GGMUG

Our good friends Glen Gordon (Developer Evangelist) and Chad Brooks (Architect Evangelist) are hitting the road across the south to spread the word about Microsoft Technologies. Literally. They are getting in a van and hosting events in several cities and handing out a huge number of books.

Read the full story at http://blogs.msdn.com/glengordon/pages/MSDNSouthernFriedRoadshow.aspx.

They also have a Facebook site at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25541521364.

They will also be appearing at the Techdays '08 in Atlanta. Read about that one here: http://blogs.msdn.com/glengordon/archive/2008/09/04/techdays-08-is-coming-to-atlanta-september-23-25.aspx.

Sounds like a great time rolling through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi!

OK, so the contest is officially heating up! I now know of THREE entries. I've seen two of them and they look good!

You still have this weekend, so you can still enter! Just send me an email by Monday to let me know you are in. info@ggmug.com

So what does this mean? Right now each of these competitors has a 33.33% chance of winning! (Repeating of course)

If you don't get the above joke, do a search for the name Leroy Jenkins...

Keith posted a link to some sound effects way back in June, but I only just now realized it... doh!

http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/weblog/2008/06/19/Excellent+Free+Sound+Effects+Resource.aspx

For anyone who was at the August meeting, this is where I got the sounds for PracticePong.

jeffa

Our September meeting will feature demos, voting and awards presentation for our Silverlight Game Contest as well as a series of short (15-20 minute) presentations.

At the August meeting we all discussed several possible topics. Please email us at info@ggmug.com and let us know which of these topics (or any others you can think of) would be of interest to you.

• Logic Of Game Design
• Entity Framework -- Intro
• Enterprise Level WPF Architecture
• VBA Use In Enterprise Application Development
• Mobile Development -- Intro
• MVC Intro
• Alt.Net
• Expression Web
• Expression Blend
• Expression Design
• Expression Studio
• SQL Server -- Intermediate to deep
• Biztalk Server
• Virtual Earth
• Business Intelligence
• Development Process
• Windows Workflow
• IPV 6

Also let us know if there is a topic you would like to speak on.

The August meeting was a blast!

Jim Wooley's Intro To LINQ.

Jim Wooley is always a fantastic speaker, and we all learned a bunch about LINQ.

Here's a picture of Jim giving his presentation:

Thanks, Jim, for making the drive all the way over from Cobb County to be with us.

INETA Membership

Jim is also INETA's User Group Mentor for Georgia and announced that GGMUG has been accepted into INETA. INETA is an international association of user groups focusing on Microsoft technologies. This is a big success for us and will enable us to more easily draw from a larger pool of speakers among other benefits.

Operation Silverlight

We're coming into the home stretch for our Silverlight Game competition. At the September meeting we will vote for the winner and present the Zune to the first place winner.

To jump start entries, our President Jeff Ammons presented a simplified tutorial with a game he calls Practice Pong. You can read about it and download his source code on his blog at http://ammonsonline.com/jeffablog/post/Silverlight-Game-Programming-for-Total-N00bs.aspx.

Good luck to all entrants! Don't forget to email us at info@ggmug.com to let us know you are entering.

We now have a GGMUG group on LinkedIn.com.

Click here to join.

Once you are approved, you will enjoy all the rights and privileges to which which LinkedIn group members are entitled. Namely, your LinkedIn profile will say you are a member of our group...

For anyone who is not familiar with LinkedIn, it is a professional networking site. You can post a variation on your resume and link up with people you know. I think it is a great way to stay in contact and both grow and formalize your network.

Operation Silverlight (our game contest) is well underway. Someone is going to win a Zune, so get cracking!

I've poked around the dark corners of the Internet and found some Silverlight Game Tutorials that might help you out.

I'm not ranking them or judging them, just listing them for your enjoyment.

http://www.ddjsilverlight.com/

http://silverlightrocks.com/Community/blogs/silverlight_games_101/

http://laumania.net/post/PopTheBubble-Silverlight-game.aspx

Here's a great link that points to a bunch of Silverlight games:

http://blogs.msdn.com/cbowen/archive/2007/06/29/index-of-silverlight-games-most-with-source.aspx

Good luck and have fun!

Microsoft Developer Evangelist Glen Gordon was on hand at last night's meeting and told us about the upcoming ASP.Net University to be held at their office over in Alpharetta.

This is a great opportunity to spend a day learning about ASP.Net directly from Microsoft. Did I mention the price? Free. Better than free, they will feed you and give away some prizes.

Check out Glen's blog for details here.

Great meeting last night!

Cliff Jakobson gave us a nice overview of what's new in .Net 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 and IIS 7.

You can get his powerpoint here: Whats_New_in_NET_3_5.ppt (1.29 mb)

We also started a new segment at the beginning of having a more basic topic done in a short format. Jeff Ammons spoke about table partitioning in SQL Server 2005.

You can read about Jeff's adventures in partitioning here and here. 

Here are a couple of pics: 

To go with Keith Rome's Games For The Web With Silverlight 2.0 presentation at our June 12th meeting we have our very first contest.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to develop a web game using Silverlight 2.0 before the July meeting.

Microsoft has been very generous in donating a Zune for the 1st place winner! We will be working with other companies to get more prizes donated for the 2nd and 3rd place winners as well.

The rules are simple:

1) You MUST attend BOTH the June and July meetings to win (6/12/08 and 7/10/08).

2) Judging will by by voting by all attendees of the July meeting.

3) In the event of a tie, there will be a head-to-head vote to break the tie.

4) You must be a member in good standing of GGMUG to enter. This is not an open contest for anyone in the wide, wide world of sports. Rule number 1 pretty much covers this one...

5) The game must be playable with the Silverlight 2 player in a browser.

More rules may be added (as we think of them...) and will be presented at the June meeting.

We're not a huge group yet, so your odds of winning a Zune look pretty good! Come on out to the meetings and let's have fun with this one!