Mark A. Wilson

Register Now for Spark Conference

Posted on May 11, 2015May 24, 2015 by Mark A. Wilson

Register Now for Spark Conference

Join us for the 2015 Spark Conference on Saturday, June 6, at the UNC Charlotte Center City campus in uptown Charlotte, NC. Connect with up to 600 members of the regional developer community. Thoughts will be sparked. Questions will be answered. And fun will be had. To learn more about this premier, must-attend event for technology enthusiasts in the South Atlantic region, please visit www.sparkconf.org.

We Love Our Sponsors

This conference would not be possible without the support of our sponsors. For that, we love our sponsors. Please take few moments to thank them for their support. Let them know that we appreciate their contributions. To learn more about becoming a sponsor of this incredible networking opportunity, please visit www.sparkconf.org/sponsor.

April Meeting: JavaScript of Tomorrow Is Already Here

Posted on April 21, 2015April 20, 2015 by Mark A. Wilson

Join us and TekPartners on Tuesday, April 28, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. We will take a look at the landscape for creating rich single page applications and how ECMAScript 6 is becoming popular now. We will evaluate what it means to write an application in ES6 and also look at some features of ES7 that are being targeted now as well. We will also look at automation tools like GulpJS and, the new kid on the block, JSPM. This will be an introduction to all that is coming at Mach speed. You can decide to jump in and learn now or wait until your are forced to. We hope you will see some advantages of taking a look now and how some tooling, like Microsoft’s TypeScript, is trying to help in the transition.

The meeting presenter is Matt Duffield.

Matt Duffield has over 15 years working in IT. He enjoys building rich user centric applications. Matt is very active in the community speaking at user groups and code camps. He is the leader of the Charlotte ALT.NET user group. He is an INETA speaker member and has been a Microsoft MVP in Client Application Development. He started working in .NET as soon as it was available to the development community and was also an early adopter of both WPF and Silverlight. He believes good business intelligence (BI) architecture is the formula for a successful software package that looks beyond just data and provides insightful information. He is the co-author of the book: Silverlight 5: Building Rich Enterprise Dashboards. You can read his blog at mattduffield.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter at @mattduffield.

The meeting is sponsored by TekPartners.

TekPartners is a leading provider of professional services for the Information Technology and Communications community. TekPartners has been ranked by numerous publications as one of the FASTEST GROWING Technology Service firms in the country.

TekPartners excels in the areas of Application Development, Data Warehousing, Database Administration, Web Development, Network Infrastructure, ERP, Business Analysis, Project Management and Technical Support.

TekPartners is a full-service organization with the ability to offer consulting, staff augmentation, recruitment, human capital management and business intelligence solutions to our clients. We provide our clients with the ability to identify, screen, select and hire the best and most qualified talent available within today’s marketplace. TekPartners focuses in the areas of contract, staff augmentation, direct hire and contract-to-hire service offerings which allows our team to provide world-class service to our clients and candidates. Learn more at www.tekpartners.com.

Please RSVP so we know how much food to order.

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When is the next Carolina Code Camp?

Posted on April 15, 2015April 20, 2015 by Mark A. Wilson

The Enterprise Developers Guild hosted the first code camp in Charlotte, NC on Saturday, April 30, 2005. When asked what spurred the camp’s creation, Bill Jones, Co-Founder of the Guild stated, “We saw a lot of change coming and no easy way for contract developers to get training.” The daylong event was the first of its kind locally. Mark Wilson, the Guild’s First Vice President, described it as having “more than 20 hours of hard-hitting technical content.”

As the program evolved, user groups from around the region took interest. This prompted the name change from Charlotte Code Camp to Carolina Code Camp. With the added diversification, the Enterprise Developers Guild had created one of the most influential training platforms for IT talent in the Carolinas.

Since its pilot, the trademark event experienced monumental growth. The initial event only had around 100 in attendance. Last year, almost 400 attended with many more on a wait list. The amount of content also grew with a total of 60 hours of training offered last year. Additionally, the agenda has seen many upgrades. Attendees have enjoyed the integration of hands-on labs and informal “Chalk Talks” hosted by Microsoft MVPs, authors, and of course, local developers.

Over the course of ten years, the Enterprise Developers Guild hosted a total of 14 events. While no one kept official statistics, it’s safe to say thousands of attendees across the region have benefited from hundreds of hours of training. But despite the overwhelming success of the event, the 2014 Carolina Code Camp was the last one.

What happened to code camp? In short, it grew! Due to an overwhelming attendance, we’ve outgrown the previous venue. This presented an opportunity to shake things up…and we couldn’t resist!

This year, Wilson, Syl Walker, the Guild’s Vice President, and UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics, along with others, are introducing Spark Conference. This all new event will become the premier, must-attend event for technology enthusiasts in the South Atlantic region. But rest assured that our goal for Spark Conference is to not just match the rich success of Carolina Code Camp but to make it better than ever for our attendees, speakers, and sponsors.

To learn more, please visit the event website at www.sparkconf.org.

Have you submitted your Spark Conference session yet?

Posted on April 10, 2015April 10, 2015 by Mark A. Wilson

Call for Participation Ends April 12

There are just a few days left to share your spark with the community. The session submission window will be closing this Sunday night. If you have already submitted your sessions, rest assured the organizers are processing them and will begin voting on them soon. If you haven’t, block part of your day off to give yourself time to submit your sessions.

As a reminder, they are looking for topics in the following general tracks:

Design — Sessions focused on UI/UX design principals, tools, and techniques.
Developer — Sessions for software developers, testers, architects, or project managers.
Internet of Things — Sessions around the network of physical objects or embedded “things”.
IT Professional — Sessions for server, database, or network administrators.
Startup — Sessions around founding a technology startup or running a technology company.
STEM — Sessions for K-12 students interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Panel Discussion — Discussions that you will be organizing to discuss one of the tracks above.

The deadline for submitting sessions is Sunday, April 12, 2015 at 24:00 EDT. Speaker selection will be announced toward the end of April, before tickets go on sale. To learn more about becoming a speaker at the 2015 Spark Conference, please visit www.sparkconf.org/session.

We Love Our Sponsors

March Meeting: Kendo <3 Angular: Two Great Libraries, Together At Last!

Posted on March 17, 2015April 4, 2015 by Mark A. Wilson

Join us and Signature Consultants on Tuesday, March 24, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. Telerik’s Kendo UI framework provides everything you need to create great JavaScript applications. It includes a world-class widget library. But in recent years, AngularJS has exploded onto the scene. It has become a popular and elegant framework for creating web applications. Yet, Angular lacks its own built-in widget library. This could have created a nearly perfect match, but when Angular first came along, using it with Kendo UI wasn’t easy. That all changed recently when Telerik added support for AngularJS into Kendo UI, and now the two can finally be together! Jonathan “J” Tower will walk us through an introduction to both frameworks. He will show us how you too can make amazing web applications with AngularJS + Kendo UI.

The meeting presenter is Jonathan “J.” Tower

Jonathan “J.” Tower is a Microsoft MVP, Telerik Developer Expert, and Senior Software Architect with over fifteen years of software development experience in many different industries. He loves the creative and problem-solving aspects of his work, sharing what he’s learned, and building community.

J’s current technology interests include web technologies–ASP.NET MVC, various JavaScript frameworks like Kendo and Angular– as well as cross-platform mobile development technologies like Xamarin or hybrid mobile apps.

Normally you would find J. near his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he organizes a user group, four annual developer conferences, and a GiveCamp. This year, however, he and his family are on a one-year-long road trip around the country visiting the 48 contiguous states.

The meeting is sponsored by Signature Consultants.

Signature Consultants was established in 1997 with a singular focus: Provide our clients and consultants with superior staffing solutions. At Signature Consultants, it’s not just about the bottom line; it’s about the people. We focus on the relationships we have with our clients, consultants and candidates. Our motto, “Getting IT Right,” is reflected in every aspect of our company – it guides our decisions and actions and ensures that our consultants and clients always come first. Learn more at www.sigconsult.com.

Please RSVP so we know how much food to order.

Downloads: Slides and Code

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Introducing Spark Conference

Posted on March 16, 2015April 10, 2015 by Mark A. Wilson

Spark Conference will offer unparalleled training for developers.

To learn more, please visit the event website at www.sparkconf.org.

Call for Participation

A small fiery particle of curiosity, passion, and motivation can ignite great things within us all. It only takes a spark for an idea to create new and innovative things. Please consider sharing your spark with the community. The only thing missing is you! To learn more about becoming a speaker at the 2015 Spark Conference, please visit www.sparkconf.org/session.

February Meeting: What’s up with Ruby on Rails? A .NET perspective.

Posted on February 16, 2015April 4, 2015 by Mark A. Wilson

Join us on Tuesday, February 24, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. The Rails framework was first released nine years ago. Over the years, it has gotten traction with web developers and enjoys a large and active community. Just earlier this month, Microsoft announced that you can run Ruby on Rails (or anything else, really) on IIS8 with the new HttpPlatformHandler. If you are an ASP.NET developer, or just someone who has wondered, “What’s the deal with Rails?”, please join us for a look at Ruby on Rails from a .NET perspective.

The meeting presenter is Paula Paul.

Paula was one of the first 1000 people to earn an MCSD certification in C# during her early consulting days in Boston. She’s been kicking around Charlotte for a few years since joining Microsoft Consulting Services as an ‘App Dev’ consultant in 2001 to work with enterprise customers on .NET adoption. Paula has donned many hats and toolchains since then. When she’s not home with programmer and husband Bob and their two boys, Paula consults and teaches a Ruby on Rails immersion course for Tech Talent South.

Please RSVP so we know how much food to order.

Downloads: Slides and Code

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Future Path Technology Scholarship

Posted on February 9, 2015February 14, 2015 by Mark A. Wilson

Logical Advantage, a Premier Sponsor of the Enterprise Developers Guild, has established the annual Future Path Technology Scholarship. The $3,000 scholarship will be awarded to a Mecklenburg County high school senior who has been accepted to a North Carolina college or university to study computer science or a related technology degree. The intent of the scholarship is to recognize a local student who has demonstrated a passion for technology.

The application period is open now, and will close on February 18th at 5:00 PM. To learn more about the scholarship and to download the application, click here.

Please share with anyone who might be interested.

January Meeting: MongoDB

Posted on January 15, 2015February 15, 2015 by Mark A. Wilson

Join us on Tuesday, January 27, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. Joe Feser, Senior Developer from Logical Advantage, will discuss MongoDB with us. In this talk Joe will go over what is involved in setting up MongoDB on Windows and what is involved in working with it in C#. He will discuss: how to serialize / deserialize objects, how to query the data, and how to configure databases and containers (“tables”). Joe will show what an e-commerce ordering system would look like in MS SQL Server and compare how it would look in MongoDB, including sample code. Joe will show how to create object structures for quick get and set operations. He will wrap up by discussing a few best practices and the challenges of migrating to MongoDB from SQL Server including searching and indexing.

The meeting presenter is Joe Feser.

With over 16 years of experience with Microsoft technologies, Joe Feser has worked on a vast array of challenging projects. He works at Logical Advantage on a wide variety of technologies including HTM5, Knockout.js, Silverlight, and SQL Server. In 2008, he moved to Greenville, SC from Cleveland, OH to work for NCover. Since then, Joe has worked on a free timing profiler and many open source projects. He also spend a lot of time working with Windows Azure using the Service Bus, SQL and Compute technologies. You can follow him on Twitter at @joefeser.

The meeting is sponsored by TEKsystems.

By working for TEKsystems you become part of our dedicated Microsoft Technologies Practice. Since its inception our Microsoft Technologies Practice has helped hundreds of Microsoft Specialists to find the most ideal job opportunities in the marketplace. Our program at TEKsystems specializes in the cornerstone technologies of the Microsoft stack – .NET, SQL Server and SharePoint. Our team consists of Delivery Experts, in key market geographies, with ties to the most cutting edge work opportunities.

As a member of the TEKsystems Microsoft Technologies Practice you will have access to a Market Delivery Expert that focuses on Microsoft Technology jobs around the clock in your local region as well as across the US. In some cases you will be afforded the opportunity to become a full time employee of TEKsystems and work as a Microsoft expert on our staff or at our key clients. Be sure to speak with your local TEKsystems contact Lindsey Thomka about our Microsoft Technologies Practice and how it can benefit your career.

People are at the heart of every successful business initiative. At TEKsystems, we understand people. Every year we deploy over 80,000 IT professionals at 6,000 client sites across North America, Europe and Asia. Our deep insights into IT human capital management enable us to help our clients achieve their business goals – while optimizing their IT workforce strategies. We provide IT staffing solutions, IT talent management expertise and IT services to help our clients plan, build and run their critical business initiatives. Through our range of quality-focused delivery models, we meet our clients where they are, and take them where they want to go, the way they want to get there. Learn more at www.teksystems.com.

Please RSVP so we know how much food to order.

Downloads: Slides and Code

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Author: Mark A. Wilson

Register Now for Spark Conference

We Love Our Sponsors

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Call for Participation Ends April 12

We Love Our Sponsors

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Spark Conference will offer unparalleled training for developers.

Call for Participation

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