Welcome

Last week in the pub after an event I was asked why there wasn’t much non-Microsoft stuff at Scottish Developers. Fair question. We are after-all supposed to be here to cater for the entire developer community, not just one section of it. The reality is that the current committee mostly use Microsoft tools and the areas in which we happen to operate on a daily basis are within that sphere of influence. It therefore becomes easy for us just to invite speakers that we already know. Not a very good reason, and really rather a poor excuse too. But, I want to change that.

I would like to invite anyone who knows of an event that would be of interest to folks involved with non-Microsoft developer technologies to let me know and I’ll add it to the events page and announce it on the website. If you want to get more involved, such as being able to speak at an event, then we would be very interested in that too. Finally, we always welcome feedback, so if you have any other ideas then let me know. We already do joint events from time-to-time with the SQL Server User Group, so why not joint events with other organisations. All feedback, comments, suggestions, etc. can be sent to support@scottishdevelopers.com

Things are now moving forward quite well with Developer Day Scotland 2009. The session voting is currently open, but hurry, it closes at the end of the month. I hope you will take the opportunity to vote for the sessions that you want. It is a tough choice as we have so many excellent sessions. The delegate registration will open early during the first week of March, so keep an eye on the website for details.

As I mentioned above, we are always keen to find out what you want, so if you have any suggestions then please let us know. You can email event suggestions to support@scottishdevelopers.com

Did you know we have a twitter feed? You can follow us @scottishdevs.

As always, we are on the look out for new speakers. If you would like the opportunity to do a presentation on a software development topic from 10 minutes to 90 minutes then get in touch with me at colin@scottishdevelopers.com.

Regards,
Colin Mackay, Chairman, Scottish Developers

Events

24-February-2009 @ 18:30 in Edinburgh (Scottish Developers)
An Introduction to the Live Framework
Registration Required – Cost FREE

26-February-2009 @ 19:00 in Dundee (Linux Society)
Squid
Registration Unknown – Cost FREE

12-March-2009 @ 19:00 in Dundee (Linux Society)
OpenLDAP Replication Strategies
Registration Unknown – Cost FREE

19-March-2009 @ 18:30 in Glasgow (Scottish Developers)
Inversion of Control and Testability
Registration Optional – Cost FREE

26-March-2009 @ 19:00 in Dundee (Linux Society)
Web Penetration, Privilege Escalation and Maintenance
Registration Unknown – Cost FREE

8-April-2009 @ 19:00 in Edinburgh (Scottish Developers)
jQuery – An introduction
Registration Required – Cost FREE

14-April-2009 @ 18:30 in Glasgow (Scottish Developers & SQL Server UG)
Two DBAs walk into a room full of developers…
Registration Required – Cost FREE

Further Afield

March:
  DevWeek 2009 (London)
  SQL Bits IV (Manchester)

April:
  DDD Belfast (Belfast)
  WebDD ’09 (Reading)
  ALT.NET North (Bradford)
  ACCU 2009 Conference (Oxford)

May:
  Developer Day Scotland 2 (Glasgow)
  DDD South West (Taunton)

Sponsor’s Message

DevWeek 2009
23-27 March
Barbican Centre, London
www.devweek.com

DevWeek is the UK’s biggest conference for software developers, IT architects and DBAs, and the 12th annual event takes place in London at the end of March.

The main three-day conference features eight concurrent tracks, and there’s also a wide choice of pre- and post-conference workshops, which can be booked in addition to or separately from the main event. /p>

Session and workshop topics include Visual Studio 2010, Ruby on Rails, .NET Framework 4.0, Cloud Computing, SQL Server 2008, Enterprise Design Patterns, Silverlight 2, Productive Programming, ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, Architecture Awareness, LINQ, and Code Metrics.

If you book your place by 27th February you can save up to £100.

Community conference season is on us. What ever you do there is a conference to suit you somewhere in the UK in the next few months. The only problem you are going to have is fitting it all in.

Up first is SQL Bits IV on 28th March 2009 in Manchester. The delegate registration is now open – so get ’em while they’re hot!

Then on 4th April the community heads over to Belfast for DDD Belfast, the first time the DDD conference has visited Northern Ireland. Voting is currently open for that conference.

Then in May you have two choices, one at each end of the UK! On the 2nd May in Glasgow there is Developer Day Scotland where voting has recently opened. Then in Taunton there is DDD SouthWest, where the Call for Speakers is currently open.

There is lots of choice and the diverse range of locations means that you shouldn’t have to travel far to find something near you. If you are very keen it also means an opportunity to visit lots of places you may not have been before. I’m particularly looking forward to Taunton – I’ve never been down that way before!

UPDATE!

The community conferences just keep on coming. We really are spoiled for choice this year! Two more conferences announced, both on the 18th April!

• ALT.NET ‘in the North’ conference (Bradford)
• WebDD’09 (Reading)

If you live in or near Gloucester you may be interested in a new .NET User group that is just starting. GL.NET will have its first meeting in February, so watch out on their site for exactly when and where that will be.

I am honoured that for the 5th year running the powers that be at Code Project decided to make me an MVP (Most Valuable Professional) once again.

The award is essentially for contributions to the community over the previous year. There is a full list of the other amazingly helpful folk which includes some other regulars to the list as well as some new faces this year.

As an example of how helpful the folks are at Code Project one of my few requests for help was answered in about 15 minutes by two people offering valuable advice. Heck, I can’t even get that level of support out of a paid service!

So, three cheers to everyone that makes Code Project such a great place, especially to Chris Maunder and his team who tirelessly keep everything running.