Europe Virtual ALT.NET

Postponement: Andreas Håkansson and Steven Robbins on Nancy on 22 November 2011

2011-11-21T11:45:00.001-08:00

Due to the busy schedules of both presenters and the nasty cold that got a hold of Steve, I regret to inform that the previously announced talk on Nancy is postponed until a later date. Our sincere apologies for the short notice. We’ll be announcing a new date very soon.

Andreas Håkansson and Steven Robbins on Nancy on 22 November 2011

2011-11-07T12:26:00.001-08:00

We’re very happy to announce that Andreas Håkansson (aka The Code Junkie) and Steven Robbins (aka GrumpyDev)agreed to do a talk on Nancy, a lightweight, low-ceremony, framework for building HTTP based services on .Net and Mono. The goal of the framework is to stay out of the way as much as possible and provide a super-duper-happy-path to all interactions. With Nancy you can go from zero to website in a matter of minutes.

Andreas is a software developer working from Sweden. He’s a strong believer of open-source software, software craftsmanship and contributing to the overall quality and knowledge of the community. Besides working on the Nancy web framework as the main contributor, he also runs the MEF Contrib, a set of community contributed extensions, tools and samples for the Managed Extensibility Framework.

Steven is a Technical Architect at Lightbox Education in the UK, mainly working on educational software and line of business applications for education related government departments and commercial companies. He’s also the coordinator of the Manchester NxtGenUG .Net User Group and a well know open-source developer on projects like Nancy, TinyIoC, Simple.Data, etc. … .

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 08:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 09:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

We do hope to virtually meet you there for this excellent learning opportunity. We would still like to hear your voice about future E-VAN sessions, so check out our feedback & suggestions page.

Recording of Jonathan Oliver on Event Sourcing and EventStore @ E-VAN 25 October 2011

2011-10-26T12:55:00.001-07:00

Jonathan Oliver did a tremendous presentation yesterday on Event Sourcing and the open-source EventStore project. Jonathan is clearly very passionate about this topic as he shared some great real-world knowledge and insights. He started off by telling about his own CQRS journey, jumping over to event sourcing and describing the EventStore model, dispatchers, serialization, etc. … Jonathan also showed two particular implementations, one for SQL Server and another for RavenDB.

As always, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Jonathan Oliver on Event Sourcing and EventStore @ E-VAN 25 October 2011

Because we were close to time, Jonathan wasn’t able to answer all questions. There’s this thread on the DDD/CQRS group or you can just send Jonathan an e-mail directly.

We’re still very interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions. Please let us know what you think or do suggest a topic that you’re interested in.

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

Jonathan Oliver on Event Sourcing and EventStore on 25 October 2011

2011-10-17T12:13:00.001-07:00

We’re very proud to announce that Jonathan Oliver agreed to talk about his open-source EventStore project. In previous sessions, Greg Young and Mark Nijhof already talked about event-sourcing. Jonathan is going to dedicate this whole session on this topic, showing us several implementations for different kinds of databases.

For those of you who don’t know Jonathan, he’s the founder of SmartyStreets, a company that does web-based address verification and address validation. Most of their code is open source, including the EventStore project. Jonathan is also the founder and co-host of the Distributed Podcast, a great podcast about CQRS, DDD, Cloud Computing and much more.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

Don’t miss out on this excellent learning opportunity. We would also love to hear your voice about future E-VAN sessions, so check out our feedback & suggestions page.

Recording of Mike Murray on Compositional and Convention-based Web Development With FubuMVC @ E-VAN 20 September 2011

2011-09-21T14:06:00.001-07:00

Mike Murray did a great talk yesterday about FubuMVC, showing us how easy it is to get started with this open-source front-controller MVC web framework. Mike also demonstrated how to configure routes using conventions, action behaviors, view discovery, HTML conventions, model binding and a lot more of cool stuff. This session was a one way ticket to get up and running with FubuMVC. Great stuff!

For those who missed it, the recording is now available:

Mike Murray on Compositional and Convention-Based Web Development With FubuMVC @ E-VAN 20 September 2011

Here are the links that were referenced during the presentation:

The original file that we used for uploading can also be downloaded from Vimeo as well. So you just have to log on (or register if you don’t have an account) and download the original recording in the right down corner. The quality of the original recording is slightly better. It’s also possible to download the original OLM recording here. Keep in mind that this one will only be available for one year.

We’re still very interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions. Please let us know what you think or do suggest a topic that you’re interested in.

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

Mike Murray on Compositional and Convention-based Web Development With FubuMVC on 20 September 2011

2011-08-16T11:52:00.001-07:00

We’re very pleased to announce that Mike Murray has agreed to do a talk on FubuMVC. FubuMVC is a .NET open-source front-controller MVC web framework. Fubu (which stands for "for us, by us") focuses on rapid development, pluggability, and convention-based configuration. It tries to focus on SOLID principles, composability, separation of concerns, DRY, and other critical concepts of rapid, frictionless and pain-free web development. There are several differentiating features from ASP.NET MVC, such as behavior chains, packaging, routing conventions, HTML conventions, and much more.

Session agenda

Starting Bare Bones from the FubuMVC NuGet package
Exploring the Getting Started Sample from the FubuMVC Guides
Configuring Routes via Conventions
View Location and Discovery
Clean Controller Actions with Behavior Chains
HTML Markup Generated By View Model Conventions
Ultimate Modularity with Packages (Bottles)

For those of you who don’t know Mike, he’s a software engineer for Extend Health, Inc. Mike has been primarily developing with C# and .NET for 7 years, and currently entertains interests in F#, Ruby, and JavaScript on the side. At Extend Health, he is participating in the migration of the company's production website from ASP.NET MVC to FubuMVC, while also contributing back bug fixes and features to the open-source project.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

This should be very interesting stuff, so we hope to (virtually) see you there. We would also love to hear your voice about future E-VAN sessions, so check out our feedback & suggestions page.

Recording of Me, Myself and I on Taking Baby Steps with Node.js @ E-VAN 14 June 2011

2011-06-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

Last night I did an introductory presentation on Node.js where I tried to bring across some of the stuff I’ve been learning about during the last couple of months. I do hope that the folks who attended this session actually got something out of it and not consider it a too big waste of time :-). I must admit that I definitely had too much content for a single session (hence the long recording). You can find the slides of this talk on the Prezi website and the code can be downloaded here.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available:

Jan Van Ryswyck on Taking Baby Steps with Node.js @ E-VAN 14-06-2011

We also already received some responses on our feedback & suggestions page, but we’re still very interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions. Please let us know what you think or do suggest a topic that you’re interested in.

Me, Myself and I on Taking Baby Steps with Node.js on 14 June 2011

2011-05-23T10:49:00.001-07:00

For this last session before the start of the holiday season, I decided to step up to the plate and give a talk myself about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, which is Node.js. Those who have been reading my blog lately know that I’ve written a fair amount of blog posts on JavaScript and Node.js during the last couple of months. With this presentation, I’m going to make a humble attempt to recapitulate the things I’ve learned throughout my journey and provide an introduction for those who want to learn what this Node.js stuff is all about. I’ve prepared a couple of slides but expect to see lots of JavaScript code as well.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

We hope to (virtually) see you there.

Recording of Hadi Hariri on CouchDB for .NET Developers @ E-VAN 03 May 2011

2011-05-04T12:17:00.001-07:00

Hadi Hariri did a superb talk last night on CouchDB and how to incorporate this popular document database into .NET applications. Hadi first started out with talking about the concepts behind CouchDB. Then he showed us how the REST API looks like and how it can generally be used. Next he showed us how to use this API from a .NET application, talking about Ottoman and his very own open-source library called EasyCouchDB. Hadi then concluded his talk by mentioning some of the pitfalls that you can run into when building applications on top of CouchDB. As you probably figured out by now, this session is really packed with great content.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available:

Hadi Hariri on CouchDB for .NET Developers @ E-VAN 03 May 2011

We would also love to hear your voice about the previous and future E-VAN sessions, so make sure to check out our feedback & suggestions page.

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

Hadi Hariri on CouchDB for .NET Developers on 03 May 2011

2011-04-25T12:40:00.001-07:00

We’re very happy to announce that Hadi Hariri agreed to join us for doing a talk on CouchDB, showing us how to incorporate this excellent NoSQL document database into .NET applications. Last year, J. Chris Anderson already did an introductory presentation on CouchDB on the E-VAN. Hadi is going to expand on this, showing what CouchDB is all about and how to get your applications up and running using CouchDB and .NET in no time at all, also explaining how creating and maintaining applications that use this NoSQL thing from a .NET Developers perspective is actually very simple.

Hadi Hariri is a developer, speaker, podcaster and Technical Evangelist at JetBrains. His passions include software architecture and web development. Book author and frequent contributor to developer publications, Hadi has been speaking at industry events for over a decade. He is based in Spain where he lives with his wife and two sons, and runs the .NET Malaga User Group. He is also a C# MVP and ASPInsider.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, May 03, 2011 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, May 03, 2011 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this timezone converter or every time zone.

This should be very interesting stuff, so we hope to (virtually) see you there. We would also love to hear your voice about future E-VAN sessions, so check out our feedback & suggestions page.

Recording of Robert Greyling on Spark View Engine @ E-VAN 12 April 2011

2011-04-13T08:21:00.001-07:00

An inspiring talk last night by Robert Greyling on the Spark View Engine. Rob first talked about JavaScript Spark Views, after which he discussed SparkSense and using the Spark View Engine with ASP.NET MVC, FubuMVC and NancyFx, closing of this session by talking a bit about bindings. Also make sure to check out his blog for some more Spark goodness.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Robert Greyling on Spark View Engine @ E-VAN 12-04-2011

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

Robert Greyling on Spark View Engine on 12 April 2011

2011-04-01T14:38:00.001-07:00

We’re very pleased to announce that Robert Greyling agreed to do a talk on the Spark View Engine. Spark is a view engine for the ASP.NET MVC and Castle MonoRail frameworks. The idea behind it is to allow the HTML to dominate the flow and the code to fit seamlessly.

For those of you who don’t know Robert, he literally eats, sleeps and breathes all things tech, and although his expertise lies mainly in the .NET space since the beta in 2000, he loves delving into all sorts of stuff, including functional and dynamic languages. He also has an avid passion for clean and efficient code that adheres to SOLID principles derived through intelligent application of proven patterns.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

This should be very interesting stuff, so we hope to (virtually) see you there. We would also love to hear your voice about future E-VAN sessions, so check out our feedback & suggestions page.

European Virtual ALT.NET – Feedback & Suggestions

2011-03-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

Although we’ve still got plenty of topics that we would like to see discussed in future online E-VAN sessions, we would also like to hear about your interests for future topics and get some overall feedback from the community. That’s why we’ve set up a “forum” where we would like to capture your feedback and ideas so that we might do a future session on a particular topic that we haven’t thought about or make some overall improvements if necessary. So if you would like to suggest a future topic or you have some great ideas on how to keep this community going, then please let us know:

European Virtual ALT.NET – Feedback & Suggestions

We are looking forward to hear from you!

Recording of Mike Hadlow on Monads @ E-VAN 29 March 2011

2011-03-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

Mike Hadlow did a superb talk on Monads last night. Not only did he provide a nice introduction on what Monads are, talking about the theory and core concepts behind it; Mike also did an excellent job showing us the code to back up these concepts by means of some hands-on coding, showing us the MayBe Monad and much more. Also make sure to read his excellent blog series on the topic.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Mike Hadlow on Monads @ E-VAN 29 March 2011

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

Mike Hadlow on Monads on 29 March 2011

2011-03-14T12:59:00.001-07:00

We’re more than happy to announce that Mike Hadlow agreed to do a talk on Monads. These days, monads are the "celebrities of programming language theory". But they also inspire fear in the hearts of lowly imperative programmers. However they are a very useful and powerful abstraction and they pop up everywhere. C#'s Linq syntax is Monadic, for example. Having an understanding of Monads will give you the conceptual tools to greatly simplify many programming challenges, from dealing with nulls and managing state, to asynchronous programming and parsing. This talk will be mostly C#, but I will also be introducing a little F# and even some Haskell.

Based in Brighton, England, Mike works as a freelance programmer, specializing in enterprise application development with Microsoft tools. He’s very interested in the art of programming and frequently gets excited by new technology.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

Don’t miss out on this excellent learning opportunity. We hope to (virtually) see you there.

Recording of Andreas Öhlund on NServiceBus (Part Two) @ E-VAN 08 March 2011

2011-03-09T12:36:00.001-08:00

Yet again a great talk from Andreas Öhlund on sagas in NServiceBus. Passionate as ever, Andreas first provided a solid explanation of sagas after which he did some hands-on coding, showing us how easy it is to implement sagas into your applications using NServiceBus. Some of the attendees also asked some great questions at the end, which truly made this a great learning experience. Great stuff!

For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Andreas Öhlund on NServiceBus (Part Two) @ E-VAN 08 March 2011

The original file that we used for uploading can be downloaded from Vimeo as well. So you just have to log on (or register if you don’t have an account) and download the original recording in the right down corner. The quality of the original recording is slightly better. It’s also possible to download the original OLM recording here. Keep in mind that this one will only be available for one year.

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

Andreas Öhlund on NServiceBus (Part Two) on 08 March 2011

2011-02-25T15:00:00.001-08:00

During his first appearance, Andreas Öhlund already provided us with an extensive introduction to NServiceBus, talking about the basics of sending messages during a hands-on coding session. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite get around to demonstrate how to deal with publish-subscribe scenarios.

So we’re more than pleased to announce that Andreas agreed to do a follow-up, talking about publish-subscribe and sagas using NServiceBus. You can watch the recording of his previous talk in case you missed it and want to get up to speed.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 08:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 09:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

We hope to (virtually) see you there.

Recording of Matt Yoho on Ruby for Static Language Developers @ E-VAN 22 February 2011

2011-02-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

Splendid introduction to Ruby by Matt Yoho. Matt talked about the Ruby object model, duck-typing, modules and many other features provided by this great programming language.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Matt Yoho on Ruby for Static Language Developers @ E-VAN 22 February 2011

Details for the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

European VAN on Ruby for Static Language Developers on 22 February 2011

2011-01-26T11:45:00.001-08:00

We’re very proud to announce that Matt Yoho agreed to do a talk on Ruby for the next European VAN meeting. Matt is a developer and agile enthusiast with a love for Ruby and the web, working for EdgeCase, LLC in Columbus, Ohio. He’s going to discuss Ruby’s unique object model, the power of implicit self, the effects of dynamic execution as well as metaprogramming. Matt is also going to contrast this great dynamic language with other static programming languages while diving into duck-typing and some of the unique functional features of Ruby.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 08:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 09:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

This is a great opportunity to learn more about Ruby. We hope to virtually see you there.

Recording of Ayende on RavenDB @ E-VAN 11 January 2011

2011-01-12T12:06:00.001-08:00

Ayende did a great speak at the first European VAN meeting of the new year. He talked about RavenDB, mostly doing hands-on coding with a couple of introductory slides at the beginning of the session. As always, Oren is very passionate about the stuff he is working on and certainly when it comes to RavenDB. Needless to say that he was really on a role. There was also a good turn-out of attendees, which made that there were lots of great questions as well.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Ayende on RavenDB @ E-VAN 11 January 2011

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

European VAN on RavenDB on 11 January 2011

2010-12-31T05:55:00.001-08:00

For the first E-VAN session of 2011, we’re going to continue our series on NoSQL. So we’re more than happy to announce that Oren Eini, also known as Ayende Rahien, agreed to do a talk on RavenDB. RavenDB is an open-source (with a commercial option) document database for the .NET/Windows platform. RavenDB offers a flexible data model design to fit the needs of real world systems. RavenDB stores schema-less JSON documents, allow you to define indexes using Linq queries and focus on low latency and high performance.

I guess Oren barely needs an introduction as he’s a well known active member of the .NET open-source community (NHibernate, Rhino Mocks, Castle, etc. …), the author of DSL’s in Boo and the developer/inspirer behind products like NHibernate Profiler, EF Profiler, Linq to SQL Profiler and RavenDB.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 08:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 09:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

Make sure that you don’t miss this excellent learning opportunity and we hope to see you there.

Discussion on the State of (ALT).NET on 23 November 2010

2010-11-08T11:49:00.001-08:00

We’ve been hearing and reading quite a lot lately about folks that were part of the ALT.NET community leaving the .NET platform and moving on to other development platforms, not only for late night coding but also for their day jobs. This seems to go along with these people ventilating a lot of frustration regarding the .NET community in general. The ALT.NET community efforts seems to be rapidly declining as well, probably due to the fact that many of the most active members were amongst the first to jump ship. What has changed in the .NET space over the past couple of years, or perhaps, what didn’t change. Do we eventually get fed up with the single vendor driven community or do we get frustrated with the second-class role of open-source in the .NET world?

We would love to have a discussion about this topic and also we would like some feedback about the E-VAN sessions we’ve been doing for the past 1,5 years now. We have some ideas we would like to share and we would love to hear others as well.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 08:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 09:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

We hope to virtually see you there.

Glenn Block on “WCF - Evolving for the Web“ @ E-VAN 18 October 2010

2010-10-19T12:45:00.001-07:00

Glenn Block did an excellent talk on the stuff that he and the WCF team are working on regarding REST and HTTP on the .NET platform. He showed us some of the work that has already been done and also talked about some of the plans for the future. Very interesting to see where this new embrace of HTTP on the .NET platform is headed.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Glenn Block on WCF Evolving for the Web @ E-VAN 18 October 2010

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

Glenn Block on “Embracing HTTP in the .NET platform” on 18 October 2010

2010-10-01T13:40:00.001-07:00

We’re happy to announce that Glenn Block agreed to do a talk about REST and embracing HTTP in the .NET platform. REST is a topic that has gotten quite a lot of attention on this format and with good reason. With his talk, Glenn is going to show us some of the investments that are being made to provide richer and more natural support for HTTP in WCF “vNext”. Glenn is going to talk about the work that has already been done and he’s also bringing an inside perspective on what the future will bring. So we’re more than willing to learn more about this new embracement of HTTP in the .NET stack.

For most of us, Glenn barely needs an introduction. Currently he’s a program manager on the WCF team working on Microsoft's future HTTP and REST stack. Prior to WCF he was a program manager on the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in .NET 4.0.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Monday, October 18, 2010 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Monday, October 18, 2010 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

Make sure that you don’t miss this excellent learning opportunity and we hope to see you there.

Recording of Andreas Öhlund on NServiceBus @ E-VAN 29 September 2010

2010-10-01T08:41:00.001-07:00

Andreas Öhlund performed an excellent hands-on coding session showing how to quickly get up to speed with NServiceBus. We could easily tell that Andreas is really passionate about this excellent open-source message bus. He covered the basics of sending messages but didn’t quite get around to demonstrate pub-sub. We’ll probably schedule a second part later on if Andreas agrees to come back on and further enlighten us with another coding session.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Andreas Öhlund on NServiceBus @ E-VAN 29 September 2010

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

Andreas Öhlund on NServiceBus on 29 September 2010

2010-08-30T05:05:00.001-07:00

Now that this year’s holiday season has come to an end, we’re going to pick up the European VAN meetings again. Colin and myself have been talking about making a couple of changes about the format and content of these online gatherings, but more on that in a future post.

We’re more than happy to announce that Andreas Öhlund has agreed to show us some of the goodness of NServiceBus. Andreas is a software developer for Frontwalker in Sweden. In his spare time he enjoys doing open-source development as one of the committers for the NServiceBus project. NServiceBus is an open-source, lightweight service bus for .NET and has gained a lot of traction over the last couple of years. You can read a couple of reviews here.

This presentation is going to be an hands-on introduction to NServiceBus with a lot of code samples and some ‘live coding’. Here are the details:

Start Time: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

Hope to see you there.

Recording of Hamilton Verissimo on MEF @ E-VAN 28 June 2010

2010-06-29T12:01:00.001-07:00

A very informative presentation of Hamilton Verissimo on the Managed Extensibility Framework (aka MEF). For those who missed it, the recording is hereby available on Vimeo:

Hamilton Verissimo on MEF @ E-VAN 28 June 2010

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted soon.

European VAN on MEF on 28 June 2010

2010-06-08T11:50:00.001-07:00

Hamilton Verissimo, aka hammett, proposed to do an all inclusive talk about the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) on the next European Virtual ALT.NET (thanks to Glenn Block for setting this up). MEF promises to simplify the creation of extensible applications, offering discovery and composition capabilities that can be leveraged to load application extensions.

Hamilton is going to be the first presenter on the E-VAN that holds a blue badge, so we’ll see how this goes ;-).

Here are the details:

Start Time: Monday, June 28, 2010 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Monday, June 28, 2010 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 03:00 PM EST, 01:00 PM MST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site, use this time zone converter or every time zone.

Be prepared to have a MEFilicious time. We hope to virtually see you there.

Recording of Michael Dirolf on MongoDB @ E-VAN 07 June 2010

2010-06-08T11:34:00.001-07:00

We all very much enjoyed Michael Dirolf’s presentation on MongoDB. For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Michael Dirolf on MongoDB @ E-VAN 07 June 2010

If you got infected by MongoDB and want to learn more, then the European MongoDB conferences are an excellent opportunity. There’s one scheduled in the UK on June 18 and one in France on June 21. The nice folks at 10gen provided us with a discount code that will give all E-VAN sympathizers a 20% discount at registration (use discount code “evan”). We hope you will enjoy one of those events as well.

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted very soon.

Recording of J. Chris Anderson on CouchDB @ E-VAN 26 May 2010

2010-05-28T09:06:00.001-07:00

J. Chris Anderson did an excellent introductory presentation on CouchDB. For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

J. Chris Anderson on CouchDB @ E-VAN 26 May 2010

Hope to see you all at the next session on MongoDB.

European VAN on MongoDB on 07 June 2010

2010-05-03T12:05:00.001-07:00

We’re happy to announce that Michael Dirolf agreed to do a presentation on MongoDB as part of our series on NoSQL. MongoDB is a scalable, high-performance, open source, document-oriented database written in C++. A highlight of the features are full index support, replication, high availability, auto-sharding, map/reduce, gridFS etc. … . Michael is a software engineer at 10gen working on MongoDB, so we’re pretty sure that he’s got many things to say about it.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Monday, June 07, 2010 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Monday, June 07, 2010 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 02:00 PM EST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site or use this time zone converter.

Make sure that you don’t miss this excellent learning opportunity and we hope to see you there.

European VAN on CouchDB on 26 May 2010

2010-05-03T12:03:00.001-07:00

The next session in our series on NoSQL is going to be a presentation on CouchDB. CouchDB is a scalable, schema-free, open source document-oriented database written in Erlang. None other than J. Chris Anderson is going to do this talk. He’s a CouchDB committer, co-author of the book CouchDB: The Definitive Guide and a director of couch.io, offering commercial hosting, support, consulting, and custom development. We guess that he’s in a pretty good position to tell us more about CouchDB.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 02:00 PM EST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site or use this time zone converter.

Make sure that you don’t miss this excellent learning opportunity and we hope to see you there.

Recording of Neil Robbins on NoSQL @ E-VAN 26 April 2010

2010-04-27T11:20:00.001-07:00

Neil Robbins did a splendid job introducing us to the concepts and main ideas behind NoSQL. For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Neil Robbins on NoSQL @ E-VAN 26 April 2010

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted very soon.

Next European VAN on 26 April 2010

2010-04-12T11:53:00.001-07:00

Neil Robbins agreed to do an introductory presentation on the ideas behind NoSQL, what its all about, why its important and where it can be applied. This is going to be the first session in a series on NoSQL. We’re planning to do a couple of other talks on a variety of document databases, key/value stores, etc. during the course of this year.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, April 26, 2010 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, April 26, 2010 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 02:00 PM EST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site or use this time zone converter.

If you want to learn what the fuzz on NoSQL is all about, then don’t miss this opportunity. Hope to see you there.

Recording of Discussion on Software Craftsmanship @ E-VAN 06 April 2010

2010-04-07T12:59:00.001-07:00

I hope everyone enjoyed last night’s discussion on Software Craftsmanship with Robert C. Martin, David Starr and Mark Nijhof. Unfortunately Corey Haines and Scott Bellware couldn’t join us due to issues with Office Live Meeting. We’re going to re-evaluate whether there are better alternatives to Office Live Meeting that at the very least provide a cross-platform solution.

For those who missed this discussion, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Discussion on Software Craftsmanship @ E-VAN 06 April 2010

You can also download the original OLM recording here. Keep in mind that this one will only be available for one year.

We tried to cover as many questions as possible. In case you’ve got some more questions regarding this topic, you can always post them on the Software Craftsmanship Google Group.

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted very soon.

Next European VAN on 06 April 2010

2010-03-05T12:05:00.001-08:00

For this session we’re going to facilitate an open discussion on Software Craftsmanship. We’ve asked a couple of well known craftsmen who have either been involved in the software craftsmanship community or contributed to the greater good of the software community itself.

Robert C. Martin is the founder, CEO, and president of Object Mentor and is a well known software professional.
David Starr is the principal craftsman with Guild 3 Software, instructor with Pluralsight, founder of ElegantCode.com and one of the initiators of the Software Craftsman Cooperative.
Mark Nijhof is going to join us for the third time already and so he barely needs an introduction. He recently started his own business called Cre8ive Thought.
Scott Bellware is one of the founders of the ALT.NET movement and organizer of the Monospace, ALT.NET Open Spaces and Continuous Improvement conferences.
Corey Haines is a well known as a Software Journeyman and spent almost a year traveling to pair-program in exchange for room and board. Now he’s still travelling around the world for his Code Retreat tour.

Quite the bunch we gathered here for this discussion. Here are the details:

Start Time: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 02:00 PM EST and 12:00 Noon PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site or use this time zone converter.

Hope to see you there and also feel free to join the discussion. Needless to say that we’re going to have a blast. If you already have some interesting topics that you want to see discussed here, then please add them to this thread on the Software Craftsmanship Google Group.

Recording of Mike Amundsen on HTTP Web Caching Techniques @ E-VAN 01 March 2010

2010-03-02T10:58:00.001-08:00

Mike Amundsen did a really nice presentation on HTTP Web caching techniques. The talk both covered the rationale behind these techniques as well as getting down into the code. Highly recommended for all kinds of web developers.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Mike Amundsen on HTTP Web Caching @ E-VAN 01 March 2010

The trick is to download the original file that we used for uploading. So you just have to log on (or register if you don’t have an account) and download the original recording in the right down corner. The quality of the original recording is a bit better. Also you can download the original OLM recording here. Keep in mind that this one will only be available for one year.

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted very soon.

Next European VAN on 01 March 2010

2010-02-10T12:19:00.001-08:00

We’re going to have another topic related to REST just because this is so near and dear to our heart :-). Mike Amundsen is going to do a talk on HTTP Web caching techniques. You can read the outline of the talk here.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Monday, March 01, 2010 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Monday, March 01, 2010 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 07:00 PM UK, 08:00 PM Brussels, 02:00 PM EST and 11:00 AM PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site or use this time zone converter.

If you want to learn more about this particular topic, then make sure to drop by. Hope to see you there.

Recording of James Gregory on Git @ E-VAN 08 February 2010

2010-02-09T10:23:00.001-08:00

James Gregory did a rock solid introductory presentation on Git last night. The talk was mostly hands-on with a bit of history at the beginning and going over the most commonly used commands for the rest of the presentation.

For those who missed it, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

James Gregory on Git @ E-VAN 08 February 2010

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted very soon.

Next European VAN on 08 February 2010

2010-01-25T11:35:00.001-08:00

We all know James Gregory from the Fluent NHibernate fame, but it seems that he also has quite a few things to say about Git. You’ve probably already heard a lot of buzz around Git and most reactions of developers that already used it seem to be very positive. James is going to give a “getting started with Git” kind of presentation which should be a great way to start out. We’re certainly looking forward to this as both Colin and yours truly are both padawans when it comes to Git.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Monday, February 08, 2010 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Monday, February 08, 2010 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 07:00 PM UK, 08:00 PM Brussels, 02:00 PM EST and 11:00 AM PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site or use this time zone converter.

If you want to learn more about Git, make sure to drop by. Hope to see you there.

Follow-up - Recording of Mark Nijhof on CQRS @ E-VAN 18 November 2009

2009-11-26T14:23:00.001-08:00

We have to admit that the quality of the recording we uploaded last week wasn’t that great. Apparently, Office Live Meeting did trick us in the end with the resolution Mark used during the presentation. Thankfully, Mark Jennes who is a colleague of mine, patiently recorded last week’s session using Camtasia. We had some issues getting it uploaded on Vimeo this time. The quality of the recording you can watch online is better than last week’s but it isn’t that great either. But you can download the original file used for uploading by just logging in.

Mark Nijhof on CQRS Sample @ E-VAN 18 November 2009

So, enjoy!

Recording of Mark Nijhof on CQRS @ E-VAN 18 November 2009

2009-11-19T12:19:00.001-08:00

Update 26 November 2009: Also check out this follow-up post.

Mark Nijhof talked about the concepts behind the Command Query Responsibility Segregation while walking through the code of his CQRS sample application. It was good to finally see a concrete implementation on the architectural styles that Greg Young and Udi Dahan talked about in the previous sessions. The people who attended were able to ask their questions during the presentation. We hope that this helped them a lot in getting a better understanding of CQRS principles. We believe that Mark did a tremendous job and went into a great deal of effort to make this all more understandable.

For those who missed the presentation, the recording is now available on Vimeo:

Mark Nijhof on CQRS Sample @ E-VAN 18 November 2009

Unfortunately, the quality of the recording is not that good so you can also have a look at the original OLM recordings as well.

Details of the next E-VAN presentation will be posted shortly, so stay tuned.

Next European VAN on 18 November 2009

2009-10-29T13:38:00.001-07:00

We just couldn't resist to get Mark Nijhof back after he announced his CQRS sample application on the DDD user group. The sample application that he developed is completely based on DDD à la Greg Young. The great thing about Mark's initiative is that the DDD/CQRS/SOA principles evangelized by Greg and Udi become more concrete and accessible to a wider audience of architects and developers. Therefore, the focus of this session is to take a deep dive into the code as Mark did before during his FubuMVC presentation.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 07:00 PM UK, 08:00 PM Brussels, 02:00 PM EST and 11:00 AM PST. For time zone arithmetic, you can consult the world clock site or use this time zone converter.

Take a look at the source code and please provide your questions or feedback on the E-VAN Google Group. You can also ask your questions during or after the session, but it would be nice if we could consolidate some input in advance. So don't be afraid to get your questions out there :-). Again, this should be a very learningful experience. Hope to see you there.

Recording of Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz on SOA Patterns @ E-VAN 05 October 2009

2009-10-06T13:17:00.001-07:00

If you missed last night's presentation, then we have some good news. The recording of Arnon's excellent presentation is now available:

Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz on SOA Patterns @ E-VAN 05 October 2009

We had some annoying issues with the slides from time to time (I guess the Office Live Meetings gods were still not entirely in our favor), but everything worked out fine in the end. Both Colin and myself really enjoyed this presentation and we hope you will so too. We'll be posting the details for the next E-VAN presentation, so keep an eye out.

Next European VAN on 05 October 2009

2009-09-07T12:17:00.001-07:00

This time, Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz will enlighten us with a presentation about the xsights architecture, talking about a real-world SOA architecture as well as balancing up-front design and evolving an architecture, etc. Definitely check out his blog, which also contains a number of insightful papers on SOA and architecture in general. Arnon is also the author of an upcoming book on SOA Patterns, which both Colin and myself really enjoyed reading.

Here are the details:

Start Time: Monday, October 05, 2009 07:00 PM GMT*

End Time: Monday, October 05, 2009 08:30 PM GMT

Attendee URL: http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

VAN Calendar: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar

(*) 08:00 PM UK, 09:00 PM Brussels, 02:00 PM EST and 11:00 AM PST

So this presentation will definitely be a learningful experience. Don't miss out on this opportunity. Hope to see you there.

Recording of Discussion on REST @ E-VAN 20 July 2009

2009-07-24T15:20:00.001-07:00

Our initial plan was to get Ian Robinson and Jim Webber to appear for this session, but due to some technical difficulties with Office Live Meeting that plan was flushed down the drain. Despite having done a successful dry run, who would have guessed that Office Live Meeting causes so many problems when used on the new Windows 7?

Gladly Colin Jack, Alan Dean, Sebastien Lambla and Udi Dahan chimed in to have an alternative discussion on REST which worked out pretty well actually. You can listen (rather than watch) to this discussion at the usual backlog:

Discussion on REST @ E-VAN 20 July 2009

Rest assured that the discussion with Ian Robinson and Jim Webber will be rescheduled to a later date. We will post the details on this blog soon.

Online Book Club - Time to vote

2009-07-14T13:09:00.001-07:00

As part of the E-VAN we're planning to have an online book club, probably using Skype.

Thanks to Jimmy Bogard's advice we're going to do it fortnightly and we know we need a small core group of people who can be relied upon to attend and in addition a strong motivated moderator to keep the conversation on topic. Other than that its open, we'll make the decisions on the first session and can refine them as we go.

However that brings us to the first big decision, which book to cover, so get voting.

We'll also need to identify the core of people, if you want to be a part of it get hold of one of us or add a comment here.

Recording of Alan Dean on REST @ E-VAN 06 July 2009

2009-07-08T11:47:00.001-07:00

Great presentation performed by Alan Dean on Separating REST Facts from Fallacies for last night's European VAN. You simply can't afford to miss this presentation if you want to get your REST facts straight. You can watch the recording from the E-VAN gold collection:

Alan Dean on REST @ E-VAN 06 July 2009

Keeping in touch with the spirit of REST, Colin already posted the details for the next E-VAN meeting. Ian Robinson and Jim Webber were kind enough to answer all your questions about REST.

Ian Robinson and Jim Webber on 20th July

2009-07-05T14:56:00.001-07:00

As part of our series of session REST we've been lucky enough to get Ian Robinson and Jim Webber to agree to appear on the E-VAN on the 20th and we're looking for your input to help shape their session. The more views/questions the better so add them as comments or e-mail them to us and we'll aggregate them for Ian/Jim.

As you may know they are writing a book on REST, along with Savas Parastatidis and have also written one of the best articles on REST that you'll find. However there are a range of other related topics that are worth discussing including MEST, Guerilla SOA, ESB's, consumer driven contracts, and business service design so feel free to submit as many questions as you can on these or any other topics by adding comments to the blog entry.

And don't worry if some of these are new to you I've added some links below so get learning :P

Session Details

Monday July 20th (6:00PM GMT)

In France/Germany/Belgium: 8:00PM
In UK is: 7:00PM
EST in the US is: 2:00PM (EST)
PST in the US is: 11:00AM

Attendee URL

http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

Links

Here's some great links you might want to look at before the session:

MEST - Jim has discussed why in many cases his default is now to consider Web-oriented style of architecture, but when/where is a MEST style (sans-SOAP) still a good choice?
Guerilla SOA - See Jim's session at InfoQ, definitely a topic worth discussing particularly as to do it successfully seems to involve bringing in a range of other interesting topics.
Consumer Driven Contracts - A very interesting topic and one its definitely worth spending some time familiarizing yourself with.
ESBs - This relevant given Martin Fowlers recent post which discusses the misuse of ESBs but you might also want to watch the presentation that Martin/Jim did at QCon called Does My Bus Look Big in This?
Service Design - As was discussed on the session with Udi there are some techniques you can use to define large scale business services. But how do we go about defining the boundaries of these business services? Is capability modelling the best approach? Ian has a great post on some of the subtleties involved but it's a great topic, as is taking the output of the capability modelling and building sensible services. You might also want to read this post by Ian and a related one by Jim.
Combining REST with Web Services - A topic that was also discussed in the Thoughtworks REST podcasts, so where are Web services still useful? Mixing REST, MEST and Web Services...are projects doing this successfully?

See you on the 20th.

Alan Dean on REST (Monday 6th July 2009)

2009-06-29T12:43:00.001-07:00

We've now planned the next couple of E-VANs which will focus on REST, the first will be with Alan Dean where he will cover facts and fallacies related to REST.

Alan is a real authority on REST and he's got a great talk ready so this is a great chance to find out more about REST. In addition if you have any particular questions for Alan, or topics you'd like to discuss in detail, then you can add them to the existing topic on the google group.

Start Time on Monday July 06 (7:00PM GMT)
In France/Germany/Belgium: 9:00PM
In UK is: 8:00PM
EST in the US is: 3:00PM (EST)
PST in the US is: 12:00PM (Midday)

The session will last around 90 minutes and on timings see this world clock site or more information.

Attendee URL
http://snipr.com/virtualaltnet (Live Meeting)

Udi Dahan Video Online

2009-06-28T12:46:00.000-07:00

First off if you didn't watch Udi Dahan talk on the SOA then you missed a treat, a real pro speaking on a topic that he and a very few others in the .NET space are way ahead of the rest of us on. Brilliant stuff and the video is now online at Vimeo.