Thanks to the efforts of John Gagnon the MSDN Northeast Roadshow will once again make a stop in Augusta, ME.

Mark your calendars for June 18th is the day you can enjoy a day of free learning with Microsoft's New England Dream Team: Chris, Bob & Jim.

More info and sign up info: http://tinyurl.com/Summer09Roadshow

The Maine Microsoft Certification Study Group is a group focused at developers helping eachother get their Microsoft certification. Are you looking to get certified and would like to have help and help others? Then signup today at http://ms-study-group.groups.live.com.

The first virtual group will start studying soon!

The show is on! You are invited to join us on Thursday afternoon, the 16th of April as the Maine Developer Network will host the Augusta Developer Event.
Learn all you need to know about LINQ to SQL, DevForce Entity Framework, SQL Server Client Side Reporting and hot stuff from the patterns & practices group!

LINQ and LINQ to SQL
by Mark Blomsma
The number one topic requested at our previous meeting: LINQ and LINQ to SQL. This session will take a close look at one the biggest additions to the C# and VB.NET language: LINQ and LINQ to SQL. How does Language INtegrated Query work, what are lambda expressions and expression trees and how do they get translated into SQL statement? [60 min.]

Introduction to DevForce Entity Framework
By Scott Woodruff
Entity Framework is a cornerstone product that shipped in .NET 3.5 SP1. The company IdeaBlade has been working on enhancing this product from the very first CTP and betas that have been available.
In this session Scott will talk and demonstrate what Entity Framework is and how DevForce EF enhances the basic mechanics of Entity Framework. [30 min.]

SQL Server Client Side Reporting and LINQ
by Mark Blomsma
SQL Server Reporting Server has created a client side reporting control which allows you to use SQL Server reports, even without having a SQL Server! This session is all about using the control and hooking up data to it using LINQ queries. [45 min.]

What’s new from Microsoft Patterns & Practices?
by Shawn Robichaud & Mark Blomsma
The Microsoft Patterns & Practices group offers guidance in various forms.
Recently the Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight (Prism) has been made available.
Shawn will take you on a tour what this package has to offer for you.
After which Mark will offer a look at what the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Application Architecture Guide 2.0. [45 min.]

Location
The event will be held at:
State of Maine Offices
Harlow Building
First floor conference room
18 Elkins Ave
Augusta 

Time
We'll start at 13:00 and plan to finish by 16:30.
Please use the Register form on the website to RSVP:
http://www.maine-devnet.org/Home/SignUpForEvent.aspx.

See you there!

Mark Blomsma
Maine Developer Network
 

Once again the Maine Developer Network (thanks to John, Shawn and the State of Maine Government) is happy to help out Chris, Bob and Jim with finding a location to hold the MSDN Northeast Roadshow.

On March 19th the Roadshow will hit the Central Maine Commerce Center in Augusta. Go here to sign up today!

Location
Central Main Commerce Center
Florian Auditorium
500 Civic Center Drive Augusta Maine 04330
United States

Date
Thursday, March 19, 2009 8:30 AM - Thursday, March 19, 2009 4:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Welcome Time: 8:00 AM

The Maine Developer Network is proud to announce that the Northeast MSDN Roadshow by Chris Bowen and Jim O'Neil will once again make it as far north as Augusta!

Don't hesitate: sign up today!

It took a little while, but we're ready to rumble. The Main Developer Network is organizing the Visual Studio 2008 Community Launch Event. A whole afternoon of sessions all about the recently released Visual Studio 2008. We've got the following sessions lined up:

The Business Analyst Perspective
by Shawn Robichaud
The focus for this session is on requirements gathering and techniques to help capture and manage requirements throughout the lifecycle. The session explains some of the challenges associated with deciding precisely what to build and it presents techniques for capturing and evolving requirements to ensure that requirements stay current throughout the software development lifecycle. [40 min.]
 
Value-up software development
by Shawn Robichaud
This session introduces the notion of value-up software development. It compares and contrasts core value-up principles and practices with conventional work-down approaches. The latter have proved over the years, largely ineffectual for team-based software development and are part of the reason why only 30% of software projects succeed. [40 min.]

Enabling Offline with SQL Server Compact and Sync Services for ADO.NET
by Scott Woodruff
Synchronization Services allows you to maintain a local, synchronizable copy of your data regardless of connection reliability or availability. This session will introduce synchronization services and how you can build applications that use the services. [75 min.]

LINQ and LINQ to SQL
by Mark Blomsma
The number one topic requested at our previous meeting: LINQ and LINQ to SQL. This session will take a close look at one the biggest additions to the C# and VB.NET language: LINQ and LINQ to SQL. How does Language INtegrated Query work, what are lambda expressions and expression trees and how do they get translated into SQL statement? [75 min.]

The session will be held at:
State of Maine Offices
Harlow Building
First floor conference room
18 Elkins Ave
Augusta 

We'll start at 12:30 and plan to finish by 17:00. Please use the Register form on the website to RSVP: http://www.maine-devnet.org/Home/SignUpForEvent.aspx.

The event data on the left of the homepage has been replaced with a live RSS aggregation of Maine developer blogs. The RSS subscription for the Maine Developer Network will also include all recent posts of listed people. If you blog and wish to be included in this feed, please email me at mark.blomsma@maine-devnet.org.

Our lunch meeting with Chris Bowen as a speaker was well attended and the feedback on the evaluation forms indicates, very well received.

Chris did a session: Introduction to LINQ & Language Improvements in C# 3.0/VB 9

LINQ (Language Integrated Query) is a unified approach for querying data using coding syntax that remains consistent regardless of the data source. It WILL change the way you work as a developer and architect and this session will help you on your way to using it effectively. To understand how LINQ works, we'll first navigate the new features of C# 3.0 and VB 9.0 that enable LINQ functionality. Then, we'll dive into .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 to explore the various realms of LINQ: Datasets, XML, Database/SQL, in-memory objects, and more. By the end of this session, you'll have a solid understanding of how LINQ works and what it can do for your applications.

Download the slides here:

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