August Newsletter

23 August, 2009 by Colin Angus Mackay Leave a Comment

Welcome

I’m not sure where the summer went, one moment it was lovely and sunny the next it felt like it had been raining forever. It took two days for my shoes to dry out after walking home in Thursday’s downpour. However that’s not stopped up, we’ve been working hard to get new events lined up for the latter half of the year.

First, I’d like to welcome Andy Gibson to the team. Andy is our new convenor in Tayside and will also be working on our website. Andy role is to arrange events in the Tayside area, so we hope to put events on in Perth as well as Dundee in the future.

We also hope to bring you more details of other events that may be of interest to software developers in Scotland, not just the ones we arrange. If you know of any events please get in touch at [email protected].

If you are interested in software testing the BCS (British Computer Society) have an event by their Software Testing SIG in Edinburgh coming up later this month. Scot ALT.NET will be talking about Inversion of Control  on the 3rd September. For web developers, the Future of Web Development is coming to Glasgow in September. Finally, if the User Experience is an area you are interested in the Glasgow UX Book Club are meeting towards the end of August.

Further afield SQL Bits are holding their 5th Conference, this time in South Wales, on 19th to 21st November. There is also the Goovy and Grails eXchange on 10th December in London.

We are also interested in getting some events running in Aberdeen. If you have any topics you’d like us to get the ball rolling with then please let us know, but more importantly, we’re looking for a venue (preferably free). If you can help with that then please do get in touch at the usual address [email protected].

Finally, if you are artistically creative then look out for a competition we are about to launch to design a new logo. Details will be published on our website in the next few days.

Regards,
Colin Mackay, Chairman, Scottish Developers

Our Upcoming Events

8-September-2009 @ 18:30 in Glasgow
Credit Crunch Code - Time to Pay Back the Technical Debt
Registration Required - Cost FREE

23-September-2009 @ 19:00 in Dundee
When agile goes bad: How to stay calm and move forward
Registration Required - Cost FREE

24-September-2009 @ 19:00 in Edinburgh
An Introduction to OpenRasta, an MVC Framework with strong opinions
Registration Required - Cost FREE

13-October-2009 @ 18:30 in Glasgow
Advanced TDD - An Introduction to Testing Patterns and Behaviour Driven Development
Registration Required - Cost FREE

10-November-2009 @ 18:30 in Glasgow
Web Application Testing with Selenium
Registration Required - Cost FREE

Filed under Newsletter

Inversion of Control

21 August, 2009 by Colin Angus Mackay Leave a Comment

Scot ALT.NET are holing a talk on Inversion of Control on 3rd September in Edinburgh

Inversion of Control is one of the most useful practices in an enterprise developers tool belt and IOC containers can make it the management of these dependencies even easier.

Castle Windsor is one such container that can do a lot more than manage your dependencies. In this we will look at configuring the container, using it in various desktop and web scenarios and other features including facilities and interceptors.

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 Castle Windsor knowledge sharing and discussion.  The event will take place on 3rd of September at 7.30pm at ScottLogic, 17 Gayfield Square Edinburgh EH1 3NX.

Speaker

Colin Gemmell 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.

You can find more information and sign up here.

Filed under Third party events

Ann: Groovy & Grails eXchange

20 August, 2009 by Colin Angus Mackay Leave a Comment

We received an announcement from the Groovy & Grails eXchange that we thought you may be interested in:

Following on from the success in previous years this years Groovy & Grails conference will bring together the leading innovators in the Groovy & Grails community, including Guillaume Laforge and Graeme Rocher, the leads on Groovy and Grails projects respectively, for an informal day of deep technical insight and friendly discussion.

The aim of the Groovy & Grails eXchange is to promote awareness and adoption of innovative ideas and technologies for enterprise JEE development with Groovy and Grails.

With Groovy Project Lead Guillaume LaForge and Grails Project Lead Graeme Rocher providing the conference keynotes, 5 expert talks and two Parkbench sessions, the programme is structured to encourage discussion and bring together the leading thinkers and passionate members of the UK JEE, Groovy & Grails community. With a maximum number of 125 delegates, we aim to provide an informal and intimate environment where you can share experience, demonstrate new ideas and techniques, talk to the experts and generally have lots of fun.

Russ Miles has kindly agreed to be the Programme Lead, and is currently working with Guillaume LaForge, Graeme Rocher, Hans Dockter, Burt Beck and other leading experts on an interesting and exciting set of talks!

Groovy & Grails eXchange website

http://skillsmatter.com/event/java-jee/groovy-grails-exchange-2009/wd-188

Register today - Tickets just £50

To event aims to provide a real opportunity to share ideas, learn and discuss, so we have limited the number of delegates to 125 only. There is also an /Early Bird Discount of nearly 75% if you book on or before September 10th/, so if you would like to join us, get your skates on and register today!

Sponsorship

There are a variety of sponsorship packages available for organisations that wish to reach this audience. For further details about sponsorship packages, please contact Skills Matter’s Community Manager Natalie Gray.

Filed under Third Party Announcement, Third party events

Web Application Testing With Selenium

16 August, 2009 by Colin Angus Mackay 3 Comments

When/Where

Glasgow on 10th November at 18:30

The Talk

Testing is a fundamental part of the development process regardless of how you approach it however GUI’s have always been trickier to test and web based UI’s are some of the hardest. JavaScript, AJAX and browser compatibility are all things that make web UI functionality quite difficult and time consuming to test. Enter Selenium, a web application testing framework which makes the creation and automation of complex web user interface tests a joy.

This session will introduce you to Selenium and explain the core features of the framework before showing you, through live ASP.NET MVC demonstrations, how it can be harnessed in your own web development.

The Speaker

Andy Gibson is an Information Systems Developer for Rockstar North with a background in web application development including ASP.NET MVC, PHP and jQuery. He is always on the lookout for new technologies to play with and loves to learn what he can about things especially in the web development arena.

Keen to give back to the community, Andy has spoken at a number of community events including Developer! Developer! Developer! Scotland and is currently the Tayside Events Coordinator for Scottish Developers.

In his spare time (not that he has much), Andy enjoys table top wargamming, keeping up with the computer gaming industry and drinking malt scotch.

The Venue

We are meeting in Room M402 on the 4th Floor of the George Moore Building at Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow, G4 0BA

Filed under Events

An introduction to OpenRasta, an MVC framework with strong opinions

12 August, 2009 by Colin Angus Mackay 1 Comment

When/Where

Edinburgh: Thursday 24th September, 2009 at 19:00

The Talk

Everybody seems to rediscover the MVC model, and new frameworks seem to appear all the time. Most of those hide the richness of the web. Come discover OpenRasta, a very opinionated framework that help you write MVC-style web applications and data services, using a unified API.

The Speaker

Sebastien Lambla runs Caffeine IT, a .net consultancy / contracting company helping the good people of London adopt new technologies, new processes, new methodologies and in general anything that’s new and shiny. Specializing in cutting-edge tools, from REST architectures to occasionally connected rich clients, Sebastien has been developing with .net since 2000. An out and proud restafarian, Sebastien is the creator and maintainer of the OpenRasta project.

The Venue

We are meeting at the offices of Sinclair Knight Merz, 160 Dundee Street, Edinburgh, EH11 1DQ

Filed under Events

When agile goes bad: How to stay calm and move forward

12 August, 2009 by Colin Angus Mackay 1 Comment

When

Dundee: Wednesday, 23rd September, 2009 @ 19:00

The Talk

With applying agile methodologies comes changes in many aspects of delivering software. And with any change will come a time when something fails. How to convince the undecided? How to keep everyone calm? How to provide practical solutions to prevent people from reverting back to non-agile practices at the first roadblock? Through examples gathered from personal experience and the community, we’ll explore ways to prevent the boat from sinking at the first spilled glass of water.

The Speaker

Sebastien Lambla is a developer passionate about all things agile. Through years of facilitating the move to agility, be it Scrum, Lean or XP, Sebastien has helped teams deliver better software. A seasoned speaker, Sebastien also delivers training sessions in Europe, and organizes the local alt.net events in London, a community focused on self-improvement.

A developer at heart, Sebastien has created Caffeine IT, an consulting and contracting company specializing in Microsoft technologies. From REST architectures to rich disconnected clients, Caffeine IT has been helping companies develop their products and empower their teams, with a focus on quality. Caffeine IT is also the main sponsor of the open-source OpenRasta REST framework for Microsoft platforms.

The Venue

We are meeting in the Queen Mother Building at Dundee University. After the meeting we normally retire to the bar at Laing’s.

Filed under Events

Glasgow User Experience Book Club

6 August, 2009 by Colin Angus Mackay 1 Comment

Thursday, August 27th 2009 at 18.30 - 20.30

Hosted by tictoc at their Glasgow studio

The book will be…?

Places at the meeting will be limited to ~12. To be notified when tickets are released get in touch with andybright AT gmail.com (or @pocopina) and register your interest.

Book suggestions

 For more information go to the UX Book club website.

Filed under Third party events