The guys in Baton Rouge have scheduled the first meeting of the Windows Phone user group. They don’t yet have their own web site, so I’m going to try to help out by blogging the mailer that just went out. For now, head over to their Google Group site to keep up on all the latest details.

Baton Rouge Windows Phone User Group Meeting – November 9th

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011, and for this month, we will be running in conjunction with the .NET User Group, the SQL Server User Group and the IT Pro User Group.  The meeting is on LSU’s campus at Tureaud Hall, which is north of our previous meeting place, Taylor Hall (CEBA). Tureaud Hall is adjacent to the Dairy Science Building/Ice Cream Shop. See this link for an overhead map to Tureaud – http://g.co/maps/xb5pf

When arriving on campus, park in any of the available spots in the parking lot to the northwest of the building or on Stadium Drive. Alternatively, you can actually park in the same lot as before, to the west of Taylor Hall, and walk north on the sidewalk. 
 
Our meeting begins in room 204 at 6pm with food and announcements. 

Room 204 – BR .NET User Group and food
Room 206 – SQL Server User Group
Room 211 – IT Pro User Group
Room 221 – Windows Phone 7 User Group
 
Topic:   Pocket Brewer – Show and Tell

See what went in to creating a simple Silverlight based Windows Phone 7 beer brewing app and the support structure that supports it.    Wayne will talk about the process from File->New Project, app construction, building the supporting website, the submission process, marketplace issues, revenue and in general dealing with the app over the past few months.

About Wayne Odom:

Wayne is a Software Development Project Lead for Turner Industries Group, a large heavy industrial construction company based out of Baton Rouge.   After graduating from LSU with a computer science degree in 2002 he has continuously been developing a variety of software solutions for Baton Rouge businesses, including construction, health insurance, advertising and SEO.    He also maintains a small client base (jerryodom.net) and a couple of pet projects including a personal blog(wayneodom.com), a beer brewing app (pocketbrewer.com) and an informational Baton Rouge website (bestofbatonrouge.com).

As always, stay after the meeting for a developer garage where you can work with other Windows Phone developers to add polish to your app ideas, or to help you out of a development rut. 

Finally, let everyone know that these meetings are open to the public, especially to students! 

I just heard off the grapevine that there is a new Windows Phone user group starting up in Baton Rouge! For those of you in the area, I *highly* recommend you attend. I absolutely LOVE the format – a little time to chat and eat, a little time for a presentation, then a good 90 minutes for hacking away at building applications. This is the format that I think all user groups should look to adopt – it’s great to hear new information about relevant technologies, but there is nothing like getting your hands dirty actually trying to build applications with that technology.

Here’s the agenda and registration information for those that are interested in attending. I wish I could go myself, but I only just learned of it today and can’t get out to BR that quickly I will make every effort to attend one in the coming months – hope to see you there!

When: Wednesday, October 19, starting at 5:45
Where: Sparkhound, Inc., 1st Floor Conference Room

Sponsored: Sparkhound, Inc!

Topic: New development features in Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango)
Speaker: Paul Johnson, Sparkhound

Windows Phone Mango release has finally gone RTM and is making its way to handsets across the universe! This meeting will be to spotlight some of the major improvements as well as exploring some code examples that enable us to pull them off.

About Paul Johnson:
Paul is a Senior Development Consultant with Sparkhound, Inc. Though not in an official capacity, Paul is evangelizing the Windows Phone platform whenever and wherever he can.

As with all meetings of the BRWPUG, all time after the presentation is available for discussion of WP app development in an open forum.

Agenda:
5:45-6:15 – Meet, Greet, and Eat
6:15-7:15 – Presentation by Paul Johnson
7:15-8:30 – Phone Garage

RSVP Via EventBrite.com @ brwpug1019.eventbrite.com

If you are interested in getting more involved with Windows Phone development in Baton Rouge, or want to find out about future meetings of the BRWPUG, please visit their online dissusion group or contact their organizer at pjohnsonjr@live.com and @pjguitarist.

My good friend Jay Smith announced on his blog this week that he’ll be hosting another one of his amazing Community Leadership Town Hall events at the upcoming Tulsa TechFest.

What is a Community Leadership Town Hall, you ask? Here’s some bits from Jay’s blog:

In many towns and cities across the country the town hall is the center of the community.  The town hall is where the local governments keep offices, serves as the main base for the Mayor, and is where citizens of the community come to work with the official representatives to share issues, ideas, and solutions that can make their community better. 

The Community Leadership Town Hall brings this concept to community leaders in your area.  The evening will be filled with discussions about issues, ideas, and solutions regarding creating, maintaining, and growing user groups and technical communities.   This will be a highly interactive night where everyone will have a chance to suggest a topic and voice their opinion.

For those who haven’t added it to your calendar yet, Tulsa TechFest is scheduled for Friday, October 7th, so the CLTH will be held the night before on October 6th, 2011 from 6 – 10 PM at the OSU Room NH150. I hope to see you there!

Tonight marks the kick-off meeting for the newest user group in the metroplex – Hands-On-Coding.

Unlike many of the excellent .NET community-based groups around, the goal of Hands-On-Coding is to learn .NET coding by doing. The format will consist of a short conceptual overview of a coding topic, followed by a series of interactive, hands-on, instructor-led lab exercises.

For the first meeting, C# MVP Sean Weisfeld will lead the group into a deep dive of Generics in .NET. During this meeting, attendees will write their own generic implementation of a generic method and generic collection, and then take some "sample" code and convert it to use generics.

Going forward, the group will meet every second Tuesday of the month, from 6 to 9 PM, at Improving Enterprises. To find out more about future meetings, make sure to visit their web site at www.hands-on-coding.net, and join their mailing list. While you’re visiting the web site, be sure to share your recommendations on how to make the group better, or land a comment here to let us know what you think!

Come Join Us for two day s of Code and Fun with Silverlight and Windows Phone 7!

We will start Friday June 18th with a walkthrough of the tools and some key skills to get you started.  The goal is to provide a foundation to enable groups to build dynamic Windows Phone 7 applications using Microsoft Silverlight.  How we structure the training and focus points will depend on how attendees answer a few questions when they sign up. At the end of the day on Friday, you will join with a few of your peers to start collaborating on your own WP7 or Straight-up Silverlight application to work on and present to the other groups at the end of Saturday. 

Saturday June 19th, we build, build, build (you can start Friday night if you want but you will need to do that off site).  Mentors will be on hand to answer questions and add clarity to problem spots.

At the end of Saturday, the groups will have an opportunity to show what they built and bring it all together.  Before we all go home, we’ll have some cool giveaways.

Lunch will be provided both days!

You can get more information about this event at http://silverlightpalooza.dynamitesilverlight.com/ or register right here, right now!

I was asked to do a presentation on giving demos at a the recent DFW Technically Speaking event, held last weekend at the Woot! offices in Carrollton.  Without doing any actual demos, and saving the specific tools discussion/demonstration for a future talk, I wanted to share my experiences planning, scripting, practicing and targeting your demos to a technical audience. 

Anyway � here is the video.  I look forward to your feedback

Attention all  current and potential public speakers!  Are you a technical person with loads of great information to share with your peers? Do you get nervous speaking in front of crowds? Would you like to develop your public speaking, demonstration and group interaction skills?  Then DFW Technically Speaking is for you!

Led by some of our top local presenters, here�s a summary of what Technically Speaking will help you learn to do:

• Overcome public speaking nervousness by gaining confidence in your presentation skills
• Present technical ideas and speak more effectively at user groups or technical events
• Communicate your ideas more effectively using stance, gestures, movement, and voice
• Structure your presentations to emphasize and reinforce key points.
• Create visual aids and improve your use of them while interacting with your audience
• Target your presentations to match your audiences by use of research techniques

Featured speakers include:

• Dave Gunby �The successful speaker: Techniques for �Techies�
• Chris Koenig � Art of the Demo
• Caleb Jenkins � Gauging and engaging your audience
• Tim Rayburn � Let�s get started!!

The first Technically Speaking event will be held on March 27th, 2010 from 9am � 5:00 pm at 4121 International Parkway in Carrollton. The cost to attend is $50 per person, which will include a nice lunch. 

Seats are limited so sign up soon by going to http://technicallyspeaking.dfwnav.com or contact Teresa Burger at tburger@woot.com.

My friend and teammate John Weston (a.k.a. @technetguy) just told me about a new SharePoint user group in OKC.

Their first meeting is Thursday, March 11th at the Dell facility in OKC:

3501 SW 15th
Bldg A, Hudson Hall
Oklahoma City, OK 73108

Map to Dell Campus in OKC

Eric Shupps, the SharePoint Cowboy, will be presenting at this first meeting, giving an overview of MOSS 2010.  For more information see the OKC SharePoint User Group website (coming soon!).