Events

SQL Injection Attack Talk in Nuneaton

Colin Angus Mackay — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:18:47 GMT

I’ll be speaking to VBUG in Nuneaton on the 12th January 2010 on the subject of SQL Injection Attacks and Tips on How to Prevent Them.

More details on this event can be found on the VBUG website.

Barcamp Blackpool

Colin Angus Mackay — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:53:21 GMT

This just in:

I wanted to let you know of an event we’re involved in on October 17^th in Blackpool. The event is great for professionals in any field, start-ups and freelancers as it will help them network and explore ideas in an open friendly environment.

I love Barcamps, they’re great fun and you get to learn and relax at the same time.

If you’ve never been to Blackpool, take the day out – come up (or down) and enjoy the event! Blackpool is seriously good fun and we guarantee you’ll meet some of the friendliest people in England right here in Lancashire.

Fish and chips, the illuminations, kiss me quick hats, Blackpool Rock, and of course the pleasure beach! It’s like Las Vegas – but without any money, and more chavs ;-)

WHAT IS BARCAMP?

As an “unconference” there are no scheduled speakers or activities. The attendees are the speakers. At the beginning of the day, attendees are invited to take ownership of a session (3 ~30min sessions run at the same time continually through the day) by putting their name and session title in a time and room slot on a whiteboard. Sessions can be anything the attendee wants: a talk, a demo, presentation, a game… absolutely anything and about anything, it doesn’t have to be technical. The Barcamp provides the space and the facilities, the attendees provide the format. Attendees use the whiteboard to decide which talks to attend.

REGISTER FOR FREE

http://bcblackpool.eventbrite.com/

LEARN MORE

http://barcampblackpool.com/

Scot ALT.NET: An Evening of O/RM

Colin Angus Mackay — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:28:24 GMT

O/RMs help us bridge the gap between the database and the code base we love to write. On the night we will be looking at two O/RMs, NHibernate the most mature O/RM in the Alt.Net space and Microsoft's recently released Enitiy Framework, the young pretender to the O/RM thrown.

ScottLogic, a leading financial software and consultancy company based in Edinburgh, have been kind enough to offer the use of their premises for an evening of O/RM knowlege sharing and dicussion. The event will take place on 2nd of July at 7pm, 17 Gayfield Square Edinburgh EH1 3NX. All are welcome!

The agenda

19:00 – 19:30 Paul Cowan - An Introuction to NHibernate
19:30 – 20:00 Chris Canal - FluentNHibernate in 15 minutes
20:00 - 20:10 Break
20:10 – 20:40 Colin Gemmell - NHibernate vs Entity Framework - which is best?

After the meeting we will retire for a beer and some heated discussion. If you are planning to attend, please let us know by registering at the Scot Alt.Net Edinburgh EventBrite page (http://altdotnetedinburgh.eventbrite.com/).

About the speakers

Paul Cowan has recently started his own business Cutting-Edge Solutions. He is a keen advocate of iterative development, test driven development, continuous integration and modern techniques. Paul is a regular committer to the horn open source project. He recently gave a presentation on horn at the Dsl DevCon at Microsoft in Seattle. You can follow his blog here.

Chris Canal has worked at a Web Developer for the past 7 years. Starting with procedural languages like ASP and PHP, he quickly moved onto the .NET Platform when first released. A great believer is continual–improvement, Chris is constantly looking for new technologies, tools and methodologies that will help in creating robust and maintainable software applications. Having felt the pain of using Microsoft "Demoware", Chris has become an active member of the Scottish Alt.Net Community to share his findings and ideas with like-minded developers.

Colin Gemmel is a Web/Application Developer working in the Medical Faculty of Glasgow University for the past 3 years. An avid follower of agile principles and practices he is always happy to pass on his views of software development to anyone that will listen. Colin is also a regular participant of the Scottish Alt.Net Community

http://scotalt.net/blog/2009/06/11/an-evening-of-orm/
http://www.scottlogic.co.uk/contact_info
http://altdotnetedinburgh.eventbrite.com/
http://groups.google.com/group/scotaltnet

Developer Day Scotland 2009

Colin Angus Mackay — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:24:10 GMT

There is less than 2 weeks until Developer Day Scotland 2009. There are still a few places left so if you haven’t got one, now is your chance. If you’re still not sure then read on.

Developer Developer Developer events are founded on a number of principles which I think makes it unique and well worth a single day of your time once a year.

DDD events are free. It doesn’t cost you anything to attend. Think of any large conference that you might like to go along to. They costs hundreds of pounds, if not more. Sure, we might not have all the bells and whistles of a big fancy conference, but at the end of the day what do you want out of an event like that? Do you want the glitz and schmaltz or do you want to learn something new?

Speakers from the community. We invite people that have something to say, a story to tell, or an experience to learn from. This year we had 84 session submissions from all sorts of folks and on all sorts of subjects. The majority of these people are real day-to-day software developers or DBAs that actually work for a living.

DDD events are democratic. All the sessions are voted in by the community, so we only put on what people have asked to see. This year the 84 sessions were whittled down to 20. We have 5 database sessions all lined up so if you are a DBA or database developer you won’t miss anything. We also have a route through the agenda for Web Developers. We also have sessions on languages (dynamic and functional languages as well as what’s coming soon in C#), processes and tools (such as scrum, virtualisation, TDD and refactoring) and architecture & patterns (such as MVC, MVVM and AOP)

No Marketing BS. The core philosophy for the sessions are that they contain useful information. Stuff that you can either take back and start using the next day or (if not yet available) to start planning how to move to that technology.

To paraphrase the Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, Developer Day Scotland is of the developer community, by the developer community and for the developer community.

Upcoming events

Colin Angus Mackay — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:56:05 GMT

There are a lot of upcoming events that you may be interested in. I’ve been putting posts on the Scottish Developers site as I get told about them and there have been a fair few this week. So, here’s a quick round up in chronological order:

2nd May: Developer Day Scotland 2009 takes place at the Continuing Professional Development Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University.
6th May: UX Book Club meets in Glasgow to discuss Designing for the Social Web.
7th May: Scottish ALT.NET group meet in Glasgow.
12th May: An Insight into Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Magic at Glasgow Caledonian University.
14th May: Girl Geek Scotland has its launch event with a Girl Geek Dinner in Edinburgh.

Update

Colin Angus Mackay — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:39:02 GMT

If you follow my blog on a regular basis you'll have noticed the entries fall off over the last couple of months. That's because I'm currently heavily involved in organising Developer Day Scotland on the 2nd May. (By the way, delegate registration is now open. As of writing we are about two thirds full so there are still a few places left)

All this organising is taking most of my time at the moment but I promise that there will be more technical posts coming soon. Hopefully in the areas of ASP.NET MVC, C# 4.0 and enterprise web applications.

Scottish Developers March Newsletter is out. It details all the upcoming events that we have in the works.

Scottish Developers February Newsletter

Colin Angus Mackay — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:31:26 GMT

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.

It's community conference season

Colin Angus Mackay — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:57:19 GMT

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)

DDD Belfast - Call for Speakers open

Colin Angus Mackay — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:06:17 GMT

DDD Belfast has opened its call for speakers. So, if you'd like to present in Belfast on the 4th April then get submitting. Be warned - They want photos!

Attendees Map

Colin Angus Mackay — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 15:15:05 GMT

At Scottish Developers we ask for a partial postcode on our feedback forms to get an idea of how far people travel to get to our events. We've not really done an awful lot with this information so far, but with last Thursday's event on ASP.NET MVC (held at Microsoft's Edinburgh Office) getting our biggest turnout so far (49 people for an evening event) I thought it would be interesting to map out where these folk came from. Actually, while I was going through the feedback I got a feeling that many people travelled through from the west and that does seem to be true as you can see by the map. Kudos to the person who travelled from about half way up Loch Lomond - that was some trek.

And, in response to the person who wrote for event dislikes "Location: GLASGOW please" we do run lots of events in Glasgow, we've run many events in Glasgow and will continue to do so. We've run 8 events in Glasgow so far this year (9 if you include our conference, Developer Day Scotland) in comparison to just 2 in Edinburgh. We can see from the map that there were many people travelling from Glasgow to the ASP.NET MVC event and we are putting on many more events in Glasgow too. For the folk in Edinburgh who've been left without many events so far this year, rest assured that we are trying to remedy that and that next year we aim to put many more events on in Edinburgh - And if you know of a venue that we can use then please let me know.