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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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:

• FubuMVC.com
• FubuMVC Guides - Getting Started
• FubuMVC GitHub Repository
• FubuMVC NuGet Package
• FubuMVC Google Group Mailing List
• Presentation GitHub Repository
• Mike Murray's Blog - Murray on .NET
• mkmurray - Mike Murray on Twitter
• Chad Myers - Cool Stuff in FubuCore and FubuMVC Series
• Josh Arnold - Patterns of Compositional Architecture
• DevDirective - FubuMVC Articles and Links
• Rex Flex - Introductory Posts on FubuMVC by Rex Morgan
• Spark View Engine
• MvcToFubu - Transition your website from ASP.NET MVC to FubuMVC Part 1

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

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

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

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 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

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.

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. 

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

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

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 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

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

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

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.

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

Robert Greyling on Spark View Engine on 12 April 2011

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

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

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

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.

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

Mike Hadlow on Monads on 29 March 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.