There will be no Bloomington .NET Users Group meeting this month. We haven't been able to secure a speaker for this month. The good news is that I've hade a couple of inquiries to help run the group which should help out with future meeting plans. If you're interested in helping manage the group or would be interested in speaking at future meetings, please contact me.

The Downers Grove chapter of the Chicago .NET Users Group will be holding their October meeting tonight at 6PM in the Microsoft offices in Downers Grove. Tonight’s meeting will be jam packed with two fantastic talks.

First, Mike Culver, Amazon Evangelist (the eCommerce site, not the jungle), will be presenting a talk on Amazon Web Services and how .NET developers can build their own mini-Amazon.com’s utilizing these open services. Second, we have Tom Cole from Magenic presenting a talk on Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2007. So as you can see, we have some great content lined up for this evening.

Also, CNUG is in the midst of planning the next “Day of .NET” event. If you’d like to volunteer to help out with planning efforts, we’ll be meeting from 5:30 – 6:30 in the Microsoft offices in Downers Grove.

Technorati tags: Chicago, .NET, Users Group, Amazon, Web Services, Sharepoint

We have an exciting event coming to the Chicago and Milwaukee user group communities. On May 17th (in Downers Grove, IL) and May 18th (in Milwaukee), Microsoft in conjunction with InnerWorkings will host a developer make-over event called “Hacked or Be Hacked”. Developer make-overs are all about “making-over” your skill set – increasing your knowledge base through fun and interactive exercises. This particular make-over event will detail some of the common security vulnerabilities found in today’s web applications followed by a hands-on coding challenge that will help you learn how to mitigate these security vulnerabilities.

To participate in the hands-on portion of this event, it is recommended that you bring your own machine with at least Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Editioninstalled. Visual Studio 2005 Standard edition, Professional edition and any Team System role editions will work as well. Once you have VS2005 up and running, we’ll be able to download the InnerWorkings Web Application Attacks module. The great thing about InnerWorkings training modules is that they integrate directly within the Visual Studio development environment.

The InnerWorkings training engine maintains a score level on how well you perform in the exercise. With this scoring ability, we will keep a running scoreboard to determine who is “Top Coder”. We will run the coding challenge for a week following the event. For those of you not able to make it to the meeting, you can still participate by still registering.

The stakes are high including a copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition to the winner of the coding challenge. Also, just by registering for the coding challenge, you will be entered into a drawing for a $200 Amazon gift certificate courtesy of InnerWorkings.

The event dates are as follows:

May 17th, 2006
Microsoft Corporation
3025 Highland Parkway, Suite 300
Downers Grove, IL.
Click to Register

May 18th, 2006
Medical College of Wisconsin
10000 West Innovation Dr.
Milwaukee, WI.
Click to Register

Microsoft partners’s IMG and Magenic Technologiesare teaming up to deliver a free professional developer seminar around Windows Forms 2.0 development on April 27th in Downers Grove, IL. Magenic heavy-weights Keith Franklin, Raj Das and Keenan Newton will be presenting topics on What’s New in WinForms 2.0, Building Data-bound WinForm applications and ClickOnce.

Register at http://www.imginc.com/devcares.

AprilDevCares

April 27th, 2006, 1PM – 5PM

Microsoft Corporation

3025 Highland Parkway, Suite 300

Downers Grove, IL. 60515

What’s New in WinForms 2.0
We begin our focus on WinForms development by looking at some of the new features found in WinForms 2.0. This session will take a look at some of the new UI controls that allow developers to create complex and professional looking Windows Forms applications. We’ll also spend some time showcasing the new design features found in Visual Studio 2005.

Building Data-bound Microsoft Windows Forms Applications
Working with data in your applications is a common task among developers. With WinForms 2.0 the abilities to work with your data has been greatly enhanced over previous versions of the framework. This session will focus on the new data capabilities and ehnahcements while pointing out new features such as the DataGridView control and new tools such as the enhanced DataSet designer. We’ll also explore additional data related features including asynchronous data access.

Deploying Application with ClickOnce
ClickOnce is a new application deployment technology that makes deploying a Windows Forms based application as easy as deploying a web application. This session will begin by introducing key concepts about ClickOnce, including how it figures within the range of deployment options that you now have available for .NET applications. We will than discuss the architecture behind ClickOnce and the security decisions that are involved in deploying your applications through the ClickOnce technology. We’ll than finish up the discussion by talking about the programmatic features of the ClickOnce API.

Tags: DevCares, Chicago, Developer

If you haven’t guessed it by now, teaching developers how to build secure applications is an important message in 2006. This message isn’t just being hollered from the mountain tops of Redmond, but companies such as SPI Dynamics and Compuware are waving the same flag – Developer Security is Important! We have a number of great events coming to the Chicago area, all around teaching developers how to build security conscious applications. These are very important events. So much so, that I’m willing to throw some skin in the game.
If you attend at least 2 of the following events, I will purchase you (1) MS Press book of your choice.* To win, you must contact me with the secret phrase: I promise to be a security conscious developer. Proof of your attendance at the events is required as well. These upcoming events include…
On April 11th, SPI Dynamics is brining their Free Web Application Hacking Workshop to Chicago. At this workshop, you will learn how to incorporate security early into the software development lifecycle. You’ll also learn about advanced hacking techniques such as SQL Injection, Blind SQL Injection and Session Hijacking and how to thwart these attacks. To register for this event, visit
On April 19th, Compuware (in conjunction with Microsoft) will be in Downers Grove, IL to host their Application Level Security Best Practices Workshop. This event will begin with a discussion around Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) process. Followed by a discussion around common coding practices that lead to insecure web applications and how a tool such as Compuware’s Security Checker can be utilized to identify problem areas within your code while offering solutions to resolving them.
On May 23rd, Microsoft is hosting an all day Security Summit. This day will be jammed packed with security discussions for the IT Pro and Developer crowds. The day begins with a keynote from Mike Nash who is Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Security Technology Unit. He will be detailing Microsoft’s Security Strategy and Vision. The keynote will than be followed by a number of break out sessions with topics such as Secure Messaging, Network Access Protection, Creating Reliable and Robust Applications with Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 and Application Development Principles and Best Practices.
As you can see, there’s a lot of talk going on around the secured development landscape. The next step is to provide some actions – building secure applications. Attend these events and you will walk away a more security conscious developer with another book to add to your collection.
* The MS Press book must be in print and available for order.