The Chicago .NET User Group (CNUG) is looking for speakers on short notice. Apparentlyour scheduled speakers for the August meeting have fallen through and we need to fill the slots fast. The typical meeting includes two one-hour presentations on topics related to .NET (naturally). We also throw in an assortment of pizzas, sodas, and a few giveaways to boot! If you’re willing to step up to the plate for the August meeting, or any meeting for that matter, please contact me.
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I get asked the question quite a bit, “Dave -How are you able to keep up to speed with all ofthe new stuff coming out of Redmond?”. Well…much to my wife’s shagrin, it involves quite a bit of time in the home office, poking around the bits and seeing what I can find. Uh… that’s the Visual Studio 2005 + Team System bits, mind you.

If you’re someone who needs something a little more structured, I’d suggest diving into the recently released 101 Samples for Visual Studio 2005. 101 Samples provides a smattering of samples for you to “poke” around in ranging from base class libraries to data access to web and windows form development.

There’s also a number of *FREE* online courses over at Microsoft’s E-Learning site that are worth checking out. Hurry though – they won’t be free for long.

Also, don’t forget the plethora of MSDN Webcasts available as well.

That should give you enough training material to make you good and ready to go come “the week of” November 7th!

As you may or may not know, the July CTP drop of Team System is back to only supporting a dual-server install.With my previous dual-server installs, I would set up my data tier to also serve as my domain controller – not so with the July CTP.

The July CTP must be installed with the June CTP drop of SQL Server 2005. The June CTP drop of SQL Server cannot be installed on a domain controller. Dan Jones explains why over on the MSDN forums.

So, it looks like I’ll be making the app tier my domain controller for this CTP.