Alabama Tech Events

The February meeting of Steel City SQL will be Tuesday, Februrary 17th at New Horizons Computer Learning Center.  The meeting will feature SQL Server Microsoft MVP, Rodney Landrum, presenting on Bulk Loading SQL in Space. This session will demonstrate the numerous ways to quickly and efficiently import and export large data volumes to SQL Server. The meeting begins at 6:00pm with a networking session and Rodney’s presentation follows beginning at 6:30pm. Food and beverage will be sponsored this month by Tek Systems.  Visit Steel City SQL for more info.

TechMixer Expo is a exposition event for the technology community of the greater Birmingham region.  Tech professionals and enthusiasts are invited to attend this FREE event which is centered on the numerous Technology User Groups and Technology Supporting Companies in the region.  This is the 5th edition of TechMixer Expo.  The last Expo attracted over 800 attendees and 70+ sponsors.

The event is hosted on the entire 3rd floor of the McWane Science Center.  Parking in the deck is free (deck entrance on 2nd Ave N) at which you can access the event entrance from Level C.  Valet parking on the curb of 2nd Ave North will also be available.  Free finger foods and a cash bar.

TechMixer Expo will take place on February 19th, 2009 from 5 to 8 pm at the McWane Science Center. For registration and more information, please see the official site http://www.techbirmingham.com/expo/

Update: I made contact with the speaker I’d lined up (my fault not his, I’d lost his e-mail during my conversion to Windows 7) and this will be a two for one meeting. We’ll do the BootCamp book selection as quickly as possible then move onto the main presentation. – Robert

The next meeting of the Birmingham Software Developers Association will take place on Thursday, February 12th at 6:30 pm. We will meet at our usual place, the New Horizons Training Center in Homewood.

This meeting will start with a planning session for Boot Camp. At a Boot Camp, we select a book to study. Volunteers than select one or more chapters to study, and at the Boot Camp do a presentation on the chapter they selected. Presentations typically run 30 to 60 minutes, depending on the length and complexity of the material. Our Boot Camps tend to be very loose and informal, they take place over a weekend (two weekends if there is a lot of material) and don’t have a rigid schedule.

At this meeting the club will review book choices, and settle on a final book. We will do a bulk order for books, and distribute at the March meeting. At that time we’ll divide up the chapters and prepare for a Boot Camp in April or May. If you have a book you think would be a good candidate, please bring it with you to the February meeting.

After the boot camp planning (hopefully no more than 20 minutes) we’ll move into the main presentation. Evan Koch will be demonstrating the Microsoft Business Rules Engine and how it can be used to encapsulate logic and the ease with which the rules can be updated as rules change.  Evan is a Senior Consultant with CTS, where he has been for the last seven years, focusing primarily on SQL Server and BizTalk.

Birmingham .Net Users Group

February 10, 2008

6:30 pm

Todd Miranda

Debugging Tips in Visual Studio 2008

We all know that we can click in the gutter of a source code file to create a breakpoint.  Did you know that, using advanced breakpoints, you could control under what conditions a breakpoint is triggered?  Did you know you could specify that a breakpoint could be triggered only every other time?  Do you know how to set a breakpoint in one function while you are currently in another function, even in another class?  In this presentation, you will learn these tricks and more to make your debugging more efficient!

Drawings will be held for swag at the end of the meeting.

Meeting will be held at New Horizons – click here for directions