Some great discussions in the FishBowl on TDD & BDD .. Then moved over to Inversion of control jump start and ended on advanced javascript & CSS session. Both of which were given by Ben Scheiman a Principle Consultant with Sogeti, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. (@subdigital)

BLOG: http://flux88.com/

About: http://www.flux88.com/AboutMe.aspx

laptop running out of juice notes will have to be inserted later.

John Teague talks about a business problem at his company Callaway golf that he ultimately solved with jQuery.

Notes:
--jQuery can be compressed to 12KB
--Easy to manipulate DOM
--TIP&TRICK: Essentially recommends combining your JavaScript files into one.
--Big fan of FireBug

Sites:

• www.VisualjQuery.com
• http://www.callawaygolf.com/Global/en-US/Products/Clubs/Drivers.html

Prescriptive Data Access in .NET 3.5
Brian Orrell

Description: Review the "right way" to develop data access and management applications using VS2008 and LINQ. Many things have changed with LINQ to SQL many developers have difficulty separating the hype from the real-world applicability of these new technologies.

BIO: Pariveda Solutions , Vice President
Brian Orrell is a Vice President with Pariveda Solutions. He has over fifteen years of technology consulting experience in a variety of industries and technologies. His emphasis is on the delivery of enterprise solutions utilizing Microsoft .NET. His areas of expertise include designing, developing and maintaining web-based and distributed object systems. Mr. Orrell has led large-scale development engagements for large utility companies, airlines, shipping companies, educational and non-profit organizations.

Notes:

• Do you check data during the time your user pulls it changes it and hits save???

I bounced around a little focusing on three sessions.

• Building Applications with Dynamic data
  Jason Kergosien
• Coding for Stupid Useres
  Gordon Montgomery
• Programming Microsoft Business Rules Engine
  Rick Garibay

These were all nice sessions. Notes will be Com'n

Attention User Group Leaders, INETA Volunteers, and Speakers! INETA would like to invite you to join us for a Mini-Summit on Monday June 2nd, 2008 at the Orlando Convention Center. We're going to be holding a somewhat informal gathering from 3-7 PM to provide user group leaders and chance to network, meet the new board members, and spend some quality time talking with us about community....

Read full article

Well we're here ... Ready to see what this place is all about.. There is a lot of Texas orange around here??? Not for sure what that is all about but I’m sporting my classic white & red Hog shirt! No funny looks as of yet wait until I break out the PIIIIIIGGG SSOOOOOOOOIIIIIIEEEEEEE on them though.

First session - [Unit Testing in Silverlight 2.0 W/ Eric Hexter](@ehexter)

BIO: AspInsider , Director Austin .NET user group, Organized 07 Austin code camp
BLOG: http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/hex/

Notes:
There are 3 DLL's inside the controls that can be used for Unit testing...Its those Dll's that make Unit testing in SilverlIght possible.

No VS2008 CTRL + R + T in Silverlight apps for Unit testing must use an add-on

Using Silverlight Test framework builds the XAP file packaged and ready for you silverlight app

**Jamie Kinsdell using Nunit with Silverlight (need to change some references web config entries.

Jeff Wilcox on Silverlight Project - project template && Item template

Code is in the Austin Code camp repository

I have heard a bunch of people threaten to start a SQL usergroup well congrats to these guys. Its now a REAL deal.

http://nwasql.com/

I look forward to going, the lunch time thing will be hard to make on a regular basis but hopefully I can square it away for the first meeting of this group.

Meeting Details

When:
Wednesday, May 14th, 11:30am - 1:00pm

Host:
Connolly Consulting

Address:
2703 SE Otis Corley Drive MAP

City:
Bentonville, AR 72712

Blogging while watching the Creating Rich, Dynamic User Interfaces with Silverlight 2 Controls. As I sit in my 2nd session of the day I have HI hopes for it to be a "Rim Rocker". Funny note all three of my sessions yesterday recommended going to this one today. They kept talking about Karen Corby.

Bio from her site - http://scorbs.com/work
"Karen Corby: the 8 sentence bio.
Born in Pusan, S. Korea. Flown to MN to meet Mom, Dad, & (eventually) little bro. Grew up in SoCal. Nicknamed scorbs by childhood pal. Studied at Stanford. Moved to Seattle to be a PM at MS. Likes travel, reading, hiking, philosophy, photography, and gossip magazines. Loves mac & cheese."

Talked briefly with her she in short is a "Big Brain" type of person.

Main topics and Random related notes: 

• Silverlight 2 USER CONTROLS (DataGrid, Button, Textbox out of the box)I can now build a website 
• Introduction to the Parts Model
• Sliverlight 2 has brought Styles & Templates to the client
• A Silverlight "page" is a UserControl in Silver 2
• Expressions Blend (beta) doesnt handeling skinning very well. Will do better when released.
• Expressions Blend (beta) does a good job now creating Custom User Controls (this is important for look & feel)
• Property triggers will not be implemented in Silverlight 2

 Please Check out Laurent's notes on this meeting they are very detailed:
http://geekswithblogs.net/lbugnion/archive/2008/03/06/mix08-session-creating-rich-dynamic-user-interfaces-with-silverlight-2.aspx

Day 1 was unbelievable!!! Packed with announcements, partnerships and code.. code.. code.  This is a truly great experience, without question the BUZZ from day 1 is centering around three hot topics:

1. Silverlight 2 Beta 1 and the fact that this is being used TODAY by Aston Martin and Hard Rock cafe. (http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/)
2. IE 8 and the features baked into it CSS2.1, HTML 5 and WebSlices
3. Deep Zoom(Seadragon) technology built into Silverlight 2 (wow).

Chris Koenig & Scott Hanselman give a nice overview of these topics: 

• Silverlight 2 and IE 8
  http://blogs.msdn.com/chkoenig/archive/2008/03/06/mix-08-keynote-announcements.aspx
• Deep Zoom(Seadragon)
  http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DeepZoomSeadragonSilverlight2MultiScaleImagesAtMix.aspx
• First look at IE8 Activities and WebSlices
  http://visitmix.com/blogs/Joshua/IE8-Activities-With-Jane-Kim/

I highly recommend checking these blogs above as well as www.VisitMix.com.  For all the latest and greatest of MIX08.

This weekend I attended an awesome event in Dallas, TX, the Community Leader Summit.  Soon to become CommunityCamp.  Thanks Caleb for organizing this event.  There were user groups there represented by a huge cross section of the user community.  Everything from .NET to Podcasting, and Joomla. 

It was very interesting to see that even though our groups are focused on different technologies that we all struggle with the same things.  And it was great to see how other groups has solved them.

I am sure the next CommunityCamp will be even better as we dive deeper into how to solve these problems and get to making our groups thrive and grow.