May 17, 2012 – “C# The Hard Parts” Lab

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Secretary

Join us Thursday (05/17/2012) at 6:00 PM for free food and drinks. The lab begins at 6:30 PM, followed by some great giveaways, such as books, training, and software! Our meetings are held at 22 Century Blvd, Nashville, TN (map).

Topic: C# – The Hard Parts

In this lab, we are going to tackle some of the newer, more difficult to grok features of the C# language such as dynamics, lambdas, and co- and contravariance. If we’re lucky, we may get into asynchronous and parallel programming. Come prepared!

June 19th, 2012 – Vaco Geek Bash

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Secretary

On June 19th (Tuesday) there will be a geek out in a brewery, sponsored by VACO.
Check out these links:
http://e2.ma/message/4dnq/c05hk
https://vacogeekbash.eventbrite.com/

May 10, 2012 – Josh Bush – Intro to Knockout.js

Posted on May 7, 2012 by President

Join us Thursday (05/10/2012) at 6:00 PM for free food and drinks. The lecture begins at 6:30 PM, followed by some great giveaways, such as books, training, and software. Our meetings are held at 22 Century Blvd, Nashville, TN (map).

Topic: Intro to Knockout.js

Knockout.js is one of many client side frameworks aimed at making it easier to create rich and interactive applications. This session will get you started writing javascript that is easier to write and maintain. We’ll walk through cleaning up your DOM spaghetti and reducing the need for complex jQuery selectors. Javascript is fun again.

Speaker: Josh Bush

Josh Bush is a Sr. Software Engineer with 8 years experience developing software for the healthcare and financial and industries. He is passionate about web based technologies utilizing the latest that HTML5 and javascript have to offer. Josh has developed and maintains a few open source jQuery plugins. You can read the occasional blog post from Josh on his website at http://digitalbush.com or follow him on twitter (@digitalBush).

Homework for the April 19, 2012 Gadgeteer Lab

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Secretary

Here’s a homework assignment from Ian Lee:

http://blog.ianlee.info/2012/04/getting-started-with-hydra-basic-kit.html

See you tonight!

April 19, 2012 – Hands-on Lab with Ian Lee – “.NET Micro Framework and Gadgeteer”

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Secretary

Join us Thursday (04/19/2012) at 6:00 PM for free food and drinks. The lab begins at 6:30 PM, followed by some great giveaways, such as books, training, software, and this time two Gadgeteer Kits too! Our meetings are held at 22 Century Blvd, Nashville, TN (map).

Topic: “.NET Micro Framework and Gadgeteer”

Our lab master, Ian Lee will speak about the Gadgeteer platforms and then we jump into the fun of programming. Hands-on lab means this time that you’ll be able to play with Microcontrollers! This lab wouldn’t be possible without our good friend VACO, who sponsors us with the Gadgets. We’ll use FEZ Hydra Kits from GHI Electronics, and even better: we’ll give away two of them during the raffle (thanks again VACO).

Lab master: Ian Lee

Ian Lee is a software engineer at Mercury Intermedia during the day and .NET Micro Framework & Gadgeteer hobbyist by night (preparing for the zombie apocalypse). He documents his electronics and woodworking hobbies on his “Software & Sawdust” blog at http://blog.ianlee.info.

Links:

Ian Lee’s blog: http://blog.ianlee.info
FEZ Hydra Basic Kit: http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/332
VACO: http://www.vaco.com/nashville

Zombie Defense Gatling Gun Video

Posted on April 13, 2012 by President

Here’s a video of Ian Lee demonstrating his zombie defense gatling gun.

You can view pictures from Ian’s talk on our Facebook or Google+ group page.

April 12, 2012 – Ian Lee – “Tools for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: Microcontrollers & Gadgets”

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Secretary

Join us Thursday (04/12/2012) at 6:00 PM for free food and drinks. The lecture begins at 6:30 PM, followed by some great giveaways, such as books, training, and software. Our meetings are held at 22 Century Blvd, Nashville, TN (map).

Topic: “Tools for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: Microcontrollers & Gadgets”

When the zombie apocalypse comes will you be ready? If you have doubts then attend this session and learn how you can use microcontrollers and the .NET Micro Framework & Gadgeteer platforms to build the tools you need to protect your family and have fun doing it. This will be a brief intro to .NET Micro Framework (FEZ & Netduino boards), Arduino, and the new Gadgeteer platform. Be there or be food.

Speaker: Ian Lee

Links to get smart (besides Ian’s blog):

Devhammer Den’s blog contains Gadgeteer stuff: http://devhammer.net/blog/what-can-you-do-with-.net-gadgeteer
694th DotNetRocks episode: Kerry Hammil Builds .NET Gadgets
625th DotNetRocks episode: Gus Issa Has a Micro .NET Framework!
Official .NET Micro Framework website: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/netmf/default.aspx
CodePlex project: https://netmf.codeplex.com/
294th DotNetRocks episode: Colin Miller and the .NET Micro Framework!

March 15, 2012 – Lab – ASP.NET MVC 3 and Razor

Posted on March 12, 2012 by President

Our hands-on labs are a great way to learn new skills and technologies in a laid-back, cooperative environment. Doors open at 6:00 PM for free food and soft drinks, and the lab will begin around 6:30 PM. Bring your laptop, or be ready to look on with someone else. Our meetings are held at 22 Century Blvd, Nashville, TN (map).

Topic: ASP.NET MVC 3 and Razor

Microsoft’s ASP.NET MVC and related technologies is a great way to build web applications. It is also one of the most in-demand skills sought by organizations in the Nashville area. Join us for a fun night of hands-on learning as we dive into this technology and learn more about it.

Helpful Links:

Jon Galloway’s ASP.NET MVC 3 Roundup
Official ASP.NET MVC 3 Home Page

Intro to Agile Night

Posted on March 9, 2012 by President

The Nashville Agile User Group is putting on a FREE event designed to help developers and technologists learn more about agile software development. There will be presentations given on Scrum, eXtreme Programming, and Lean/Kanban. Dinner is provided, and there are some great door prizes, including box seats to a Predator’s game, an Apple TV, and a Kindle Fire!

When: Monday, March 19th, 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Where: Vaco Office, 5410 Maryland Way, Suite 460, Brentwood, TN 37027

March 8th – Tommy Norman – Intro to Developing for the Kinect

Posted on February 28, 2012 by President

Join us at 6:00 PM for free food and soft drinks. The lecture begins at 6:30 PM, followed by a drawing for free giveaways, such as books, training, and software. Our meetings are held at 22 Century Blvd, Nashville, TN (map).

Intro to Developing for the Kinect

Microsoft’s Kinect device gives you a wide array of new ways to interact with your software. With its rich API you can easily track user motions, interpret speech commands, and more. This presentation will cover the basics of developing applications to use the Kinect including the following:

Setting up your development environment to work with the Kinect
Capturing Video
Using Depth Data
Skeletal Tracking
Using Speech Commands

Speaker: Tommy Norman

Tommy Norman is an Agile Coach and TFS developer for Omnicell. For 15 years he has been designing and developing line of business applications. In recent years he has been helping clients in the area of Application Lifecycle Management with tools such as Team Foundation Server and the Scrum framework. Tommy is the coordinator of the Nashville Agile User Group, one of the original founders of the devLink Technical Conference, a past president of the Nashville .NET User Group, and a frequent speaker. He has also been recognized as a Microsoft ALM MVP. When not working he enjoys being at home with his family of 5, playing guitar, and music.

Learn More

UPDATE: Source Code From Presentation

GitHub: Intro to Developing for the Kinect
Download as Zip