March Session

The next meeting is Wednesday 10th March. I’d like to present on MEF but if anyone has any better ideas then I’m keen to hear them. One suggestion that I’ve had is that we build an IoC container with MSpec. If that sounds like the thing for you then come along and be vocal.

What: Drink Beer. Discuss .NET
When: Wednesday 10th March, 6pm –> ?
Where: 43 below, corner of Barrack and Hay
Cost: Free!

Feb Session

Somehow it has got to be today without me realizing it. The Feb Session of the Perth ALT.NET group is tonight. We are dissecting AutoMapper with the intent of:

1. Understanding AutoMapper better
2. Learning how we all approach a new code base
3. Discussing AutoMapper coding/architectural style

We are starting at 5:45ish and are at 43 below (someone tell that they can’t have VB as beer of the month for a whole year please).

If you have a laptop please bring it because we are not sure we will have one. If you don’t want to discuss AutoMapper then come anyway. If you can’t steer the discussion where you want to go then at least there is beer.

Finally, due to family commitments I won’t be able to attend and I haven’t been able to organize this session. Thankfully Rhys has stepped in at the last minute to help out. If the session is cool then lavish praise on him as he’s put it together in literally 2 days. If the session sucks blame me for only giving him 2 days notice.

Have fun and I’ll see you next month.

A Chat with Rowan Bunning

Welcome back to a new year!

Sorry for the late notice but next week Rowan Bunning is going to be in Perth to do some training. Mitch Wheat of the Perth .NET Community of Practice has organized for an informal session with Rowan next Wednesday evening at 43 below (our usual venue).

Rowan is a pioneer of Scrum in Australasia. Here is his bio from the event page:

With a background in web design, object-oriented development, eXtreme Programming and Scrum, Rowan became Australia's first Certified ScrumMaster and first Certified Scrum Practitioner before becoming the first Australian Certified Scrum Trainer. He has built extensive experience leading, coaching, and training organisations in Scrum across Australasia and Europe, including European Scrum leader EMC Consulting (formerly Conchango).

Rowan is highly active in the Agile community internationally and has spoken at several conferences in Europe and North America including Scrum Gatherings in 2007 (London) and 2009 (Munich). In Australia, Rowan founded a successful Agile special interest group supported by the Australian Computer Society and helped to initiate Scrum User Groups in Sydney and Brisbane. Rowan holds a Bachelors degree in Information Technology, is a PRINCE2 Practitioner and is Cognitive Edge accredited.

If you are going to come then I ask that you please RSVP at the event page so that we can keep track of numbers and upgrade to a bigger room if needed.

December Session – Coding Dojo

Thanks to everyone for their presentations in the previous session. Since then I’ve had a good chance to have a play with PowerShell and Psake (which are both cool). I still haven’t had a chance to install AutoMapper but it seems more and more likely every day on my current project. There were some interesting side discussion around Event Driven Architectures and Do vs. Done that I’d love to see expanded upon in a later session. Finally, I continue to be blown away by the power and flexibility of WPF. I look forward to being able to build an MVVM project in WPF sometime in the future.

The next session is Wednesday 9th December and it will be another Coding Dojo session. If you haven’t come to one before it basically consists of us, as a group, solving some well defined problem using Test Driven Development. Here are some rules:

1. One pair is "driving" at any given time
2. One of the pair has the keyboard, the Driver, the other is the Navigator
3. When the tests are all passing then the audience may suggest refactorings/tests
4. When the tests are failing the audience may only suggest fixes.
5. The Driver or Navigator may request silence while the tests are failing.
6. Driver/Navigator should swap frequently (like every 5 minutes) with someone in the audience. Be prepared to jump in.
7. Have fun, be nice **

Everyone is welcome, attendance is free.

What: December Coding Dojo
When: Wednesday 9th December, 6pm - ?
Where: 43 Below, 43 Barrack Street, Perth
Cost: Free

** Not necessarily in that order.

All In

The November session is tomorrow night. It looks like we will have 5 presenters each giving 15-20 minutes on their chosen topics. These are:

• Adrian McGrath – AutoMapper
• Rhys Campbell – MassTransit
• Adam Bell – Powershell
• Jake Ginnivan – Dynamic UIs in WPF
• Ying Low – Caliburn

For those interested Adam Bell has recently started the Perth chapter of the Powershell User Group Australia.

What: All In (short sessions from a bunch of people)
When: Wednesday 11th November from 6pm
Where: 43 Below (43 Barrack Street)
Cost: Free

Hope to see you there.

November Session – Someone presents something

Thanks to Rhys for presenting last month on Castle ActiveRecord. It was very interesting. Additionally I apologise to everyone who missed the session for accidentally running the session on the first Wednesday instead of the second. There is now a Google Calendar for the ALT.NET user group to make it easier to stay informed about when stuff is going to happen. If you’re on the site then its just over there to the right.

Anyway, the November session is Wednesday next week (the 11th). The room is booked and I’m organizing a projector but I don’t have a presentation as of yet. If you’d like to step up (even for just 15-20 minutes) this could be a great opportunity. Here are some topics that I’d (personally) like to see:

• AutoMapper
• Fluent NHibernate
• SubSonic
• Caliburn / MVVM
• ASP.NET MVC 2
• Distributed Version Control with GIT or Mercurial
• Messaging Architecture with MassTransit or NServiceBus
• Powershell
• Refactoring – From Procedural to OO
• The Horn Project
• F# (Anyone actually using it?)

If you’d be interested in talking about any of those (or anything else) send me an email or leave a comment. Don’t forget the Perth .NET CoP is having a DevJam event in December so this could be an opportunity to try out ideas.

P.S. I’m interested in trying to get some sponsors to provide incentives for speakers. What sort of products/licenses would make you keen to present?

P.P.S. I’m thinking that for December we might have another CodingDojo. This one will be based around the more traditional Code Kata approach of trying to solve a really well defined problem in a set timeframe (traditionally using TDD). If anyone has a kata they’d particularly like to try then let me know.

OzVAN Presents me

Just a quick note to let you know that I'll be presenting at tonights Oz Virtual ALT.NET (OzVAN) event. It should be 7:30pm Perth time which makes it 10:30pm on the other coast**. You'll need a LiveMeeting client and then you can just head over to http://tinyurl.com/virtualozaltnet

I'll be presenting on Connascence and .NET which is an interesting way of looking at software connectedness.

If you are generally interested in OzVAN events then check out the global VAN website which has recordings of previous sessions as well as a calendar of ongoing events. OzVAN happens fortnightly on a Monday night and just like the Perth ALT.NET group there is a google calendar so you never miss any.

** It is normally 9:30pm Eastern Time but they have daylight savings so I'm not sure if I'll be home at 6:30 local. We might need to compromise on 7pm local which is 10pm EDST. Curse you Daylight Savings!