Time : Thu 01-Jan-1970

From : Scottish Developers Core Team

Subject : Scottish Developers: Newsletter: March 2004

Dear Scottish Developer, Welcome to your SDWC March 2004 newsletter. What a year 2004 is turning out to be for ScottishDevelopers.com! Our membership has increased three-fold since the start of the year! That explains why "traffic" on the SDWC has doubled during March alone! Best of all, it explains the hive of activity found on the online forums! Thanks to all of you who are contributing: keep it up! During the Macromedia event a few weeks ago a young developer, Kev aka Knowledge, stood up and asked for people in the Glasgow area to form together into a user group. A crowd of about a dozen developers gathered around Kev in an attempt to get something going. Luckily for all of us Scottish Developers was there: http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=26 You may have noticed that there are now a number of articles and book/product reviews on the site - read on to learn more about these! If you have read a good IT-related book lately, may be you would like to write a review for us? We can help you have your review published on the SDWC...send [email protected] an e-mail! We will welcome your articles too: we can help with the writing process, do contact us! -- FEBUARY 2004 CONFERENCE DAY This was our first full day conference of the year. Read all about it here: http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?cid=14 As usual, the sessions were excellent; Rob Lally gave a particularly interactive session covering test-driven development, refactoring and the remarkable IntelliJ IDE. If you missed this event, do not worry! Rob will be demonstrating the IntelliJ IDE at the next Agile Scotland meeting: http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/agendax/index.php?op=view&id;=18 -- SITE IMPROVEMENTS We are responding to your feedback - ScottishDevelopers.com is under constant review and we are trying to meet all your requirements. Of note, you will now see photographs from previous events are displayed throughout the site. The obvious, but unannounced "caption contest" will no doubt follow! We have been approached by a number of commercial organisations wishing to advertise their services on the SDWC. The core team have drawn up some guidelines for such adverts...we will still remain "not-for-profit", but will use any revenue from advertising to help make SDWC even better. Read about the site improvements here: http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=27 -- INETA NEWS Earlier this year we received some "giveaways" from INETA. We distributed the CodeZine magazine during the Feb 2004 conference day. More "giveaways" are in the post: our next conference day, May 17th in Perth, has a security session where we will give away a laptop tether, a copy of "Writing Secure Code 2" and who knows what else! Be there to stand a chance of winning! All attendees will receive the next issue of CodeZine just for coming along! INETA are planning a "VB.NET tour". It is very early days yet, however we are hoping to join forces with other user groups in Scotland to make Scotland a "must see" on their tour schedule! You can do your bit by sending us an e-mail to: [email protected], subject: "VB.NET Tour gets my vote". We will then use these e-mails to persuade INETA to come to Scotland! -- SCOTTISH DEVELOPERS - OUR EVENTS Scotish Developers next full day conference is in Perth on the 17th of May 2004 at 0930 This meeting will focus on: Security, Design By Contract, ColdFusion/Flash and will include a session covering HyperOS and Dynamic-CD. More details to follow. Group Meeting (8th April 2004, Glasgow, evening) http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/agendax/index.php?op=view&id;=19 -- EVENTS BY OUR FRIENDS eXtreme Programming in Practice by Andy Swan (29th March 2004, Edinburgh, evening) http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/agendax/index.php?op=view&id;=18 Web Services by Colin Adam (31st March 2004, Edinburgh, evening) http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/agendax/index.php?op=view&id;=23 XML Web Services in 60 Minutes by Craig Murphy (1st April 2004, Glasgow, evening) http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/agendax/index.php?op=view&id;=14 The Sidney Michaelson Memorial Lecture (11th April 2004, Edinburgh, afternoon) http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/agendax/index.php?op=view&id;=24 In Search of UTOPIA: Usable Technology for Older People, Inclusive & Appropriate (20th April 2004, daytime) http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/agendax/index.php?op=view&id;=20 Experiences with ADO.NET (23rd April 2004, Aberdeen, evening) http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/agendax/index.php?op=view&id;=21 -- ARTICLES Abdel A Saleh wrote a great article, XP and the Evangelists: http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=9 Barry Carr wrote a great introduction to Smalltalk - A Wee Bleather About Smalltalk is available: http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=5 James Tweedie writes about the Blairgowrie broadband campaign: http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=6 Book Reviews Iain Brockbank reviewed Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck for us, read the review here: http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=7 Barry Carr read a lot of books since the last newsletter. He has been kind enough to review them for us: The Pragmatic Programmer From Journeyman to Master http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/downloads/articles/bookreviews/bookreviewpragmaticprogrammer.pdf Barry read and reviewed a book about the Ruby programming language - this will appear "real soon now"! -- PRODUCT REVIEWS John Cant wrote us a review about HyperOS: Experiences with HyperOS - Running 21 Windows on One Machine http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=11 -- Please, if you have any comments about SDWC, do not just sit there moaning to yourself! Moan to us instead! The only way we can make the site better than it is, is with your contributions. There are ratings mechanisms for articles and reviews in place: please, do rate our content, it will help us improve future offerings! Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter. The Scottish Developers Web Community Team --