Peter Griffith’s Weblog

Register at

http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=event&area=9005&temID=eventdetails&eveID=10109365592870

Saturday

8:30:00Register

9:00:00 Jeremy Huppatz VSTS 2008 Database Edition

has been on an EDS professional development program for the last 3 months (including 2 months in Seattle) working with Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition.

Jeremy will walk through the SDLC phases that the various features of DB Edition addresses and some of the productivity benefits on offer

10:00:00 Allan Baird Welcome UniSA

10:15:00 coffee

10:30:00 Daniel Brown Sharepoint

11:10:00 Alan Boldock

11:50:00 Simon Holman DNN

12:30:00 Lunch

13:10:00 Peter Cornish

13:50:00 Paul Turner Branding a Publishing site in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

14:30:00 David Gardiner Microsoft Sync Framework.

15:10:00 coffee

15:25:00 Jason Stangroome/ Jim Burger Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server and the open-source Subversion alternative.

16:05:00 Nigel Spencer/ Jason Schluter Videoing Demo apps

16:35:00 QUIZ - Prize MSDN Team Suite 2008 Subscription

17:00:00 Break

18:00:00 Marcellina’s Restaurant

20:00:00 Close

Sunday

8:30:00 Paul Stovell Reactive Programming with Bindable LINQ

9:10:00 Tatham Oddie Business Considerations for the ASP.NET MVC Framework

9:50:00 Mike Duhne Welcome from Microsoft

10:00:00 Coffee

10:15:00 James Chapman-Smith

10:55:00 Greg Low

11:35:00 Shane Morris

12:15:00 Ben Mackie

12:55:00 lunch

13:35:00 Corneliu I. Tusnea CLR Production Debugging

14:15:00 Adrian Downes? business intelligence - to be confirmed

14:55:00

15:35:00 Close

ACS Business Communications SIG interactive Workshop

Date: Thursday 5^th June 5.30pm

Venue: Express Training Corporation

L5, 38 Gawler Place (Cnr Rundle Mall almost).

Adelaide.

Title: “Understanding and overcoming the fear of public speaking”.

An interactive and useful workshop (that is, Richard won’t be just standing up front and talking). Most people can speak reasonably well in private (with their friends, workmates etc…), however things change when they are asked to speak in public!

The change that occurs when people stand in front of an audience is irrational and it’s a ‘learned behaviour’ - I intend for us to explore why this happens (understand and define the problem), and consider ways to ‘unlearn’ the unproductive behaviour patterns and replace them with effective and productive behaviour patterns - it can be learned!

For details of workshop: https://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=event&temID=eventdetails&eveID=10106169990829

You can register for the workshop using the above link.

Venue: Theatre HH4-08, UniSA, City West Campus, North Terrace, Adelaide

When: 8.30am-5pm Sat/Sun 12^th-13^th July

First Call for speakers, email Peter Griffith if you would like to present.

Hire My Mum is Launched in Australia

Every now and then an idea comes along that’s so good you ask yourself, “Why didn’t somebody think of this before?” Well, one such idea is ‘Hire My Mum’ – the brainchild of a fed-up north western Sydney mum, Leigh Kostiainen.

For Leigh, frustration this time was the mother of invention. After closing a retail business due to the pressures of trying to balance work and raising a young family, Leigh scoured the local papers for a more practical source of income. She thought she couldn’t be the only mum wanting to stay with her kids but still assist financially for her family.

“I knew there had to be employers and business owners that would let me use my years of experience in marketing, database management and project management to complete jobs they couldn’t afford a full time employee to do,” Leigh said.

After a frustrating search, everything Leigh found seemed to be just a scam. Determined to do something about it, Leigh founded ‘Hire My Mum’ to assist her, and others like her, who wanted to stay at home with their kids but still contribute to the household income.

It’s a fact that everyday, working women leave work to have babies. People from all walks of life are affected, teachers, receptionists, sales people, secretaries – and in the process, dozens of businesses lose skilled workers. There’s obviously a need to fill that gap.

That’s where Hire My Mum comes in. It’s a subscription service allowing Mums who have reasonable skill levels and internet access to combine the best of both worlds by working from the comfort and security of their own homes, at hours that suit them. This provides business owners with valuable workers for one-off projects or employees on a more permanent part-time basis.

The office environment has been changed so much by technology and none more so than good old dictation. There was a time that you would pop into the boss’s office with a steno pad and pen ready to take short hand, and now you can voice record your letters or reports digitally and email them to anyone anywhere for typing.

Statistically, over 60 per cent of working mothers feel they take out their stress on their families and close to half of all working mothers would prefer to be full-time mothers, while around one fifth would like to work from home. Just four per cent of working mothers would elect to work full-time if they had the choice.

These-days, working from home is no longer a ‘fad’ or just for a select lucky few – it’s an important part of Australia’s future working culture. The new Australian government strongly supports the growth of home-based small business in our country, particularly the benefits it brings to mothers and their families.

The benefits of working from home are obvious. You create a work and lifestyle balance by beating the rising costs of childcare, parking, tolls and petrol while providing flexibility in the time of day you work. Now, that’s a nifty idea!

“At Hire My Mum we are putting these skills back into the market place and providing businesses with a strong talented pool of resources, but we want listings,” Leigh said.

Business owners finding it difficult to find reliable skilled employees, or tired of trying to fend off the high costs for specialised services are encouraged to apply. Hire My Mum can help you find willing and skilled workers ready to help providing you with many financial benefits, as well as the ability to increase productivity by up to 40%. True! There are no contracts and you can register online for free!

Hire My Mum is based in north western Sydney but is not limited geographically. Women living in any city in Australia or any rural/ remote communities can log in and get the job done. People with a disability are not excluded, in fact anyone can do it – and all jobs are listed free!

As a subscription based site, the company receives no commissions or income from the jobs listed, thereby ensuring their registered mums receive all the payment for the jobs worked.

Mums can start working from home today doing the jobs you choose at a time that suits you … and the family. Joining Australia’s newest growing online industry is simple and swift. Just log in at www.hiremymum.com.au, or ring 0417 230 682.

Hire My Mum is launching nationally in time for Mothers Day 2008 to coincide with National Families Week.

UniSA run 2 programs, Industry Alliance Program http://www.cis.unisa.edu.au/iap/index.html and the Business Information Systems Program. http://www.unisa.edu.au/bis/

These programs involve interaction with Industry, the BIS program gives students 2 x 15 week placements for project work. The CS program invites industry to give problems or development for students to solve.

Last November I attended 2 events showing some of the results of these programs. There were presentations by BIS students on the their placement projects. I believe there were 10-15 students in this program. The second event, 90 groups of CS students (usually 2 or 3 in a group) demonstrated solutions to problems suggested by industry partners.

Our contribution was a CS student who developed a USB interface and software for one of our serial interfaced energy management controllers.

ACS recognized the need for students “work integrated learning” (work

experience) by creating the ACS Foundation in 2001.

http://www.acsfoundation.com.au

By giving a student an ACS Scholarship rather than putting the student on the payroll which adds all the HR things (super, hol and sick pay, employee count, insurance, etc) and the student pays tax on his pay. A scholarship through the ACS foundation avoids all this and in most cases the student gets the whole amount donated by the donor tax-free.

Universities can make it difficult for students to get work experience by limiting the time available for this. I am told some courses now have a unit of work experience as a part of the course.

University courses suffer as a new course takes 2 years to develop and implement. The designers have to predict what’s likely to happen over the next 5 or so years. Not knowing what vendors will still be around, they avoid the problem. When the first graduates emerge from a new course, the concepts can be over 4 years old. It makes it easy to question the current relevance of courses.

I have watched the Howard government tearing the universities apart in their 10 years in Government. For a good description of how bad it was, I am indebted to The Science Show where Robyn Williams interviewed Vicki Sara, Chancellor, University of Technology, Sydney http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/2089488.htm#transcript

Vicki Sara points to a looming crisis in Australian universities as they lose their competitive position due to underfunding and over regulation.

Other OECD countries have increased funding for higher education. Australia has seen a decline of 4%.

Hi

To register for Wednesday’s meeting, use the “Visitor without an ACS Id” option (unless you are an ACS member) at

http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=event&area=9005&temID=eventdetails&eveID=10105694398845

BRING YOUR LAPTOP ALONG TONIGHT to receive your copy of the 26Gb of Heroes Happens 2008 presentations, demos and labs from our USB HDD. It will take about 30 minutes to affect the transfer or download extracts from http://www.expressnetvideo.com.au/adnug/

This month May 2008

1. ADNUG Meeting Programme - 14^th May. Please Register (by Wed am would help)
2. IMPORTANT - MS Press Online Store with UG Specials is now Launched!
3. Employment requests
4. Australian SQL Server User Group meeting – 12^th June
5. ASPUG Adelaide Sharepoint User Group meeting – 20^th May
6. CodeCampSA 12^th-13^th July UniSA
7. Expressnet free hosting offer for ASP.Net web sites
8. Beta version of new ADNUG website
9. Freebies from Microsoft Press for 2008 launches

1. ADELAIDE DOT NET USERS GROUP.

The next meeting of ADNUG will be held on WEDNESDAY 14th May at 5.45pm

at
SA Innovation Centre , Level 2, Westpac House, 91 King William Street, Adelaide .

Visitors welcome. See below for Programme.

PROGRAMME

5.45 pm Finger food and Drinks. Have some nibbles and refreshments before we start

Have something to eat before the meeting.

6.15 pm Questions and answers. Bring along your .Net problems for discussion from members.

6.25 pm Boldock, Alan (CNAHS-RAH) – Senior Analyst Programmer Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) – Tracking Patients using WPF, ASP.NET and touch-screen technologies

Alan.Boldock@health.sa.gov.au

Alan Boldock is a Senior Analyst Programmer and manager of a small development team working within the Central Northern Adelaide Health Service (CNAHS) at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH).

The team is primarily responsible for the development and maintenance of user databases. This includes many ASP .NET web application as well as Microsoft Access and SQL Server databases.

One of our most recent projects required developing a system to track patients as they are treated in the RAH pre-anaesthetic clinic. What was originally suggested was not what they got! The final application uses WPF, ASP.NET as well as touch-screen technologies to solve the problem. This talk outlines how the project was presented, the problems that arose, the solutions we developed, and how the system is used.

7.10 pm Dave Glover – Microsoft DPE – Hyper-V, The new virtualisation technology going in to Windows Server 2008

dglover@microsoft.com

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, allows you to make the best use of your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine. With Hyper-V, you can also efficiently run multiple different operating systems—Windows, Linux, and others—in parallel, on a single server, and fully leverage the power of x64 computing

8.00 pm Meeting close

..

2. MS Online Press Store User Group Specials

I’m delighted to advise you that our press distributor Woodslane in conjunction with MS has developed an Microsoft Online Press Store which is now LIVE!

www.mspress.com.au

To help us launch the Store during the month of May we’ve created a special User Group Members offer of 50% discount on all books on the site. We’d love your help to promote the store to your community by blogging about the site and including the URL in your newsletters and other communication to your User Group Members.

Some of the great advantages of www.mspress.com.au include:

- Express delivery

- Competitive pricing

- Easy Keyword Search facility

- Latest titles and Books of the Month

- Large inventory

- Newsletter sign-up

And until the end of May on www.mspress.com.au

- All User Group Members will receive a 50% discount by using this Code at Checkout (members will be sent code).

- Plus go in the draw for a chance to win an XBOX by providing feedback on the site

We are planning to keep improving the site in the future and I’ll keep you updated as these improvements are made.

Thank you for your support J

Tania Netterfield | Partner Account Manager CPLS | Microsoft Australia | 1 Epping Road North Ryde NSW 2113 |W +61 2 9870 2895 |M +61 418 883 050

3. Employment Requests

Candle ICT (Rohan Bishop rbishop@candlerecruit.com) has permanent and contract opportunities for .NET developers (C# and VB.NET) and SQL Server developers to finally take the plunge and make 2008 the year to follow through on those resolutions! So, don’t let the year pass you by. Contact Rohan Bishop on 8223 3886.

Candle IT – Sponsors of The Adelaide SQL Server User Group and the Adelaide .NET User Group.

ASP.NET Developer (For contact details email Peter Griffith pgriffit@senet.com.au)

Request for an experienced ASP.NET Developer for the development of one of the Corporation’s business critical web applications for a 3 month term.

Skills Required:

• Minimum 3-4 years ASP.NET, VB.NET (or C#), AJAX, XML, HTML, JavaScript & CSS experience.
• SQL Server management, T-SQL, stored procedures & DTS experience.
• Solid OOD and data modelling skills.
• Sound knowledge of the software development life cycle.
• Technical documentation skills.

Skills Preferred:

• SQL Server Reporting Services experience.
• Experience with source control software (specifically Team Foundation Server).
• Computer Science or related degree.

· Graphic manipulation and editing experience.

4. AUSTRALIAN SQL SERVER USER GROUP meeting:

Venue: Level 2 Westpac House (91 King William Street Adelaide)

Duration 2 hours (including light lunch) 12:00 - 2:00pm On Thursday 12^th June

See http://www.sqlserver.org.au/Events for programme

5. ASPUG ADELAIDE SHAREPOINT USER GROUP meeting:

Venue: 5.45pm Level 26 Westpac House, 91 King William Street Adelaide.

Jeff Headley (Alphawest) “SharePoint for non techies” and Paul Turner (SDM) “Building Virtual Development Environment”

To join ASPUG and/or be on mailing list click on www.aspug.org.au

6. CodeCampSA at UniSA:

Venue: Theatre HH4-08, UniSA, City West Campus, North Terrace, Adelaide

When: 8.30am-4pm Sat/Sun 12^th-13^th July

First Call for speakers, email Peter Griffith if you would like to present.

7. EXPRESSNET FREE ASP.NET HOSTING ACCOUNTS OFFER:

Expressnet are offering Free ASP.NET web hosting accounts. They are relatively small accounts designed for personal websites and beginning developer who want to host their work somewhere.

The accounts have 20MB of disk space, 200MB of monthly data transfer and 5 Email accounts. The sites are hosted in Australia (Canberra) on high spec Dell servers.

There is no access to SQL on these plans, so a database driven site like DotNetNuke won’t be able to be run.

It’s not a limited offer and will be available for the foreseeable future obviously dependant on demand.

8. Beta of new ADNUG web site

At last licencing has been sorted..

Thanks to Paul for getting the new web site to a stage that we can now get this project underway to further develop the site.

http://paulturner.is-a-geek.com:9001/default.aspx

This is an opportunity to do some work and get experience in Sharepoint 2007. We are looking for “volunteers” and beginners to get involved. You will be supported and mentored.

See latest suggestions at

http://pgriffith.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/developing-new-adnug-website/

Pick a function that needs to be added to the site and volunteer.

9. NEW - Freebies from Microsoft Press

Free e-book offer and Microsoft Press newsletter

The free e-book includes content from three recent publications from Microsoft Press:

Learn more about the free e-book offer, and sign up for the Microsoft Press Book Connection newsletter, a newsletter that provides news about upcoming and recent releases, special offers, and additional information from those who know our books best.

Check out these additional Microsoft Press books about Visual Studio:

Join the MSDN Connection. http://www.microsoft.com/australia/msdn/default.aspx for details

Going Interstate? For list of Australian User Groups http://www.microsoft.com/australia/msdn/usergroups.aspx

Subscribe to MSDN Flash http://msdn.microsoft.com/flash.

Agenda for Meeting 159 on Wednesday 7th May 2008

BUSINESS MEETING

Rostrum Club 10 – Presentation Skills

6 pm (please be there by 5.45 pm.)

to be held at

Excom, Ground Floor, 191 Pulteney Street Adelaide   SA   5000

If late and locked out, phone Peter Griffith  0408 832 891  to be let in.

5.45pm Light refreshments and networking.

BUSINESS

6.15pm Open Meeting Chairman: Helen Bills

· Introduction of guests

· Welcome of guests – MC Peter Griffith

· Apologies –

· Icebreaker – Jack Salagaras

· Minutes of meeting number 158

· Business Arising

· Induction of Mark Prodoehl

· Reports  -  President

-  Secretary including correspondence

-  Treasurer

-  Dais Member

· Business Meeting items, statistics for DAIS.

· General Business

o Notice of motions

§ Motion 1: “That Club 10 regularly submit news and information to the Rostrum Newsletter.”

§ Motion 2:  “That the M.C. for that month be the contributors to the Rostrum Newsletter”

PRESENTATION PROGRAMME

MC to introduce each speaker before each presentation – Peter Griffith

6.40pm 1^st Presenter – Terry Franklin (20 mins)

Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.05pm Set-up break

7.10pm                  2^nd Presenter – Eun Young Choi (10 mins) “Seeds for Nutrition“

Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.25pm                  3^rd Presenter – Mark Prodoehl (5 mins) “Maiden Speech”

Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.35pm                  Set-up break

7.40pm                  4^th Presenter – Helen Bills (15 mins) “Maths for Minors”

Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

8.00pm Review programme for next month (5 mins) – Peter Griffith

Any Other Business

8.05pm             MEETING CLOSE

MASTER OF CEREMONIES – Peter Griffith – pgriffith@senet.com.au

PRESENTERS please email the following information well before the meeting to the MC

v Purpose v Competency (if applicable)

APOLOGIES TO Program Director- Peter Griffith on 0408 832 891 (H) or pgriffit@senet.com.au

The Heroes Happens VS2008 sessions files are now available for downloading.

I received the following email from Simon.

“As discussed, I’ve uploaded the Visual Studio 2008 files to our server for those who didn’t have a laptop the other night.

There are two zip files containing the Training Kit and the heroescommunitylaunch.com. There are two folders containing the videos and the VPC files. The VPC files are a set and all need to be downloaded before use (~4GB).

The files can be browsed and downloaded from http://www.expressnet.com.au/adnug “

Thank you Simon.

As I pointed out at the meeting, these sessions, presentations, demos, labs and doco contain a wealth of well prepared information on VS2008, and will be an enormous help to your take up of VS2008.

Happy VS2008ing.

PG

Duke Ellingtons “A” train is a real train on the New York  Subway.  It is the “fast” train  from Harlem (Manhattan) to Queens.

http://www.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/tacur.pdf

Why was the “A Train” written?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/04/99/duke_ellington/325798.stm

Duke and Ella

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhK-zYfFsIY

PG

Agenda for Meeting 158 on Wednesday2nd April 2008

Rostrum Club 10 – Presentation Skills

6 pm (please be there by 5.45 pm.)

 to be held at

Excom, Ground Floor, 191 Pulteney Street Adelaide   SA   5000

If late and locked out, phone Peter Griffith  0408 832 891  to be let in.

5.45pm Light refreshments and networking.

BUSINESS              

6.15pm             Open Meeting Chairman: Helen Bills

·         Introduction of guests

·         Welcome of guests – MC Helen Bills

·         Apologies –

·         Icebreaker – Peter Griffith

·         Minutes of meeting number 157

·         Business Arising

·         Reports            -  President

                                          -  Secretary including correspondence

                                          -  Treasurer

                                                            -  Dais Member

·         General Business

-

 PRESENTATION PROGRAMME

MC to introduce each speaker before each presentation – Helen Bills

6.40pm             1^st Presenter – Terry Franklin (20 mins)  

                        Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.05pm             Set-up break

7.10pm             2^nd Presenter – Neil Hamilton (30 mins)

                        Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.45pm             Set-up break

7.50pm             3^rd Presenter – Jack Salagaras (5 mins) “Maiden Speech”

                        Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

8.00pm             Review programme for next month (5 mins) – Peter Griffith

                        Any Other Business 

8.05pm             MEETING CLOSE