The major event that took place in March was the official 2008 launch event in Birmingham. Andy and several of our VBUG co-ordinators were there to support the community part of the event as well as promoting the activities of VBUG. This was a full 2 day event and during that time, Andy worked with Craig Murphy to produce several podcasts which include interviews with the Microsoft Executives. These will soon be released so keep an eye out on the VBUG website!

For those who couldn't make it to this launch, we'll be running several mini events throughout the UK. During these events, we'll be giving out prizes which will include full release versions of the 2008 software. Some dates to keep in mind are as follows:

VBUG Brighton: Tue 8 April
VBUG Bracknell: Tue 13 May
VBUG Bristol: Wed 21 May 2008

Last month in London , we were very lucky to have Fritz Onion present a session on SilverLight. This was a sell-out event attracting over 70 attendees. If you couldn't make it, the demos can be downloaded here:
http://pluralsight.com/blogs/fritz/archive/2008/03/12/50458.aspx

On the 24th April, we'll be running a full 1 day mini-conference in Birmingham which includes a great lineup of speakers. If you want to register, there are still places available and both myself and Andy will be there. The cost to VBUG members is just £119.

In May, there will be DDD events in both Ireland and Scotland. These are free developer events held on a Saturday and I would strongly recommend going along if you have time.

The event in Ireland takes place on the 3rd May and in Scotland, it takes place on the 10th May. For further details, visit: http://developerdayscotland.com/ and http://www.dddireland.com/ for further details.

Finally, one of the benefits of VBUG membership is reduced rate software . If you need copies of 2008 products for development purposes, contact us for more details on MSDN subscriptions.

January 2008

Welcome to the first Newsletter of 2008! Both Andy and myself wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.

The big news this month is the start of our new region in Peterborough. The first meeting takes place on the 30th January and the response for this has been fantastic. Andy will be present at this meeting so come and say hello if you happen to be attending! Jyoti Majithia is our new co-ordinator and we wish her the best of luck in building up the developer community in the Peterborough area.

The official Microsoft launch for Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008 will take place at the ICC in Birmingham in March. To register, visit the following link http://www.microsoft.com/uk/heroeshappenhere/events/itdev.mspx. We realise that many of you will be unable to attend so we'll be organising Mini Launch events throughout many of our other regions. Keep an eye on the VBUG website for further details to come.

Over the New Year, Andy has been working hard on producing our first podcast. This is now available for download on the website (http://www.vbug.com/MP3-Interviews/Podcasts.aspx) and we hope to be producing more in the near future!

In other community news, SQL Bits 2 takes place in March and session voting is now open. SQL Bits is a free conference covering 20 sessions on all aspects of SQL Server. The actual content is selected through a voting process and more details can be found here http://www.sqlbits.com

For those further up north, DeveloperDay Scotland takes place on Saturday 10th May and this will be familiar to those who have attended the DDD events down in Reading. The organisers are keen for more session submissions so visit http://www.developerdayscotland.com if you fancy speaking.

Incidentally, we're always looking for members to be more involved. If you have any thoughts on presentations that you would like to hear or if you want to do presentation yourself, do feel free to get in touch with us. We do want to hear from you and we do listen to all comments that are made to us.

Finally, our events co-ordinator Emma Britton will be leaving at the end of the month. Emma has played a valuable role during her time at VBUG and will be sadly missed. We wish her all the best in the future.

Chairman and Vice Chairman Newsletter - End of 2007

It's been a while since we wrote a newsletter and this purely down to how much has been going on both technically and personally at this time of year. What seems like a long time ago back in October we had a very successful Annual Conference held at Microsoft's Reading Campus. We had an excellent lineup and the content of the two days was excellent and this has been reflected in the feedback we have received.

In November both Tim and I went out to Barcelona, for Tech Ed Developers, Microsoft's premier event for developers in the EMEA Region. This was a very useful week both in terms of making new contacts and picking up more knowledge with the number of sessions which we attended. You can read more of Tim's notes from the week at Tech Ed at http://www.vbug.com/newsletters/teched07.aspx and my notes on my blog at http://www.andrewwestgarth.co.uk/Blog.

The last event of the year for us was Developer Developer Day 6 at Microsoft's UK Campus in Reading on Saturday 24th November. These are great days and well worth making the trip to attend (indeed it's roughly a 600 mile round trip from my home in the North East!) I hope that any of you that attended enjoyed the day and for those who didn't, have never been to a DDD, or did not make the registration why not register for the RSS Feed and keep an eye on the event site at http://www.developerday.co.uk

Announcements

In February 2008 Carl Davies will be cycling 230 miles across Cuba to raise money for Computer Aid International. Computer Aid International, whose strap line is 'Give Children a Chance', provides computers to schools and charitable organisations in developing countries. They are working to give children the opportunities we take for granted. Computer skills are just as important in developing countries as they are in the UK. Children who have received computer training are better placed to secure jobs that will allow them to provide for their families.

Computer Aid also provides computers to Health Services to allow people to train for nurse qualifications online. This means people can continue to work while they train. The computers can also be used to update the skills of existing nurses. This touches the lives of many people in developing countries. If you are interesting in donating to this great cause please visit www.justgiving.com/carloscyclescuba

Free Linq Training

I've recently been looking at using LINQ with the IIS7 APIs and we have details of a free LINQ Training offer for you:

If you’re ready to make the link to LINQ, then check out this free learning offer from InnerWorkings. You get 1 hour of hands-on training where you’ll learn to generate strongly typed LINQ to SQL data context and entity classes to retrieve data. You’ll also learn to create, retrieve, update, and delete (CRUD) database data through a LINQ to SQL data context.
It’s all practice-based, fully integrated with Visual Studio, and best of all, 100% free! As an added bonus for VBUG members, there’s also a 10% discount off the full range of .NET learning in the InnerWorkings catalog. So why not register now and get started today!

MSDN Subscriptions - Grab the discounts before they're withdrawn!

Christian has asked us to remind anyone interested in MSDN subscriptions that the Microsoft applied discounts (15%) will be withdrawn before Christmas. This extra discount is only on the Visual Studio Professional with MSDN Professional and MSDN Premium levels.
If you are thinking about signing up to MSDN, or may want to renew early to benefit from these cost savings, please call Christian on 01753 649 680.

Don’t forget that MSDN subscribers already have access to VS2008 and the 3.5 framework; they will also be the first developers to access SQL 2008 and the new Windows Server!

Competitions

INETA Europe, is running an European Silverlight Competition. The competition is open now and runs until January 2th 2008.

How to enter? Easy. Create a .Net Component or Application using Silverlight and release it through an Open Source license (MS-PL) so INETA User Groups, Communities, Developers and Designers can use it on their own sites.

Each participating country will select a winnder and then an European Silverlight Challenge winner will be drawn among the winners of the participating countries.

Entries will be awarded marks in the following four areas: Originality, Software Technique, Design and Utilisation.

Take part and tkae on the challenge and you could win amazing prizes with a market value close to €150,000

For more information on the UK Competition go to http://www.silverlightchallenge.eu and for more information on the whole competition go to http://www.silverlightchallenge.eu

Forthcoming Events

The new year sees a number of new events for VBUG Members and the UK Developer Community. Make sure you subscribe to the events rss feed, keep an eye on the events page, or if you're using Twitter to maintain contact why not follow VBUG's news and events updates.

In the new year we are starting a new region in Peterborough, and I hope to attend the first meeting there to lend my support to the coordinator and developers of this great new region. Also We are looking at putting on a great number of in person and online events details of which are being confirmed right now.

SQL Bits II the SQL - Saturday 1st March 2008

Tony Rogerson has just sent the details through regarding the opening on speaker session submissions for the second SQL Bits event, this time held in Birmingham on Saturday 1st March 2008. This is another great community event, it's free, it's on a Saturday and if SQL is your bag then I recommend attendance. Even better if you feel like speaking why not submit a session?

"The October SQL Bits was a resounding success, we had 321 delegates on the day and feedback was brilliant, hot on the success of that conference we have started the planning for the next SQL Bits conference which will be held at the Lakeside Conference Centre in Birmingham on 1st March 2008.

We are looking for sessions that cover any topic related to SQL Server, Database Administration like Design, High Availability, Tuning etc.., Development like coding (application, CLR etc..), Business Intelligence - “ SSAS, SSIS, SSRS etc...“ Basically anything you think relevant and would interest the general SQL professional using SQL Server whether full or part time.

Please submit your sessions to http://www.sqlbits.com/information/sessionsubmission.aspx, any problems or questions please email me tonyrogerson@torver.net and I'll do my best to answer.

Sessions are 60 minutes; although we can split the sessions up into multiples if you feel you only want to do part of that time.
The deadline for session submission is 25th December so get your session proposals in quickly!"

Developer Day Scotland - Saturday May 10th 2008

Developer Day Scotland has been announced for Saturday May 10th 2008. This is the first event to be arranged based on the DDD format, but in another part of the UK. DDS will be held in Glasgow on Saturday May 10th 2008 and will again be a free event with two tracks with a capacity of 120 attendees. Speaker session submission is now open and the organisers are also looking for sponsors too. Anyone who is the North East and West of England if you haven't been to DDD in Reading I recommend you put the date in your diary and keep and eye on the DDS website as this is shaping up to being a great event and well worth attending - http://www.developerdayscotland.com . I personally am planning on proposing a couple of sessions for selection and will also be hoping to attend even if not speaking so see you there. Support this great event!

Office Closure for Christmas

The VBUG Offices will be closed from lunchtime on the 24th December till the 2nd January 2008.

On behalf of Tim, Christian, Emma, Cheryl, Our Regional Coordinators and I, may I take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. All the best for 2008!

September 2007

Welcome to the second instalment of the VBUG Chairman newsletters. Both Andy and I have been settling into our new roles and it's been a busy month for the two of us.

The annual conference is almost here and we've both been involved in the preparations. The lunchtime groktalk sessions have now been finalised and we have some excellent content. You can find out more about it here. We will also be putting together a prize giving contest so keep an eye out on the VBUG website!

As mentioned earlier by Andy, part of our strategy is to invest more into our website and we've now made a start on creating our meeting resources section. Slides and source code for some of previous meetings can now be found here:

http://www.vbug.com/members/pastevents.aspx

Over the next few months, we'll be building up the website even further. We've also now ordered VBUG branded clothing to make our Regional co-ordinators more visible.

In other news, both of us will be representing VBUG at the TechEd conference in November. We'll be supporting the community by assisting at the Ineta stand and feeding back content to our members. If any VBUG members are attending, make sure to get in touch with us!

For those unable to make it to Barcelona, DeveloperDay (DDD6) has now been announced for Saturday 24th November 2007. For those unaware of DDD, it's a free developer event held at Microsoft in Reading. In the past, places have filled up fast so make sure to keep an eye out at http://www.developerday.co.uk/

Finally, we hope to see you soon - either at the Conference or at a local regional VBUG event.

August 2007

Hello, and welcome to the first of many new articles and features which will appear on the VBUG Website over the coming weeks and months. Tim and I felt that we should produce a monthly column on what has been going on within VBUG and what is on the horizon in the forthcoming month or two

Since being elected at the beginning of August, Tim and I have been extremely busy getting to grips with the tasks at hand, understanding the issues, gathering ideas and putting together plans on what we would like to accomplish for and with VBUG over initially the first six to twelve months. We hope to inform all members of the work being done within VBUG over the coming months through this and other articles.

August as usual is a quiet month as far as local support meetings are concerned as the majority of members are spending time with families and friends and taking some well earned holiday time. Within VBUG however the work never ceases and this month has seen the launch of the first stage of the new VBUG website, the finalisation of details of the agenda, format and pricing of the annual conference in October, and the planning of local support meetings for the remainder of the year.

We are very pleased with the release of the new site and hope that with subsequent stages the site becomes a useful tool for all members and we hope to populate it with some interesting, regular and exciting content, some exclusively for members. We would like to take this opportunity to invite members to write articles for the VBUG Website and we will publish these for you, please email your articles to info@vbug.co.uk

We are into September now and there are a number of great events running in our regions and we are all constantly looking to secure the best speakers and topics for the regions. If you have a need/desire to see a topic covered in your region, why not mention it on your feedback forms or directly to your local coordinator, they will then be able to hopefully secure relevant topics for you. After all it’s your group and without your input we don’t know what topics you would like to see covered.

We also have a great selection of online meetings planned including “What’s new in VB9” which is being delivered by Beth Massi, a member of the VB Product Team. We are keen to secure many more great topics and speakers in the coming months.

We also hope to soon be able to announce a Members only downloads area whereby you can download past online meeting recordings.

Annual Conference

In October, once again, we have our Annual Conference, held at Microsoft’s UK Campus in Reading. This is the 10th year in which we have had an Annual Conference and once again a great variety of excellent and high quality sessions and speakers have been arranged for the two day event. The conference is held on Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th October 2007, the rates for attendance are:

• Member £199.00 ex VAT
• Non-Member £299.00 ex VAT

Yes, Members that’s a massive saving of £100! For more information, view the conference brochure and to register visit the Conference 2007 pages on the VBUG Site. We look forward to seeing many of you there for what looks to be building up to another excellent conference.
Do note that the above rates are the Early Bird prices, which will be closing off in the very near future!

Upcoming Events

We would like to take this opportunity to highlight a few other events which will be occurring over the coming months and of which we feel you might like to take note.

MIX:UK 07 – The registrations for MIX are now full, however there is set to be a full virtual side to the event and sessions are to be posted online - http://www.microsoft.com/uk/mix07/

SQL Bits - The SQL Community are having their first Community conference on Saturday 6th October 2007 at Microsoft's Reading Campus. There will be 20 sessions in 4 tracks (BI, DBA, Development and Katmai) all at a cost of £0.00 - yes that’s right, nothing - it's FREE!! Registration is open now however registration is filling quickly and there's only room for 350 people.
Register on the SQL Bits site and then select 10 sessions you would most like to see, Tim Leung, VBUG Vice Chairman has a session proposed - "Getting Started with SQL Server Reporting Services". There are many great sessions there so if SQL is your bag, get yourself registered and get along to what looks to be a great event. By voting you are helping to shape the conference agenda. After voting you will receive the conference registration URL. To register go to http://www.sqlbits.com/information/PublicSessions.aspx

Tech Ed Europe Developers (5th-9th November) and IT Forum (12th-16th November) in Barcelona - This annual event is Microsoft’s premier Developer and IT Pro event in Europe! Attendees from many nationalities attend this excellent event, with a pick of the top presenters and topics. This month, September, also sees the end of the Early Bird offer price of €1945(+16% VAT) for registrations, from the 29th September that price rises to €2245(+16% VAT). This is an excellent event and if you have the opportunity to attend it is very much worth the expense.
Tech Ed Developers - http://www.microsoft.com/europe/teched-developers/
Tech Ed IT Forum - http://www.microsoft.com/europe/teched-itforum/

We look forward to meeting many of you at future support meetings, the annual conference and at other community events. If you have any issues you would like us to deal with, ideas for the site or for VBUG please send them through to us.

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