan to attend so that we can plan for numbers.

I’m pleased to announce that the Newcastle Coders Group now has a home. For the foreseeable future our meetings will be held at the University of Newcastle, in room EF122. That’s in the “Engineering Theatre and Teaching” building. Parking is available nearby. If you haven’t been to the uni before, you can find it at H6 on the map here. Meetings will be held monthly on the second Wednesday of every month.

Our next meeting will be at 6pm on Wednesday 8th February 2006 and there will be a demonstration of Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 by Andrew Coates. We also have a number of Books and DVDs to giveaway on the night. Food and drink will be supplied so it will be helpful to have some idea of numbers. All RSVPs will go into a draw and the first one drawn in attendance will win a Mouse. The more the merrier, so bring your friends and colleagues or anyone you know with an interest in coding.

Andrew Coates is a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft. He speaks regularly to a variety of developers and application architects on Microsoft’s development tools and integration techniques. Prior to joining Microsoft, Andrew was an independent consultant, developer and mentor specialising in database applications including Geographic Information Systems. His blog is at http://blogs.msdn.com/acoat.

Almost every developer has users or customers who spend most, if not all, of their working day in one of the three main Office applications – Word, Excel and Outlook. Providing these users with customised application solutions has traditionally meant a difficult to maintain and less than secure VBA-based solution or a separate .NET application the user has to switch to and from.

Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System 2003 went some of the way to addressing these problems with the introduction of .NET document-centric applications hosted within Word and Excel. VSTO 2005 takes this several steps further with .NET enhancements to application objects such as named ranges and bookmarks, hosting managed controls within Office documents, simplified access to the actions pane and many other enhancements. In addition, VSTO2005 introduces support for Outlook add-ins, greatly enhancing the number of users who can take advantage of the entire .NET framework from within a familiar environment. In this session, we will explore the new features of VSTO2005 and look at how you can leverage VSTO2005 to create powerful Microsoft Office smart client applications quickly and easily.

We’re looking for speakers at future meetings.  If you have an interesting project that you would like to tell us about let me know.

See you there!