New SDDN Site Live

November 26, 2009

The new Silverlight Designer and Developer Network site is live!

The site has information on upcoming meetings, any follow up code links from the presenters as well as general Silverlight community information.

It will also contain video of the events where possible – once we figure out some hosting (damn you Silverlight Live Streaming biting the bullet!).

The best part about the new site is that it now has RSS!! A long time coming I know – but go add it to your readers :)

Check it out at http://www.sddn.org.au.

Cheers,

Jordan.


Next Melbourne SDDN Meeting – 29th Oct

October 22, 2009

Hey all!

After a short hiatus we’re back with more meetings. We’ve had a break due to a mixture of Tech.Ed, holidays and – would you belive – jury duty.

We’ve got two great talks lined up – from Phil Beadle on Unit Testing in Silverlight and from myself on .NET RIA Services validation.

How I unit test a Silverlight application – Phil Beadle

This session will cover how to architect a Silverlight application so that it can be thoroughly tested.

Time: ~1 hour.

Phil will cover:

  • The MVVM pattern
  • How to unit test the View Model
  • Using unity as an IoC
  • Using Moq to mock out the Model
  • Using the Silverlight Unit test framework to test the UI
  • Using a Mock domain client to mock out the calls to the database from a RIA service

Philip has extensive experience using these techniques in production projects, so this will be a talk not to be missed.

Philip is a DotNetNuke Trustee and works for Readily as a Principal Consultant specialising in Silverlight, DotNetNuke and ASP.Net. Philip has a large amount of experience building all sorts of online properties ranging from small personal sites to massive traffic sites such as the AFL website. Philip is also known for his passion for testing and is the lead for the new QA Team on DotNetNuke which will implement unit testing and integration testing in the coming months

.NET RIA Services Validation – Jordan Knight

Time: ~30 minutes.

This session will cover some basic .NET RIA Services concepts before delving in to to world of validations.

See how easy it is to create shared custom validation code in your applications (run on client and server).

Jordan is a Senior Consultant at Readify and is a regular on the Silverlight scene in Australia, having presented at a number of conferences including ReMix and Tech.Ed Australia and New Zealand.

Late Addition!

David Burela asked if he could give a quick 10 minute demo on some Bing Maps stuff he has been working on… why of course David!

The new Bing Maps virtual earth control lacks basic databinding, you have to manualy add pushpins and map shapes. This quick demo will demonstrate how you can import a single library to enable databinding to the bing maps control, and then create the datatemplates you need to databind your shapes directly to the map.

David is a Senior Developer at Readify who last year won the Microsoft imagine cup for his work on SOAK.

When: Thursday October 29, 5:30 for 6:00 start

Where: Microsoft Theatre, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank

Pizza will be provided to keep those tummies from rumbling.

Attendance is FREE but please register using the tool on the SDDN Site so we can figure how much PIZZA to get!


New SDDN Site Design

July 23, 2009

I know we’ve been promising a new SDDN site for like almost a year now – well finally we got our asses in to gear and have something coming!

Alex Knight (my brother from the same motha) of AGKDesign and SilverZine fame (and being my brother fame too :P ) sat down 6 months ago and ripped out this design:

SDDN New Site Design

It’s gonna rock hey!

Well now @rosscify is going to build it in Graffiti for us!

Can’t bloody wait!


SDDN Sydney – 4th August 2009

July 23, 2009

This month Jose Fajardo from Cynergy Systems will talk on “Don’t lose site of what’s important, Interactivity and Experience” at the Crown Hotel. Here are all the details.


SDDN with Scott Barnes, Product Manager, Microsoft

July 20, 2009

This week there are two SDDN events, one in Perth on Wednesday 22nd July(link) and Melbourne on Thursday 23rd July.

Our special guest Scott Barnes will be running through all the new bits in Silverlight 3 + Expression Blend 3.

Scott Barnes’ Australian Silverlight & Expression 3 Tour

Silverlight & Expression 3 launch is an important moment in Microsoft’s timeline, as this is their V3 moment! In light of this point in time, Scott has vowed to ensure all within his beloved home, Australia, get a deep insight into what just happened in both Silverlight and Expression 3.

Not only will Scott cover off some of the new stuff, but will highlight some of the existing brilliance within these products through examples and commentary of how the old and new features came to be (as well as hints to both product’s future).

In this session you not only will hear all of this, but this is also a perfect opportunity to lobby for what you want to see in Silverlight & Expression 4!

Yes, not only did Microsoft just finish work on 3, but they’re keen to get started on the next version – given Scott is on the planning team, this is a great opportunity for you to influence the future of Microsoft’s UX Platform.

Scott Barnes is a Product Manager for the Rich Client Platform team at Microsoft, with a focus on Silverlight

When and Where?

The date and time: Thursday July 23 at 5:30 PM for a 6:00 PM start.
The venue is Microsoft Theatre, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank.

Attendance is FREE, but please RSVP by entering your details in the registration tool on the site (http://www.sddn.org.au) or send an email to info@sddn.org.au.

Pizza will be provided to keep those tummies from rumbling.

Cheers,

Jordan.

P.S. Don’t miss the Nerd Dinner on Tuesday night (21st July)!


June 2 SDDN Meeting in Sydney

May 27, 2009

Miguel has been very organised and has another SDDN meeting off the ground in Sydney!

From Miguel’s blog:

“Next Tuesday, June 2 at 6:30 at Microsoft in Sydney (1 Epping Road, North Ryde NSW) we will have the SSDN Sydney’s June Meeting. This time Tatham Oddie will be talking about the new Out of Browser features in Silverlight 3 and Sergey Klementiev will presenting “LOB applications in Silverlight Lap around middle tier”. You will also have the opportunity to win a copy full of Expression 2 Suite and the best of all network amongst your Silverlight peers. So don’t miss it.”

Register on the site.

See you there!


First Virtual Silverlight Designer and Developer Network Meeting

May 14, 2009

Miguel has been hard at work organising our first ever virtual SDDN meeting!

It’s on May 18, 2009 at 9:00 pm Sydney Time.

See Miguel’s Blog for more details!

Link to the meeting will be released today hopefully.


Sydney – SDDN Meeting and Nerd Dinner

April 29, 2009

First ever Sydney meeting!

This meeting Chris Anderson (blog), from Peer Placements will be discussing advanced styling in Silverlight for both developers and designers. Topics will cover styling strategies, tools, advanced xaml techniques, fashions, and a discussion on designing user experiences.

Jordan Knight (Blog) from Readify will run through the exciting new features in Silverlight 3, and demonstrate how you might use them in a real working reference application. This in depth session will cover perspective 3D, pixel shaders, navigation features, out of browser and much more. Other concepts like Model-View-ViewModel, dependency injection, unit testing and designing template friendly (read designer friendly) applications will also be touched upon.

Win!!

Attendees will have the opportunity to win a copy of the full Expression 2 suite, worth $1000!

Details

The date and time: Tuesday May 5 at 6:00 PM for a 6:30 PM start.

The venue is the Pyrmont Bridge Hotel, Level 2, Pyrmont, NSW. See mmap for details.

Attendance is FREE, but please RSVP by entering your details in the registration in the registration tool on the site (here) or send an email to info@sddn.org.au.

Nerd Dinner

We are holding a nerd dinner in Sydney on Thursday May 7 – P.J. O’Briens.

Register here.

Hope to see you there!!


SDDN Meeting, 30th April – Melbourne

April 23, 2009

Our next meeting is on Thursday the 30th of April in Melbourne

What’s on?

This meeting we will see Dave Glover (blog), Developer Platform Evangelist from Microsoft give a primer on the new Silverlight 3 RIA Services feature. RIA Services aims to bring the client and server portions of your applications closer together.

Jordan Knight (Blog) from Readify will run through the exciting new features in Silverlight 3, and demonstrate how you might use them in a real working reference application. This in depth session will cover perspective 3D, pixel shaders, navigation features, out of browser and much more. Other concepts like Model-View-ViewModel, dependency injection, unit testing and designing template friendly (read designer friendly) applications will also be touched upon.

WIN!

Attendees will have the opportunity to win a copy of the full Expression 2 suite, worth $1000!

When and Where?

The date and time: Thursday April 30 at 5:30 PM for a 6:00 PM start.

The venue is Microsoft Theatre, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank.

Attendance is FREE, but please RSVP by entering your details in the registration tool at the top of the SDDN site.

Pizza will be provided to keep those tummies from rumbling.


Silverlight training in Adelaide a great success

April 20, 2009

The SDDN has held it’s first ever event outside Melbourne… a free training day in Adelaide.

We had 20 people in for the day and a great time was had by all. The attendees (and the presenters) had a great time. We laughed we cried (when the demo gods struck) and most of all we traded knowledge on a range of Silverlight topics from basics to some more advanced concepts. These days are really beneficial to the attendees and the presenters… we all chat and figure out where everyone is up to, and talk about Silverlight projects here and there. It’s great to see what others are working on and the challenges they are finding.

A very special thanks to Jason Schluter who put in all the leg work for the event, finding the venue and some people to run it! Jason presented the morning session, including the introduction stuff and he then walked them through creating a full game in Silverlight.

The afternoon I ran the class through networking, binding and the HTML DOM Bridge (they always love that last one). We also talked some shop about MVVM and some other common Silverlight patterns and concepts.

The venue was provided by Hire Intelligence, and the facilities were A-1.

But… the biggest surprise of the day was Academy IT, run by Brian Peel and Kim Paschero. These guys were our hosts – they opened the rooms, pre-installed the machines, handled registration and lunch. Can I just say that they are absolute pro’s who have clearly handled this kind of event many times over.

Academy IT run corporate and public training, which can be tailored plus much more. They have partnerships to operate in cities all around Australia so check them out. Head over to their site for more information. Oh yeah, did I mention that these guys are community group (i.e. SDDN) friendly and understand our “constraints” – i.e. they were very accommodating :)

We’ve had some great feedback from the attendees but as always if you have something to say, good or bad then we implore you to drop us a line a the SDDN info mailing address (I’m not linking it for spam reasons). Feedback lets us know how much you want these kind of days and session in your city :)

Coming up next: SDDN sessions in Perth (22nd), Melbourne (30th) and Sydney (5th May)…

Jordan.

SDDN training in Adelaide

SDDN training in Adelaide

SDDN training in Adelaide