Imagine Cup North East

For the last couple of weeks I've been helping behind the scenes with Imagine Cup North East. If you've never heard of the Imagine Cup it's an annual student competition run by Microsoft to build technology solutions to address real-world problems, and this year two great local organisations promoting digital industries, Codeworks and Sunderland Software City, have teamed up to run a regional heat.

This week students from Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland, Durham and Teesside universities and local colleges will be attending taster and information events (in Newcastle and Middlesbrough), where Microsoft's Ben Nunney will be on hand to discuss the finer points of the competiton.

The competition is a great opportunity for students to work on a project outside of their studies (looks good on the CV, etc) and it should be good fun too, with a 36 hour hack event later in the month. Of course there's also the possibility of a trip to the global finals in Australia to aim for too!

If you're a current student (or graduated in the last year) there's still time to get involved, and if you aren't eligible to take part, you should still be able to support the teams at a future NEBytes event. Head to the Imagine Cup North East site, the Facebook page, and follow @ImagineCupNE on Twitter to keep up with all the goings-on.

IE6 Migration Roadshow touring England

Please stop using IE6.

If you haven't yet, then you might want to attend one of these events. This comes direct from Microsoft...

We are thrilled to extend the invitation to you to attend our series of Internet Explorer 6 Migration Roadshow events!

With support for Windows XP coming to an end on the 8^th April 2014 and IE6 standing in so many people’s way of migration, what better time to start taking the leap to a more modern browser? Problem applications are all too often the blocker, so Microsoft have teamed up with Camwood, Citrix Systems and Quest Software, all application compatibility experts, to help jump-start your move.

Join us at a date below for a packed agenda discussing the technical challenges faced by IT departments when migrating their users off of IE6. We will establish:

·         Why you should go through the trouble of migrating;

·         How you go about identifying those problem applications;

·         What you can do about them.

There are a range of dates to choose from, each offering a slightly different spin and all promising to be thoroughly informative! Take your pick and use the links below to register with our partners.

Who, Where & When?
Tues 21^st February
Microsoft & Quest Software 
Manchester United Football Ground (Old Trafford) 
09:30 – 14:00 (+Stadium Tour!)
More Information & Registration

Thurs 22^nd March 
Microsoft & Citrix Systems (Including newly acquired AppDNA)
Chalfont St. Peter (Easy access via the M40 & M25 as well as rail)
09:00 – 16:00
More Information & Registration

Tues 3^rd April 
Microsoft & Camwood 
London, Cardinal Place 
More Information & Registration TBC

Thurs 19^th April 
Microsoft & Quest Software 
Reading Football Ground (Madejski Stadium) 
09:30 – 14:00 (+Stadium Tour!)
More Information & Registration

On behalf of all the team at Microsoft, we hope to see you there!

In case you're wondering, I'm usually a Chrome user myself. I'm not one for adding multiple extensions to a browser, so I like the way that Chrome natively syncs my bookmarks, etc, and has Flash and PDF reading funtionality built right in. So that's IE6 and Adobe's Flash and Reader that I no longer use. Three birds, one stone.

PowerShell v3 at NEBytes' 2nd birthday

This month's event marks 2 years since we started the North East Bytes user group and the start of what is bound to be an exciting year with some major new Microsoft products on the horizon. I'm happy to be able to give a presentation on the 18th January to talk about the "glue" that's going to bind a lot of those things together.

My session, "What's New in PowerShell v3, and Introducing Script Explorer" aims to give some insight into what's coming in the Windows 8 timeframe for those who have already started their PowerShell journey, and also to help those who are yet to take the plunge by looking at the soon-to-be-released Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell.

We're fortunate enough to have another interesting presentation on the night from Gary Short, another MVP and an excellent speaker, about data mining the social web.

You can see all the details, and register for this free event at Eventbrite. I hope to see you there!

NEBytes July event: SharePoint, IIS Media Services 4

This month NEBytes has teamed up with the SharePoint User Group UK - Simon Tyler is presenting on SharePoint Best Practices, and NEBytes' own Andrew Westgarth will be covering IIS Media Services 4.

The event will be held in Claremont Tower, Newcastle University on Wednesday 20th July at 18:30, and is sponsored by ffA.

For further details, and to register, head over to Eventbrite.

UK PowerShell User Group - 22nd March - Regular Expressions

One week from today, on Tuesday 22nd March, the UK PowerShell User Group will host a Live Meeting presentation on Regular Expressions by PowerShell MVP Tome Tanasovski. I make frequent use of Regular Expressions in PowerShell, so Tome's session sounds really interesting:

Regular Expressions have been employed by every serious scripting language for the past 15 years. PowerShell’s adoption and implementation of Regular Expressions has ensured that it is taken seriously by serious scripters. The presentation will explore the history and syntax of regular expressions. It will give a deep dive into the PowerShell cmdlets that use Regular Expressions as well as the .NET native methods that can be invoked using PowerShell. It will give a detailed understanding of the internals of Microsoft’s implementation of Regular Expressions and how it differs from other languages. Real-world scenarios for using regular expressions will be explored.

You'll find all the details to join the meeting on Richard Siddaway's blog, and remember, you don't need to be in the UK to take part, just be interested in the topic at hand.