Julie Lerman visits Scotland.

Hello!

The Scottish Developers team have an exciting announcement, we have a special guest joining us for 2 events across east and west coasts: Julie Lerman.

We have partnered with Experis and are pleased to have them support Julie Lerman’s mini-tour of Scotland.  In her presentations in Glasgow and Edinburgh, she will be sharing her latest insights on EF core as well as architectural guidance around dealing with data in the context of modern web development on the .Net stack

About Julie

Julie Lerman is a Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft MVP (since 2003), software coach and consultant. You can find Julie presenting at conferences around the world on Entity Framework, Domain Driven Design and whatever other technologies catch her eye. Julie blogs at thedatafarm.com/blog, is the author of the highly acclaimed “Programming Entity Framework” books, the MSDN Magazine Data Points column and popular videos on Pluralsight.com.

Glasgow: May 16th - @ Glasgow Caledonian University

Mapping DDD Domain Types with EF Core

Entity Framework half-heartedly supported DDD patterns. But the new-from-scratch EF Core has brought new hope for DDD practitioners to map your well-designed domain classes to a database, reducing the cases where a separate data model is needed. EF Core is very DDD friendly, even supporting things like fully encapsulated collections, backing fields and the return of support for value objects. In this hands we’ll review some well-designed aggregates and explore how far EF Core goes to act as the data model between your domain classes and your data store.
Sign up on meetup here

Edinburgh: May 21st -  @ Microsoft, Waverly Gate.

Building Cross-Platform Server-Side Data APIs

Front ends are cool but mostly useless without data. Sure, some of your data sources provide REST APIs so you can just write queries directly against them but that is so old school. Instead, you can build back end APIs that address the specific data needs of your web application and relieve front end devs from tangling with database schema, query syntax and other distractions. In this session you’ll learn the basics of creating a back end API as well as some smart architectural guidance to make moving data between your front end and your data store. We’ll start with an ASP.NET Core Web API, EF Core and a relational database, then look at a data API built with Azure Functions to support a Cosmos DB document database.

Sign up on meetup here

As you can imagine, we are really excited to have Julie visit us here in Scotland and give not one but two talks for the Scottish Developers group. Both events are free to attend thanks to our hosts and sponsors Experis.

We hope to see you all there!

The Scottish Developers Team.

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DDD Scotland: Thank You!

We would just like another opportunity to thank everyone who made DDD Scotland a success: speakers, volunteers, sponsors and of course all of you who attended. We had > 250 attendees on the day, which considering the very rainy Scottish weather we had, is impressive!

We have had some lovely feedback and some things to work on for next year to make it even better. You can still give feedback on the event here and on specific talks here.

In the meantime, let’s remind ourselves of the day with these blogs from the community (if you have blogged but we haven’t included it, let us know and we will add it to the list!):

https://theliddler.site/2018/02/11/ddd-scotland-2018/ - @The_Liddler

https://gregorsuttie.com/2018/02/11/dddscotland-restrospective/ - @gregor_suttie

https://carolelogan.net/blog/developer-diary-ddd-scotland/ - @crgrieve

https://peat.me.uk/2018/02/16/ddd-scotland/ - @RTPeat

http://blog.craigtp.co.uk/post/ddd-scotland-2018-in-review - @craigtptech

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dddscotland-net-talent-blog-darren-dalrymple-1/ - @NetTalent

Some of our speakers have shared their slides online so we thought we would gather them all on one place for you (again, if we have missed any, let us know!):

PWAs- @jmaciver22

https://speakerdeck.com/jamesmaciver/progressive-web-apps-ddd-scotland-2018

https://github.com/jamesmaciver/dddscot-demo

Accessibility in Modern Web Apps- @stuartashworth9

http://www.stuartashworth.com/ddd/accessibility-in-modern-web-applications.pdf

http://www.stuartashworth.com/ddd-transcript/accessibility-in-modern-web-applications-transcript.pdf

Leveling up to become a tech lead

https://speakerdeck.com/tourismgeek/levelling-up-to-become-a-technical-lead

Teaching an old dog new tricks- @ismailmayat

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1p4UU6t0dn8J0dIsTqK1b5UyyAOSN_o_KSEnXN6HxD6c/edit#slide=id.g258d29308c_0_0

Adding a layer of chocolate(y) - @gep13

https://gitpitch.com/gep13/ChocolateyDemos/dddscot#/

Writing Simpler ASP .Net Core - @jchannon

https://github.com/jchannon/t1000

ReactJS and Friends- @paulaik

http://ddd18.paulaikman.co.uk/#/

APIs on the scale of decades- @garyfleming

https://github.com/garyfleming/apis-for-decades/releases/tag/v0.3

Interactive C# Development- @filip_woj

http://filipw.github.io/dddscotland-2018/#/

Thanks again to everyone for contributing on the day, looking forward to seeing you all at our upcoming Scottish Developers events, and of course DDD Scotland next year!

Carole, Andrew and Christos.

(The Scottish Developers Team)

DDD Scotland: Useful Information

It’s nearly time for DDD Scotland and we are really looking forward to seeing this event come to life!We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our sponsors and supporters, without all the funding and spreading the word of this event this wouldn’t be happening.

ddds-unicorn-side-284-086

Here is the plan for the day, let us know if you have any questions.  Just get in touch via [email protected]

Getting there

Our hosts at UWS have this useful guide on finding the campus:

https://www.uws.ac.uk/university-life/campuses/paisley-campus/travelling-to-paisley-campus/

If travelling from Glasgow there are trains often from Glasgow Central to Paisley Gilmour Street. Looks like there are these timings on Saturday morning: 8am, 8.05am, 8.25am, taking about 1-15 minutes… you may even bump in to some developer friends on the way to DDD!

There is limited parking space availability at the university and it’s first come first served.

On arrival

When you arrive, please make your way to the registration table and let us know you are here. There will be tea, coffee and breakfast snacks (thanks to Streamba) to help us wake up and get ready for a day of learning.

Throughout the day

We will be kicking off at 9.15am with introductions and announcements so please try to be on time to get all the news.

We have talks and panels scheduled all day with enough time between to get a drink, have a quick break and make your way to next talk. Check out the schedule here.

If you don’t fancy any of the scheduled talks for a given time slot, head over to our community room and check out what’s happening.

We will have room monitors and volunteers available throughout the day, let us know if we can help at all. Or even just say hello, we are really looking forward to meeting you all!

12:30 to 13: 30

We have been able to supply lunch and afternoon coffee thanks to our platinum partners Arnold Clark and Screenmedia. If you would like to head out to the local area, that’s fine too. Please try to be back for 13:30 so we can get started again for the afternoon sessions.

15:15 to 15:30

Time for a quick coffee break between sessions thanks to Endjin!

17:30

Join us for thank yous, prizes and goodbyes!

Prizes

We have been gifted some awesome prizes from generous companies: books, licences, tickets and devices! We will distribute some of these throughout the day but make sure you stay til the end of the day for the prize giving!

Spread the word

Remember to tweet, Instagram, Facebook, blog about us, it will let us get the word out and make the event even better in years to come. Use #dddScotland and tag us.

@scottishdevs

@dddscot

Facebook: Scottish Developers

LinkedIn: Scottish Developers

 

Thanks,

Carole, Andrew and Christos

(The Scottish Developers Team)

 

 

Announcing the DDD Scotland Community Room

Not long to wait until DDD Scotland and we wanted to introduce you to our latest exciting addition, our DDD Scotland community room! This year we wanted to make DDD even more community focused and thought how better to do that than get people talking and giving new speakers the chance to get experience.

The other rooms will be fully booked with back to back talks, the community room will have a mix of sessions and also some unscheduled slots to allow collaboration.

This room will feature:

*Lightning talks are 15 minutes sessions for new speakers or new material from experienced speakers. A great way to test the waters with a friendly crowd!

*Panels

We have 2 panels of experts to discuss their experiences and take questions. These are “My journey as a software developer” and “What makes a graduate software developer employable”. We will keep the panellists secret for now but we think we have a great group that should make for interesting conversations.

Have a question for the “My journey as a software developer” panel? Leave them here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/8V26GKF

*Lean Coffee is an unplanned conversation where the participants suggest and vote for the topics. A great way to learn how others work in their organisation and get to know other developers.

*Mob Programming Taster

Joe will be giving us an introduction to Mob Programming, here is a description for his session:

“All the brilliant people working on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and on the same computer” -Woody Zuill

Everyone working together on one machine, at the same time? That can’t possibly work. Or can it?

Come along to this session, and we’ll spend 45 minutes mobbing. You might find you like it.

*Unscheduled time- we are leaving some sessions unbooked in this room to allow for community conversations and collaboration. You never know, your next job, project or friendship might be made at DDD Scotland!

One of the main aims from Scottish Developers team is to grow our community of developers in Scotland and beyond so this is really exciting for us! We can’t wait til see you all there on the day.

Carole, Andrew and Christos

The Scottish Developers Team

DDD Scotland: Agenda and Tickets Released!

First of all, Happy New Year from the Scottish Developers team! We hope you all have a refreshing break and are ready for an exciting year for Scottish development community. Which leads us to our big announcement…

DDD Scotland agenda has been announced and the tickets are now available here. Tickets are of course, in DDD tradition, free as this is a non profit community driven event. So, come along on Saturday 10th February to UWS campus in Paisley to join us!

As you can see, there is an interesting mix of technologies in our sessions, for example .Net, Javascript, AI, Security and Accessibility. A big thank you everyone who submitted a session and to all who voted, we were amazed by the amount of submissions and the quality of these shows just how great a development community we have here in Scotland.

One addition to the event we are excited about is that as well as our 3 tracks of voted sessions, we have a 4th room for lightning talks and panels. We have 2 panels taking place “Your career as a software developer” and “What makes a graduate software developer employable?” , where we will hear advice from experienced members of the development community. There are slots for 15 minute lightning talks available throughout the day so get in touch with [email protected] if you would like to sign up.

At this stage, we would like to thank all of our sponsors, speakers and volunteers who have made it possible to get this far. Just one month to go now and the team is excited for what is looking to be a great day, we are really looking forward to seeing you all.

Let us know on twitter if you are coming along and what sessions you are looking forward to using #dddScotland

Thanks and see you all soon,

Carole, Christos and Andrew (The Scottish Developers team).

Event: ‘Alexa open seeing eye’ with Jon Carlos

You may have heard recently, we are back and have a new team on board. We have been busy getting settled in and organising DDD Scotland but now the time has come for our first event!

Tuesday 5th December we will be joined by Jon Carlos from Screenmedia who will be sharing his expert knowledge on voice technologies.

Since co-founding award winning digital innovation practice Screenmedia 13 years ago, Jon has lead teams developing cutting edge solutions to keep his clients at the forefront of their fields. With over 18 years of commercial coding experience, he possesses vast technical knowledge of programming tools and services, and is a proactive and influential member of the open source coding community.

An active and curious developer, he can frequently be found experimenting with both hardware and software, translating his innovations into his work. Developing an auto-trading bot that is as functional as the bitcoin revolution, which is an existing crypto robot that facilitates crypto trading for users who are interested in getting started with automated cryptocurrency trading will add a feather to the cap of such hardworking developers. His current focus is bringing machine learning, cognitive services, and natural language understanding to Screenmedia’s roster of global clients to support them in the transition to an AI first world.

In his talk ‘Alexa open seeing eye’,  Jon will be walking us through the creation of an Alexa skill, from planning intents and utterances through to connecting to a visual learning AI. Using C# end-to-end through .NET core and Xamarin, Jon will show how to connect Alexa to complex backend systems, including reading data from Azure and using some of its awesome shortcuts to train an AI. Not only will we have a working Alexa skill by the end of the talk, but we’ll also have trained a visual learning AI to recognise a couple of the Scottish Developers team.

Details:

18.15pm,  Tuesday 5th December.

Hamish Wood Building - Glasgow Caledonian University

Interested? Signup on our meetup page and come along to Glasgow Caledonian Uni on 5th December. We are very excited for our first meetup and look forward to seeing you all there!

DDD Scotland is back!

You read the title correctly, DDD is coming back to Scotland! This is a completely free event where you can both learn from and network with fellow developers.

This is an all-day event taking place on Saturday 10th February 2018 between the hours of 8:30am and 5pm at the Brough Hall, UWS in Paisley (a fifteen-minute journey from Glasgow city centre).

You can expect several different tracks taking place throughout the day including one from a mixture of students and first-time speakers in line with our goals for broadening community participation.

Regardless if you are interested in simply attending or getting your name on the map by submitting your own talk for the other attendees to vote on we’ve got you covered.

This is a great opportunity for developers at all points in their career and we encourage you to participate if you are able and willing.

You can sign up and submit your talks at our website right now so don’t wait around, get the ball rolling! Submissions end on 7th December at 5pm.

Voting will be open to the public on 8th December and closed with the final count being tallied on 22nd December at 5pm.

Expect the final agenda for both tracks to be published sometime on 22nd December.

So what are you waiting for? Get  Saturday 10th February in your diaries and we look forward to seeing you there!

Full details of this event are available at DDD Scotland website or alternatively follow the official DDD Scotland Twitter at @dddscot or us at @scottishdevs for further updates as soon as we have.

Our new star signing!

With plans for our December presentation well underway and DDD Scotland scheduled for early 2018 we’ve decided to give our team a serious boost and are delighted to announce that Carole Logan is joining our team.

Carole is a senior web developer at Equator. Mainly working in the .Net stack after converting from Java, she has an interest in learning new technologies beyond websites such as IOT and voice. An enthusiastic member of the Umbraco community and current Umbraco MVP, Carole also runs the Glasgow Umbraco meetup as well as the Glasgow chapter of Ladies of Code.

Carole’s professional achievements and community contributions were recently recognized via a nomination and subsequent commendation in the Digital Professional of the Year Award, part of the Herald Scottish Digital Business Awards 2017 as well as being one of the winners of the We Are The City, Rising Stars in Technology Awards 2017.

When not coding you will find her long-distance running around Glasgow and baking.

Scottish Developers - A new team and a new vision

Hello everyone! Christos, Andrew and Jason here. We are very proud to announce that we will be the new team behind the Scottish Developers user group. A group with a long tradition of high quality events, excellent speakers and a vibrant community. Our predecessors (I only know Colin so apologies for all the omitted names) have done an excellent job creating a good community and providing continuity throughout the years.

We have big shoes to fill but we have the desire, drive and enthusiasm necessary to carry the torch and hopefully make our community bigger and better. I met some very prominent community members and inspiration speakers through this group. People such as: Scott Gu, Scott Hansleman, Gill Clereen etc. Too many in fact to name here.

Our vision is to make the group bigger and better. All three of us and hopefully you too, our community, wish for Scottish Developers to become a vibrant and exciting space where all technologies, frameworks and disciplines can be discussed. I know that traditionally Scottish Developers have been .NET heavy but I know that Scotland has a very diverse and vibrant ecosystem outside .NET. I’ve met a large number developers in the Java, Node space and some Erlang and Go. Our goal is that we should become more diverse and ideally language and framework agnostic - a bold statement coming from a Microsoft employee, but it’s a new world.

We have something exciting brewing for our first meeting in early October but we can’t announce anything until all the details are locked down and we have everything sorted. In the meantime, I would like to introduce you to your user group organisers and I would invite everyone to reach out with ideas, suggestions and requests that can help us achieve our goals, together

Christos Matskas

christos_profile

Christos Matskas is a software developer, blogger, speaker and all around geek. He currently works at Microsoft as an Azure Premier Field Engineer. Before joining Microsoft, he was a successful entrepreneur and has collaborated with companies such as MarkIT, Lockheed Martin and Barclays. He’s been building software for over 12 years and he’s a passionate Open Source advocate. He contributes regularly to numerous OSS projects and works closely with the community to make the software development space bigger and better.

Andrew De Rozario

AdeRozario

Andrew is a freelance software developer who is currently based in central Scotland.  Before devoting himself to the lifelong commitment to learning and change that is software development, Andrew trained as a classical singer even performing the odd tune in venues across Britain and Germany. Being a crypto enthusiast, He contributed to the growth of the bitcoin rush deutschland platform. Educated through the generosity and openness of the development community Andrew has gone on to work across a variety of sectors from enterprise scale projects to fast-paced agency environments working on projects for companies such as Vodafone, SSE, Taylor Wimpey, Deutsche Bank as well as various public sector and Fin-Tech companies.  Andrew is passionate about most topics to do with the software development industry and enjoys talking, writing about technology, with the odd open source contribution thrown in for good measure.

Jason McCann

COLOUR_SQUARE

A logical thinker with a keen interest in modern technologies. Jason’s progression to software development stems from his passion for video gaming and problem solving. Since graduating from his studies in Video Games Software Development at university, he has worked as a Software Developer for organisations of varying size and has progressed from native Android applications to modern web-app software development. He is inspired by Elon Musk and other forward-thinking entrepreneurs and aspires to create software for the greater good. Presently, Jason works full-time within a large-scale facilities management organisation where he plays a pivotal role in the development of their flagship product.

An exciting new start

Thanks to Colin for trusting me with this role and thanks to Jason and Andrew to work with me on this project. We hope that you’ll give them a warm welcome and we look forward to working with all of you. Watch this space for announcements and upcoming events.