Chicago ALT.NET User Group

June 2013 Meeting

F# Meetup

Better description soon.

May 2013 Meeting

Cross Platform Push with Azure

The way users use smartphones is changing. Where before we had a limited number of social services (mostly Facebook) we could rely on the user to check their feeds and see if there were important changes. But now, especially with the proliferation of social services this is no longer practical.

Enter Push Notifications, a way to send the data the user deems important to them. While the idea of Push is not new, it is coming to the forefront after Microsoft built their entire platform around it. Its importance cannot be understated and has made other platforms look at how they can better utilize it.

This talk will focus on the user experience aspects of Push and why its important. We will then dive into a full example utilizing iOS, Android, .NET and Azure as we explore how Push is/can be handled on these various platforms.

Jason Farrell works for the Centare Group in Chicago. Formally from Michigan, Jason moved to Chicago in April of 2012 to help build the Centare office in Chicago.

Jason focuses primarily on client facing solution involving mobile, web, and client side across many verticals. In his spare time Jason enjoys learning cutting edge technologies (currently SignalR and AngularJS) as well as video games and running.

Outside of technology Jason is an avid traveler having lived in Japan and summited Mt. Fuji. Jason also enjoys biking and cooking

April 2013 Meeting

Erlang for C# Developers

A team of C# and Erlang developers is a force to be reckoned with because Erlang and .NET are pure complements — each excels at what the other sucks at. Many C# developers write both JavaScript and SQL; adding Erlang to the mix can (and should) be just as natural.

But wait, what is Erlang? Erlang is an industry-proven, open-source, cross-platform, functional programming language and runtime. Facebook's chat, CouchDB, RabbitMQ, GitHub's pages, Opscode Chef, Riak, and Amazon's SimpleDB are all written in Erlang for good reason — Erlang simplifies writing highly-reliable, concurrent, distributed systems.

How does a C# developer even get started? What are the development tools? Can it all be done on Windows? What is similar, and what is truly foreign? What baggage does a good C# developer bring to Erlang? How do you begin to lose your C# accent? When is Erlang the right tool for the job? How should a .NET shop pilot Erlang? Come learn the "what", "why" and "how" of Erlang and get started!

Bryan Hunter is a geek, a partner at Firefly Logic, founder of Nashville Functional Programmers, and a Microsoft MVP in C#. Bryan is obsessed with Lean, Erlang, and CQRS. He speaks on each of these subjects tirelessly at conferences, user groups and bars.

You can say hi to Bryan on Twitter (@bryan_hunter), and see what Firefly Logic is all about here: www.fireflylogic.com.

March 2013 Meeting

Get Real-time with SignalR and ASP.NET

Still trying to keep a persistent web connection with forced techniques that leave you with an uneasy feeling? It's time to alleviate those feelings — there is a library for that and it's called SignalR.

SignalR is a client and server side library for .NET that provides the framework to build real-time, asynchronous ASP.NET applications. Figuring out implementation details for functionality such as real time notifications is a thing of the past!

In this session, you'll learn all about SignalR and see how you can build an ASP.NET application using it.

Jeremiah Billmann is a Senior Software Engineer with Skyline Technologies. Jeremiah has been in software consulting for much of the past decade taking on roles ranging from developer to software development manager.

He has a tremendous amount of passion for software design patterns, best practices and web applications. He feels most at home in the world of ASP.NET MVC or just plain HTML and JavaScript.

When he isn't coding, he has a conflict of interests as he holds a personal trainer certification and appreciates well-crafted beer.