Join us Thursday, May 9, 2013 for a great evening of learning and connecting with other developers. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, the lecture begins at 6:30 PM, followed by a drawing for free stuff. Everybody likes free food and free stuff, right?

Location: Vaco Training Room, 5410 Maryland Way, Suite 110, Brentwood, TN 37027

Topic: AOP for You and Me

Cross-cutting concerns are everywhere: caching, logging, transactions, and more. These can make your code a tangled, scattered mess.

In this presentation, I will define cross-cutting concerns, and show you techniques to refactor cross-cutting concerns, including dependency injection; the decorator pattern; and Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) tools like Castle DynamicProxy and PostSharp. I’ll explain the benefits and trade-offs of each design decision so that you will be confidently prepared to master cross-cutting concerns.

Speaker: Matthew Groves

Matthew D. Groves is a guy who loves to code. It doesn’t matter if it’s “enterprisey” C# apps, cool jQuery stuff, contributing to OSS, or rolling up his sleeves to dig into some PHP. He has been coding professionally ever since he wrote a QuickBASIC point-of-sale app for his parent’s pizza shop back in the 90s. He currently works from home on the Telligent product team, and loves spending time with his wife and 2 kids, watching the Cincinnati Reds, and getting involved in the developer community. He is the author of Aspect-Oriented Programming in .NET (published by Manning), and also teaches at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. You can find him on Twitter as @mgroves, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Join us Thursday, April 11, 2013 for a great evening of learning and connecting with other developers. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, the lecture begins at 6:30 PM, followed by a drawing for free stuff. Everybody likes free food and free stuff, right?

Vaco in Brentwood is our meeting location winner. Given that more and more .NET jobs are located in the Brentwood/Franklin area, Vaco would be a better location long-term. I know for some of you it has been frustrating fighting traffic into downtown Nashville, especially when there are other events taking place downtown.

Location: Vaco Training Room, 5410 Maryland Way, Suite 110, Brentwood, TN 37027

Topic: Windows Azure Platform

Microsoft’s Windows Azure is the computing and storage platform that lets you build and run applications in the Microsoft Cloud, launch them in minutes instead of months and code them in multiple languages and technologies including .NET languages such as VB.NET and C#, Node.js, Java, PHP and Python.

This presentation will provide an overview of the key features of the platform and the tools used to develop applications that run on the platform. It will also cover determining the applications that are appropriate to move to the cloud and will discuss Cloud implementation models such as Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Speaker: Bill Zack

Bill Zack is currently an independent Consultant specializing in Cloud Computing and Microsoft .NET technologies. He has acted as a Senior Architect and Consultant with a major New York consulting firm where he drove Cloud strategy, architecture and execution for customers on both Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services. Previously, as a Principal Architect Evangelist for Microsoft, he worked extensively with customers and partners to help them design, build, and move applications to the Windows Azure Cloud Platform. He is an author and a frequent public speaker at conferences and user groups on Cloud and .NET technology. He also is one of the leaders of the NYC/NJ Windows Azure User Group, the NYC .NET Developers Group, and the New York Chapter of the International Association of Software Architects.

Join us Thursday, March 14, 2013 for a great evening of learning and connecting with other developers. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, the lecture begins at 6:30 PM, followed by a drawing for free stuff. Everybody likes free food and free stuff, right?

Location: 5410 Maryland Way, Suite 110, Brentwood, TN 37027

Test-Driven Development

Test-Driven Development is a software development process which lends itself to building highly flexible and maintainable code. For this lecture we’ll cover the following topics:

• Tools
  • Mocking frameworks
  • Test frameworks
  • Code refactoring and productivity tools
  • Dependency Injection / IoC frameworks
• Writing a test in MSTest with the Arrange Act Assert test pattern
• Red, Green, Refactor
• Refactoring your test
• BDD
• Writing a BDD style spec in MSpec
• Pairing with TDD/BDD
• Wiring it all up with your favorite DI framework

About Colin Callahan

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.

About David Sulpy

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.

Happy New Year!

Join us Thursday, January 10, 2013 for a great evening of learning and connecting with other developers. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, and the presentation begins at 6:30 PM. Our meetings are held at 11 Lea Avenue, Nashville, TN (directions).

2013 Career Panel

To kick off 2013, we have assembled a panel of managers, community leaders, and recruiters to discuss the current Nashville job market. This will be an open discussion on the state of technology, as well as things you can do to help improve your career in 2013. The last time we had a similar panel discussion was November 2011, and it was a great success. We hope you’ll join us for a lively discussion on how we can all make 2013 the best year yet.

Join us Thursday, November 8, 2012 for a great evening of learning and connecting with other developers. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, and the lecture begins at 6:30 PM. Our meetings are held at 11 Lea Avenue, Nashville, TN (directions).

CoffeeScript: Good, Bold, and with Sugar

CoffeeScript has quickly become one of the most watched projects on GitHub. In this session we will talk about what CoffeeScript is, why it’s important, and how it can help you develop better web apps in less time. This little language has taken the web development world by storm and it is gaining converts daily. You’ll see how CoffeeScript makes code more readable, how it removes many of the “Bad Parts” of JavaScript, and how it allows you to express yourself more clearly without having to throw out all of the JavaScript skills that you have spent years perfecting. If you develop web applications, you owe it to yourself to learn about CoffeeScript and see if it is right for you.

About Daniel Mohl

Daniel Mohl is a professional software engineer/architect whose interests include understanding the intricacies of various programming languages, enterprise application architecture, and how to bridge the gap between business and technology. He is a Microsoft MVP, C# and F# Insider, author, blogger, speaker, and event organizer. You can follow him on twitter at www.twitter.com/dmohl and view his blog at blog.danielmohl.com.

Join us Thursday, October 11, 2012 for a great evening learning and connecting with other developers. Free food and socializing starts at 6:00 PM, and the lecture begins at 6:30 PM. Our meetings are held at 11 Lea Avenue, Nashville, TN (directions).

Leveling Up: When It’s Time To Assume Technical Leadership

Most software developers would make lousy managers, but many of the experienced developers that I have met and worked with have more to offer in terms of technical leadership than they share with their managers and team. As an industry, we need you to leverage your experience for the benefit of us all. In this session we will examine some clues that you may be ready to “level up”. We’ll discuss when and how to appropriately exercise technical leadership and when to keep our mouths shut.

Attendees will leave this session with a toolkit of tactics to influence their teams, companies and clients to make better choices in the pursuit of greater user value.

About Alan Stevens

Alan Stevens is the Winston Wolfe of software development. He solves problems. He is a partner at NerdHive Industries, LLC in Knoxville, TN where he builds kick-ass mobile and web apps. He is also a jerk on Twitter at @alanstevens.

Join us Thursday, September 13, 2012 at 6:00 PM for free food and drinks. The lecture begins at 6:30 PM, followed by some great giveaways, such as books, training, and software. Our meetings are held at 11 Lea Avenue, Nashville, TN (directions).

Topic: Data Networking for Developers

With the emphasis on RESTful APIs and Service Oriented Architectures, it’s easy to forget the impact that network elements can have on application performance. In this talk, we will cover firewalls, load balancers, and caching from a network centric view. Then, we will cover how to map data flow throughout your application. We will follow that up with a discussion about how virtualization and storage can affect your application performance and how to account for it in your architectural design. Finally, we’ll investigate how to use New Relic for Application Performance Management, and Wireshark to make sure communications are occurring the way you expect them too.

Speaker: Jason Myers

Jason has spent 15 years on the infrastructure side of IT, and recently switched back to software development.  Currently a developer at Corrective Care Solutions and Worlds Old Intern at FoxyCart.  Jason blogs at www.binarydelusions.com and can be found on twitter at @jasonamyers.

Last night we were able to broadcast Elijah Manor’s talks via Google Hangouts. If you weren’t able to make it to the meeting, you can watch the talks on YouTube.

• Exterminating Common jQuery Bugs
• Using Underscore.js to Solve Common Problems

Thank you Elijah for coming to speak to us. We had a fantastic time at an awesome location hosted by Emma.