NEBytes March: Bytecast out now, Automation event next week

Next Wednesday (16th March), NEBytes is putting on an Automation Extravaganza in Newcastle, with John Price delivering a session on developing home automation systems, then I'm going to talk about using PowerShell beyond the blue command window.

My session is going to cover a number of different scanarios for taking advantage of PowerShell in different hosts, from those provided by Microsoft to 3rd party solutions, including the web. I hope that some people who think they know what PowerShell is are going to get a bit of a surprise!

To register for the event, head over to Eventbrite.

As well as the in-person events, we're continuing to produce the NEByes Bytecast, on a new monthly schedule (with some special Mega-Bytecasts coming in the future). Ben Lee and I sat down last Sunday to record Episode 9 and I think we made a good show, featuring discussion of Windows Phone 7 update problems, Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, SSD security, gaming and Apple's new versions of OS X and the iPad. If those things tickle your fancy, pop over to the NEBytes site to grab the mp3 or subscribe via RSS or iTunes.

Windows Server User Group returns with April 6th event in London

After a few months without a meeting, the Windows Server User Group are hosting an event at Microsoft's London HQ (at Cardinal Place, near Victoria Station) at 6pm on the 6th April. There will be two sessions: Microsoft's Bill Orme will present Active Directory – Rights Management Services (AD-RMS) and how it can integrate with the cloud, and Simon Veale of the Oxford Computer Group is presenting on Active Directory – Federation Services (AD-FS). The formal sessions will be followed by far less formal drinks in the Ha Ha bar afterwards.

If you're in the area, I'd suggest getting yourself along to the event. See all the details and the registration link on the Windows Server User Group site. 

NEBytes Event this Wednesday - Exchange 2010 and WCF Data Services

This Wednesday, 16th June, the 7th North East Bytes meeting of the year has NEBytes co-founder Ben Lee talking about Exchange 2010 and Iain Angus of Black Marble covering WCF Data Services. Here are the full details...

"WCF Data Services" with Iain Angus
WCF Data Services is a framework for exposing data layers in a REST-ful manner. This session will look at how WCF, REST and LINQ come together to form Microsoft's latest data access technology. Topics covered include implementing and consuming data services, why IQueryable and IUpdatable are important, service operations / interceptors and concurrency.

"Exchange 2010, Product Overview And Example Architectures" with Ben Lee
Exchange 2010 is the latest generation of Microsoft’s enterprise messaging suite. This session will provide an overview of the platform, focusing on the architecture changes including the simplified storage topology, resiliency options as well as the improvements to the end users. If you didn’t know what a DAG was before the session, you certainly will by the end!

This free event is hosted at Newcastle University from 18:30 to 21:30 and if you'd like to come along, please register at Eventbrite.

NEBytes May Event - Making Powerful use of PowerShell 2.0 Easily

I'm a bit slow posting this one, especially since I was the one who planned it from the start, but better late than never. Next Wednesday evening, 19th May, I will be presenting at NEBytes in Newcastle on PowerShell 2.0. Here's the overview...

With the launch of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, PowerShell became part of the core OS and added a bunch of 2.0 features. In this session, aimed at existing users of PowerShell as well as beginners, we'll cover some of the new aspects of PowerShell which IT Professionals can use easily to manage their Windows systems. This will include remoting, background jobs, advanced functions, script debugging and more. There are some deep concepts at play here, but this session will make them accessible enough for you to start working straight away. For those with no experience of working with PowerShell, there will be a quick on-ramp to get you going.

Also on the bill is a developer session from Phil Pursglove entitled The Need For Speed: A Developers Guide to Velocity (aka AppFabric). That doesn't mean anything to me right now, so I'll be interested to hear that presentation myself.

The event is free (as usual), and if you want to come along, sign up at Eventbrite.

NEBytes / UK Tech Days events in April

Next month we'd already planned an event on the 3rd Wednesday as usual, when we had the opportunity to become part of Silverlight Geek, Jesse Liberty's tour of the UK & Ireland. It was too good a chance to pass up, so we're doing the regular event and a special one-off...

On Friday 19th April, Jesse will be joining us to deliver a session on "Building A Highly Extensible, Decoupled Silverlight Open Source Application with MEF and RIA Services using Lean, Test Driven Development, An International Team of Volunteer Programmers,  and lots of Advil."

This talk will use the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform open-source project on CodePlex as a case study in building highly extensible Silverlight applications. Among the topics we will focus on are:

• New features in Silverlight 4 and how they made life easier
• The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) added to Silverlight 4
• WCF RIA Services for connection to a back-end db
• Handling inter-module communication when the requirements are that modules cannot assume which other modules will be created, there can be no dependencies on order-of creation and unanticipated modules must be able to communicate with existing modules.
• Using Markers, Injected Markers and polling to trigger events while viewing a video.
• A Quick introduction to Lean, TDD and Kanban.

Registration is open and is free as usual. We are exploring the possibility of following Jesse's session with a Geek Dinner (although that won't be free). Keep an eye on the NEBytes site for more details on that.

You may want to sign up for that one as soon as possible - with the recent announcements over Windows Phone 7 Series development using Silverlight, this topic is hotter than ever.

In addition, we'd already planned April's regular event on Wednesday 21st April, where Ben Lee and myself are going to cover Office 2010, and Colin Mackay is coming to talk about "SQL Injection Attacks and Tips on How To Prevent Them".

The Office 2010 session isn't just going to be your typical tour of sparkly new features, although we will do a bit of that for people who like that sort of thing (I know I do). We're going to have some proper IT Pro content in there, so if it's your job to deploy and manage the Office suite, this session is for you. Hopefully we'll manage to fit in one or two cool things that you can go and teach the boss to help make them look good too.

Registration for the 21st is also open now.

It's also worth pointing out that we're running these as UK Tech Days fringe events. The main Tech Days events run in London, 12th - 16th April, with a full line-up for developers and for IT professionals. There are a variety of fringe events in London that week, and around the country, being run by various usergroups from this week into May.

You can follow all the UK Tech Days events by searching for the #uktechdays tag on Twitter.