So… “leadership” has failed to prepare for the planned lab. How about we learn some F# instead? Using a series of structured lab exercises (in contrast to the chaos of last month), we will learn some of the fundamentals of F#.
We may choose to revisit building an event calendar with Oak at a later lab.
Join us Thursday, May 16, 2013 for a great evening of hands-on learning and connecting with other developers. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, the lab begins at 6:30 PM.
Location: 5410 Maryland Way, Suite 110, Brentwood, TN 37027
In this hands-on workshop we will continue to explore the Oak .NET Framework by building a community calendar application. The goal of this lab is really about exploring new approaches to developing .NET applications through the use of dynamics, continuous feedback loops, testing, and other concepts that are more often found in languages outside of .NET. We hope this will be an exciting, challenging, eye-opening experience for developers at *all* skill levels.
To learn more about Oak, visit http://amirrajan.github.io/Oak/
Join us Thursday, April 18, 2013 for a great evening of hands-on learning and connecting with other developers. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, the lab begins at 6:30 PM.
Location: 5410 Maryland Way, Suite 110, Brentwood, TN 37027
For our next lab, we will begin exploring a C# web framework named Oak. Although the focus will be on the Oak framework, the goal of this lab is really about exploring new approaches to developing .NET applications through the use of dynamics, continuous feedback loops, testing, and other concepts that are more often found in languages outside of .NET. We hope this will be an exciting, challenging, eye-opening experience for developers at *all* skill levels.
Single page web apps are becoming the norm as opposed to the exception. And with that comes a large part of your code base existing on the client side with a lot of JavaScript, JSON and async HTTP. Oak gives you a way to quickly build these kind of apps by:
Join us Thursday, March 21, 2013 for a great evening of hands-on learning and connecting with other developers. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, the lab begins at 6:30 PM.
Location: 5410 Maryland Way, Suite 110, Brentwood, TN 37027
Test-Driven Development is a software development process which lends itself to building highly flexible and maintainable code. For this lab we’ll cover the following topics:
Colin Callahan is the CEO of Acklen Avenue, an agile software development company focused on delivering flexible code through an iterative process. For 12 years Colin has been building software for clients around the Nashville area. He is also the co-founder of Nashville’s Geek Jam were software developers and other geeks get together and play music.
David Sulpy, the CISO of Acklen Avenue, moved to Nashville from Atlanta to study Computer Science and Information Systems. After undergraduate school, he began his career immediately as a software engineer building experience before returning for a Master’s Degree in Information Security. Taking an interest in information security and best practices as they relate specifically to software engineering has become Sulpy’s passion. Outside of work, he enjoys coaching and playing ice hockey, supporting the Preds, playing ultimate frisbee, and all things neuroscience related.
We hope you join us in Brentwood at Vaco’s new training room for free food and learning! Come at 6:00 PM for food and get to know other developers in our area. The meeting starts at 6:30 PM and will run to 8:00 or later, depending on how much get into our subject.
Topic: ASP.NET Web Services
Facilitator: Clay McKinney
Location: 5410 Maryland Way, Suite 110, Brentwood, TN 37027
(The meeting room is on the first floor next to the bathrooms.)
This lab is aimed at ASP.Net (web forms) programmers who have never created a web service. Beginners are welcome. We will create a simple web service and consume the service from an ASP.Net web page. We will then use the service from an HTML page with jQuery’s Ajax method. We will talk about the difference between SOAP and JSON. We will talk about why web service techniques are useful and how to apply them to your work and projects.
Clay McKinney has been working with the web since 1999, and with ASP.Net since 2006. He has been the Lead Developer at StrategyCorps since 2011.
Help spread the word. We will not meet tonight. Please treat your spouse, significant other, or newfound programming love to a special evening 
Our next meeting is Thursday, February 21 at Vaco (map) on the first floor at their new training room at 6:00 PM. Bring your laptop, if you have one. Clay McKinney will lead us through building Web Services in ASP.NET.
Eric Johnson (Firefly Logic and Nashville Tech Council) has started a group on Codecademy.com for high school programming clubs. If you are interested in participating, get signed up.
Co-op Talk Day – March 30
Watch the first 30 seconds of this video to learn why should consider giving a talk.
Code PaLOUsa – Louisville, KY – April 25-27
CodeStock – Knoxville, TN – July 12-13 - Call for speakers
DevLINK – Chattanooga, TN – August 28-30 - Call for speakers
Help us spread the word!
Because the 2nd Thursday of the month falls on Valentine’s Day, we WILL NOT meet on February 14. Please treat your spouse, significant other, or new found programming love to a special evening
Because of scheduling conflicts, we WILL meet at Vaco February 21 in Brentwood. Vaco is located at 5410 Maryland Way, Brentwood, TN 37027. We will be meeting on the first floor in Vaco’s new training room.
This lab is aimed at ASP.Net (web forms) programmers who have never created a web service. Beginners are welcome. We will create a simple web service and consume the service from an ASP.Net web page. We will then use the service from an HTML page with jQuery’s Ajax method. We will talk about the difference between SOAP and JSON. We will talk about why web service techniques are useful and how to apply them to your work and projects.
Clay McKinney has been working with the web since 1999, and with ASP.Net since 2006. He has been the Lead Developer at StrategyCorps since 2011.
Join us Thursday, January 17, 2013 for a great night of hands-on geek fun and learning. To follow-up our career panel, we would like to continue our discussion of career development with a lab focused on important skills such as communication and interviewing. For those of you that missed the career panel, here is a video.
Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, and the lab begins at 6:30 PM. Our meetings are held at 11 Lea Avenue, Nashville, TN (directions).
Join us Thursday, November 15, 2012 for a great night of hands-on geek fun and learning. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, and the lab begins at 6:30 PM. Our meetings are held at 11 Lea Avenue, Nashville, TN (directions).
After years of solving the same types of problems over and over, developers recognized there were common patterns that could be applied to many programming problems. Out of this grew what we call “Design Patterns.” Learning design patterns keeps us from “reinventing the wheel,” and gives us a common vocabulary to express our ideas with other developers. In this hands-on lab, we will examine the most common design patterns, and work through exercises to help us see how these patterns can be put into action. Whether you are familiar with design patterns or not, we could all benefit from learning more and sharing experiences.
Join us Thursday, October 18, 2012 for a great night of hands-on geek fun and learning. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, and the lab begins at 6:30 PM. Our meetings are held at 11 Lea Avenue, Nashville, TN (directions).
Chance to win a $100 Best Buy gift card! Holland Square Group is sponsoring this lab, and will be giving away a $100 gift card to one lucky attendee!
Want to be a Black Belt in .NET? Then you need to come to our Coding Dojo. What’s a Coding Dojo you ask? That is where we break up into teams and write small simple practice apps to sharpen our skills. Then we’ll swap teams and do it again. Then the teams will discuss what they learned. It is a great way to practice with your peers and discover new ways and approaches.
Bring your laptop with Visual Studio 2010 or 2012, or pair with someone who does! Please use this link if you need to download the free version of Visual Studio 2012 Express.
Tommy Norman is a Senior Consultant with Holland Square Group leading their Agile Solutions group. For 15 years he has been helping clients build solutions using both Agile and traditional approaches as a Certified Scrum Master / Practitioner as well as a Microsoft ALM MVP. Tommy is a coordinator for the Nashville Agile User Group, one of the original founders of the devLink Technical Conference, a past president and board member of the Nashville .NET User Group, and a frequent speaker at both local and national events. He blogs about Agile, TFS, and .NET at www.tommynorman.com and rambles about most everything on Twitter as @tommynorman. When not working he enjoys being at home with his family of 5, playing guitar, and music.