Sessions

Session times are 1 hour and 15 minutes long with 10 minutes breaks between talks. It is recommended that your presentation be no longer than 55 minutes leaving plenty of time for Q&A.

Please have your proposed presentation submitted before March 10th, at which time the submission period will be closed and the final schedule prepared.

Submit a session

A telepresence robot you can build in a day

Presenter: Dan Ray
Tags: robot, robotics

A teleprescence robot will be demonstrated as well as steps to build your own. This robotics platform is also ideal for jumping straight to advanced robotics with open source vision and voice recognition software.

Agile Games 2012

Presenter: Jason Dean
Tags: Agile

Come join us to play some Agile games! You'll not only learn about Agile, the roles involved, and some of the basic Scrum and XP techniques, but you'll have fun doing it! Be prepared to roll up your sleeves, meet people, and get involved - you'll be glad you did!

Agile ScrumMastering

Presenter: Jason Dean
Tags: Agile

So you're going to be a ScrumMaster? Come learn about the responsibilities and interactions required of an Agile ScrumMaster. Find out how they work with teams and stakeholders, differences from a Project Manager, how to build and read burndown charts, details of certification, how to be a servant leader and more!

Asp.net MVC Tips and Tricks

Presenter: Bob Clements

Tips and trick for effectively using asp.net mvc.

Being Collaborative (and getting things done)

Presenter: David Spann

Being a collaborative leader requires a clear set of beliefs and disciplined practices to back up those beliefs. If you are a leader who wants people to work together better, deliver results faster, and exceed basic customer satisfaction, you will need to look in the mirror and see how your behaviors compare to the collaborative leader role expectations discussed in this presentation. The key is to create an environment in which others succeed.

Branches and Merges are Bears, Oh My!

Presenter: Craig Berntson
Tags: none

One of the most important tools you have have is a Version Control System (VCS). But while it can be very useful, it can also be very frustrating. It's common to branch your code, but when it comes time to merge, it can be a big problem. In this session, you will learn concepts to avoid branching in the first place and when brancing makes sense. Whether you use a centralized or distributed VCS, you'll see how to apply practices that can make a big impact in managing your VCS.

Build, Migrate, Publish ... Repeat

Presenter: Andrew Hanson

Decrease your time to market by creating repeatable build and deployment processes so you can spend more time writing code and less time deploying changes into production.

Building Interactive Widgets for iBooks Author and the iPad

Presenter: Jim McKeeth

Apple introduced iBooks 2 with support for JavaScript and HTML5 powered interactive widgets. This session provides an overview of iBooks Author - the tool for authoring iBooks, with a focus on JavaScript powered interactive widgets both created with Dashcode and without.

Building Windows 8 Applications with HTML and jQuery

Presenter: Rich Dudley

One of the many new advances in Windows 8 is the ability to create Windows applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. In this session, we'll take a look at the Windows 8 technology stack on which these applications run, how HTML/CSS/JS apps actually run, and discuss the implications of the different ways to utilize third party libraries such as jQuery. We'll then migrate an MVC application which utilizes jQuery into a Metro-style application. By the end of this session, you'll have a solid idea of what it means to have a Metro-style application built with web technologies.

Case Study: An Android App for Managing Jobs on a Cluster

Presenter: Christopher Schance

This session will cover the design of an Android phone application which can be used for managing PBS jobs running on parallel computer clusters. This is a good case study for developing a medium complexity app with performance issues.  Methods of implementation and testing will also be discussed. Presenters: Chris Schance, Amit Jain

Code Katas: Practicing your Craft

Presenter: Mike Clement

One of the key values as part of the Software Craftsmanship movement is to be "skill-centric" and as part of that, practicing our skills as software developers is key! The Code Kata format is a coding exercise that is repeated and perfected. It provides one of many ways to practice the craft of software development. We'll discuss the Code Kata format, introduce a few katas and discuss some other practice formats. I will be guiding the Kata in C# (no previous knowledge necessary though). As this is hands on, to take full advantage of the session have Visual Studio or SharpDevelop installed, NUnit installed (or via NuGet) and an integrated unit test runner (recommend Resharper or NCrunch for VS) or find a pair!

Corona SDK is not only fooling around

Presenter: John Conti
Tags: none

Corona SDK has been a popular platform for mobile gaming. But increasingly this platform for iPhone is spreading, not just across platforms, but also into new application areas for business and education.

Cross Platform Mobile Development with Titanium For Android and IOS

Presenter: Glen Colby

Getting started with Titanium (www.appcelerator.com): Building cross platform mobile apps for Android and IOS

Effective Agile Leadership

Presenter: Jason Dean
Tags: Agile

The Agile Manager Overview class is intended to help prepare managers in Agile environments to understand why agile works and how to effect change. This enables managers to optimize and guide the organization without taking away the benefits of doing Agile in the first place. Managers will learn how Agile practices are enabling Agile Lean principles, the importance of providing an optimum environment for learning and growth, and understanding more about the challenges ahead.

Entity Framework (EF) 101

Presenter: Jack Stephens

I will help you get started with the ADO.NET Entity Framework using Visual Studio Express. EF is Microsoft's ORM for .NET.

Executing Agile Projects

Presenter: Jason Dean
Tags: Agile

We will discuss the basics necessary to setup, run, and successfully deliver Agile projects. We'll look at organizational as well as team practices. This session will be for managers, developers, testers, business owners, or anyone interested in learning about the flow of Agile in development project.

Fitting Microsoft Hadoop into your Enterprise BI Strategy

Presenter: Cindy Gross

What is this Big Data thing and why should you care? Learn about Microsoft's Hadoop connectors, our Hive add-in for Excel, what Pig and Hive are, and more. Big Data is an exciting foray into the world of data previously too big to load and query in an affordable manner. With the new Big Data tools you can expand your BI reach be the hero who helps your company make better business decisions.

Fun with powershell

Presenter: Adam Clark
Tags: none

How to utilize powershell daily. Everything from credentials to chainable cmdlets. Building the foundations for daily use.

Getting started with Backbone.js

Presenter: Jarod Ferguson
Tags: javascript, JSON

This session will cover the basics of building web applications using backbone.js.

HTTP Fundamentals

Presenter: Richard Cirerol
Tags: none

Learn about how browsers and web servers interact with the HTTP protocol. Enhancing your knowledge of the HTTP protocol, enhance your web applications.

I want to start my own company, now what?

Presenter: Shavonna Case
Tags: leadership

Many successful software companies start with one really good idea. However many more really good ideas fail to transform into a successful software company. As with all software development, it is the effort spent on planning and architecting the product that leads to success in the end. We will present some of the challenges involved in starting your own business from paperwork to payroll and everything in-between.

Intro to MonoTouch

Presenter: Paul Aicher
Tags: .net, c#, mobile

This is an introduction to building applications using C# and the MonoTouch framework that will run on iPhone and iPad.

Intro to RavenDB: Forget about it SQL

Presenter: Andrew Hanson

Don't like writing SQL, forget about tables, rows, mappings or complicated data-layers. RavenDB is a document-oriented database you can just dump all your objects into. Queries are amazingly fast and flexible. Learn the basics of the amazingly fast and easy to use native .Net document database RavenDb, http://ravendb.net

Introduction to JQuery

Presenter: Chris Brandsma

This is a general purpose session for getting to know JQuery, JQuery UI, and JQuery Mobile. I will try to cover best practices, usage, performance, and cross-browser concerns. I also encourage you to bring questions.

Introduction to NancyFx

Presenter: Richard Cirerol
Tags: .net

NancyFx is a Sinatra-inspired web framework for .NET. Learn about the super-duper happy path of building a web application.

Introduction to no-sql databases

Presenter: Jim Hoffman

No-SQL databases have been the talk of the industry for a couple of years now, but what is it. No-SQL offers a different way of looking at data than many of us are use to. I will introduce the key concepts of No-SQL with examples in Cassandra. Along with these concepts I hope to give you an idea of when to use a No-SQL database and where it is not a good fit.

JavaScript & JQuery 101 for Dynamic Websites

Presenter: Clint Tinsley

This session is about taking your website to the next level by learning the basics of using JavaScript and JQuery in building dynamic websites. Even if you use a content management system such as WordPress or Drupal, both technologies are integral to effective websites. By understanding and using these underlying technologies, you can build more effective and dynamic websites.

JavaScript Animation for Web Developers

Presenter: Ed Klopfenstein

I'll spend about 45 minutes reverse engineering some of the coolest sites on the web to figure out how they do the animation they do and discuss what animation makes sense both technically and for online marketing. This talk with cover animation features in JQuery and other libraries.

JCombinatorial: efficient automated testing with JUnit

Presenter: Jeremy Reeder

Automated tests should be efficient. That is, they should work reliably with minimal effort to create and maintain them, and they should also be good at finding bugs. Whenever several test cases have a lot in common, a combinatorial approach can make the testing much more efficient. I will demonstrate how to do this with JUnit tests using my open-source JCombinatorial library.

Kanban vs Agile

Presenter: Joel Robinson
Tags: Software QA

Which is better for your organization? Kanban or Agile? Joel Robinson will present a role-playing game where you learn the difference. Lots of shouting and panic attacks for everyone!

Leverage the hosted TFS

Presenter: Richard Hundhausen

Microsoft launches its hosted Team Foundation Service later this year. It will be a great way for teams of any size to get setup, configured, and productive quickly. In this session we'll look at TFSPreview.com, which is available today, and compare it to the full, onpremises installation of Team Foundation Server 11.

LightSwitch Onramp

Presenter: Rich Dudley

Microsoft's LightSwitch presents a radical new way of designing applications in Visual Studio. Applications can be quickly built using screen templates and prewritten code to handle routine tasks. Custom business logic can be added in VB.NET or C#. LightSwitch applications can access a number of data sources, including SQL Server and SQL Azure, and can be hosted locally or on Azure. LightSwitch will enable IT staff to quickly turn around those small-but-necessary enterprise apps end users are so fond of, and it's easy enough for power-users with limited programming experience to build their own apps. By the end of this session, we’ll understand what LightSwitch is, what we need to develop with LightSwitch, and how to get started developing a LightSwitch application.

Linq (From the Inside)

Presenter: Mike Clement
Tags: c#, Linq

Knowing how to use Linq is useful if you're doing any coding using .NET 3.5 or newer. But have you ever thought about what is going on "under the hood"? Join us as we dive into the guts of Linq and implement Linq extension methods such as Where, Select, Any, All and Sum. Not only is it interesting to see what's going on, it'll help you to build better code using Linq.

Mathematica for Anyone

Presenter: John Conti

Mathematica seems like software for just the extremely mathematically inclined. In fact this accessible and affordable software may be showing us the future of design, manufacturing and the distribution of knowledge across the Internet.

Meet Riak

Presenter: Justin Pease
Tags: NoSQL, Riak

Riak is an open source, scalable, fault-tolerant distributed database. This introductory level talk will discuss what Riak offers, some of the concepts upon which it is built, and why it should possibly be of interest to you.

Mobile Websites with jQuery Mobile

Presenter: Brett Adler

Learn how to create user-friendly mobile websites quickly and easily using jQuery Mobile. We will cover the basic concepts of jQuery Mobile, including formatting your site for mobile phones and scripting your site to detect events such as tapping and swiping. Brett will also show examples of sites built using jQuery Mobile and will provide a list of resources for additional learning.

MongoDB for large scale, reliable data management

Presenter: Daniel Watrous

MongoDB represents a deviation from traditional relational databases. This affects how data is structured, stored and retrieved. Perhaps even more fundamental is how it affects data design.

MS Office Visual Basic for Applications

Presenter: James Thomas

Repetitive data crunching with Excel doesn't stop! High demand for small databases boosts office productivity through the roof. Having one Office app like Excel, start up another like Outlook and send individualized emails is especially valuable. All of this is done with Office's automation language VBA!

NGINX and Comet

Presenter: Brian Loomis

This session will explore using nginx to build a low latency comet server able to maintain thousands of open connections for sending push notifications. We'll cover compiling a push module into nginx, and setting up dynamic channels to serve JSON and keeping open requests from the client with JSONP.

Optimizing MySQL Databases

Presenter: John Nahlen
Tags: database, MySQL

This lecture will provide a scratch-the-surface understanding of a multitude of optimizations that can be done when working with MySQL databases; both with data as well as schema design. Will also discuss hardware, engine recommendations to help best suit your needs. Please bring your table designs and come prepared to ask questions.

Prism: Why I love it, why I use it

Presenter: Karl Shifflett
Tags: c#, LOB, Prism, wpf

Line of business applications that are maintainable over time require a good infrastructure that the application can be built on. Microsoft patterns & practices Prism guidance provides not only a reusable library but written guidance for architecting these types of applications. In this session I will demonstrate how I leverage Prism when building real world WPF LOB applications by walking through a full featured application that uses powerful time saving techniques and patterns.

Randori: Group Practice

Presenter: Mike Clement

Looking for a new way to practice your craft? Randori provides a complementary way type of training when compared with katas. Elements are: Pair Programming, Pair changes with mechanism (Time box, Ping Pong), Start from scratch, Use TDD, Everyone should be following, Pair should be explaining, Audience gives suggestions only with when Green, Example at http://vimeo.com/2499540 . To the organizers: This session would benefit from being longer than the standard 60 minutes if it can be accommodated. Email me directly for additional discussion if you decide to accept this session proposal. This is a hands on session!

Removing the OS Barrier with PaaS

Presenter: Adron Hall

In this session I'll provide an overview of IaaS and PaaS and how this is revolutionizing the way we're building and will be building software in the future. We'll jump through some Node.js, maybe some .NET, and even some Ruby on Rails and how these frameworks are now enabled with PaaS and blows the doors off of traditional software development environments.

Responsive Web Design: Thinking Inside the Box

Presenter: Steve Miller

In this introduction to responsive web design you will learn techniques for making your web designs flexible and accessible in nearly any size screen - whether on a desktop, a tablet, or a mobile device. Experience with basic web design will be helpful (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript).

So, Just What Is Node.js?

Presenter: Travis Bretton
Tags: javascript

Javascript is emerging as one of the most powerful languages available for internet development. So it makes sense that you would want to harness that power for not only your client code, but also for your server code. Node.js utilizes Google's V8 Javascript engine to create highly scalable internet applications using event-driven, asynchonous I/O. We'll discuss how to install node.js and how to use the node package manager (npm). Then we'll code several applications demonstrating the power of node.js.

Software Gardening

Presenter: Craig Berntson
Tags: none

Creating great software is not like construction. It’s more like gardening. In this session you will learn about important software gardening concepts such as soil, water, seeds, light, pruning, insecticide, weeding, and more. Along the way you’ll see processes, concepts, tools, and techniques that you can use in your software gardening project. By applying the ideas presented in this session, your software will be lush, green, and vibrant.

SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups

Presenter: Grant Carter
Tags: none

Demonstration of new HA/DR feature in SQL Server 2012 called AlwaysOn Availability Groups. This feature combines the best of Windows Clustering and Database Mirroring to create a solution that can provide automatic failover and disaster recovery. This feature also allows you to offload read-only workloads to other machines.

The Modern Web Trifecta

Presenter: Sean Timm
Tags: CSS, HTML, javascript

In this session, I'll be reviewing fundamentals of HTML, JavaScript and CSS. CSS will receive the majority of the attention, but I will touch on the other topics as well. If you've ever used "overflow: hidden" to get rid of a scrollbar or struggled to get something to position how you want, you should show up!

Using Caliburn.Micro to reduce WPF busywork

Presenter: James Nugent
Tags: .net, wpf

In this session, we'll look at using the Caliburn.Micro framework in WPF, and show how features such as convention-based binding, actions, and coroutines can dramatically reduce the amount of repetitive work needed to build applications.

web gui automation with selenium(2)

Presenter: Aaron Backer

selenium2 (se2) is an open source toolset for (among other things) doing automated web GUI testing. We’ll run through the what, why, when, and (of course) how to get started. Examples will be in c#/java...though se2 can be used from ruby, python, and perl among others. What we will cover: --writing nunit and junit tests from scratch in c#/java (*no* record/playback involved) --se2 gui test design patterns --se2 handy util methods --multi-browser testing via webdriver --se2 and “selenium grid” for parallel test execution --se2 and hudson(continuous integration server) (if time allows)