Details: Conference Info
Quick Registration: Click here to register

Note: Member Discount of $100 off of the regular price  of $300 (a total cost of only $200) exclusively for our members!  Space is limited!
USE code SUGDC in Where did you hear about us to get the $200 price

Dear Colleague,
The SharePoint Users Group of Northern VA is proud to announce the event of the season! As a follow up to our very successful event last year, we are producing another Regional SharePoint Users conference. On Friday June 27th and Saturday 28th, we will be hosting a conference for users and by users. The event will be held at the Holiday Inn in Dulles, who has provided very reasonable rates for our out of town guests. 
Breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack for both days will be included. The presenters will all be users selected from within the community to share their hands-on real world experiences with SharePoint. Oh yea, the proceeds will go to the Children's Miracle Network (http://www.childrensmiraclenetwork.org/). 
 
We have put together a great line up of speakers with a total of three tracks:
1. SP Development and Design [SP Developers],
2. SP Administration [New and Experienced SP Administrators], and
3. SP Management and Governance [Business Unit Managers, Users, and SP Project Managers].
As always, there will be cross-pollination between and among tracks.
 
In addition we have brought together a great group of sponsors including:
1) Premiere - AvePoint
2) Platinum - Susquehanna Technologies
3) Platinum – I3 Solutions
 
Please register early as we expect this event to sellout. Remember, it is only $200 if you register and pay using the code SUGDC.
For full details, please visit the SUGDC Conference page.

Hello Everyone,

A lot of things have been happening behind the scenes that I would like to share with you, but first I would like to give a big thanks to our very own VP of Marketing, Hal Hayes, for working extremely hard trying to get sponsors signed-up to support our user group.

As you may know by now, Hal closed 3 product sponsor deals - this is huge! As I speak he is still hitting potential sponsors, especially meeting sponsors (those that provide the pizza!), so if you are interested in advertizing opportunity please feel free to reach out to him.

The 3 product sponsors I am referring to are:

1. Telerik
2. Infragistics
3. JetBrains

I was disappointed to have missed last month's meeting where I missed the very first time we ever gave our free product liceses to a lucky winner! The good news is, that because of Hal's hard work, we will be giving licenses away everytime we meet! W00t!

As if that were not enough, Hal is also going to be the presenter on the 18th. Here are the details:

Location: 
1900 Gallows Road, Vienna VA 22182

Time: 
7:00PM to 9:00PM

See you all there!

Antonio Chagoury
President
Capital DotNetNuke User Group
organizer@capitaldug.org

We are still on track for next meeting next Wednesday, May 21st at 7:00pm, however I wanted to inform you of a change in presenter.

Our very own Chris Hammond (another Core Team member) will be in town that week from his home town, St. Louis MO, and I have been able to persuade him to take on a presentation and provide his perspectives and ideologies around DotNetNuke.

The topic for the evening will remain the same (DotNetNuke WAP Module Development Overview), the difference is just the presenter; you get a better one :-)

For address and directions information please visit the following URL: http://www.capitaldug.org/About/Directions/tabid/748/Default.aspx

So without further ado:

Topic

DotNetNuke WAP Module Development Overview DNN Module development using web application projects. How to get started with module development for DotNetNuke, leveraging tools within the framework to speed up the development process. If time allows we will also get into Packaging and Distributing your modules.

About Chris Hammond

Chris Hammond is the Product Manager for Internet Solutions with Engage Software (www.engagesoftware.com) in St. Louis, Missouri. Having worked with DNN since its inception Chris has solidified his role within the community as a leading expert on the platform, presenting at conferences and user groups across the United States over the past 5 years. As a DotNetNuke Core Team member and Wiki Project team leader Chris has been able to provide community support and development to users all across the globe. He started and runs one of the most active DotNetNuke user groups, the St. Louis DNN User Group located at www.dnnug.com. You can read more about Chris on his blog at www.chrishammond.com.

Meeting Sponsors

Robert Half Technology
Robert Half Technology is a leading provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis. We specialize in initiatives ranging from web development and systems integration to network security and technical support.

To learn more about Robert Half Technology visit www.rht.com  

Product Sponsors

A FREE license to each of the following product will be raffled out at each meeting. Other swag such as T-Shirts and Books will also be raffled out. You can't miss this!

Infragistics net Advantage for ASP.net

Telerik RAD Controls for ASP.net

Other Sponsors

Inspector IT, Inc.
Inspector IT’s main core competencies range from large scale e-commerce applications architecture and development to mash-ups, social networking components and Web 2.0 solutions. Inspector IT is a .net and DotNetNuke Solutions provider located in the Washington DC metro area.

To learn more about Inspector IT visit www.inspectorit.com

Internation .net Association
INETA provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoft® .NET user groups. Our mission is to offer assistance and resources to community groups that promote and educate their membership in Microsoft's .NET technologies.

To learn more about INETA visit www.ineta.org   

We hope to you see you there!

Antonio Chagoury
Founder/President
Capital DotNetNuke User Group (C-DUG)
www.capitaldug.org

Event Date: Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
Presented by: Antonio Chagoury
Location: AT&T Building, 1900 Gallows Rd, Vienna, VA22182  (Directions: http://www.capitaldug.org/Directions.aspx)
Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm

DotNetNuke is a fast growing open source portal based on the Microsoft .NET framework. Learn how you can use DotNetNuke for your business, or personal use and how you can start extending the framework with your own custom modules. If are thinking of deploying or have already deployed DotNetNuke then chances are that the basic modules distributed with it are not sufficient to accomplish your goals. At this CodeCamp we will be demonstrating how you can effectively use the DotNetNuke Visual Studio .net StarterKit by demonstrating how to effectively develop data driven modules with a 3 layered architecture, the Data Access Layer (DAL), Business Logic Layer (BLL) and the Presentation Layer as well as the packaging and deployment methodology.

Antonio Chagoury will also be presenting at this month's NoVa Code Camp in Reston. Click here for more information on that event: http://www.inspectorit.com/Company/NewsEvents/tabid/673/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/36/Default.aspx

C-DUG is always looking for speakers and sponsors. Please see below to learn how you can get signed up to help C-DUG!

SPEAKERS

C-DUG is a user group, and as such, we would like to have you, the user, speak
to us. We encourage you to share your knowledge with your peers. If you have
had a particular experience with DotNetNuke, .NET, 3rd party applications, technology in
general, or just want to address the group, or if you just have tips and tricks
to help out, let us know. We would love to have you speak for as much time as you need, including short 15 minute presentations.

Send an email to  organizer[AT]capitaldug[DOT]org if you've:
* Got a topic you can share
* Got something you'd like to learn

SPONSORS

C-DUG is able to run these meetings for no cost to you thanks to the help
of our sponsors. There are several ways your company can help C-DUG
continue to provide quality service to its members:

• Sponsor a meeting by providing refreshments. Sponsors have theopportunity to speak to our members before the meeting to promote theirproduct or services.
• Donate promotional items to be raffled off at meetings. T-shirts,
  mugs, bags, stress balls, anything with your company's logo can help spread
  the word about your company and raise some money for C-DUG at the same time.
• Donate other items for raffle such as books, software, etc. that
  may or may not be related to your company.
• Offer free or discounted copies or use of your product or service
  for C-DUG members.
• Offer review copies of your product to C-DUG members: the member
  receives your product free and in return writes a review which is published
  on our website and a copy is sent to you.

All sponsors will be listed on our website, including a link to their
website as shown here: http://capitaldug.org/About/Sponsors/tabid/776/Default.aspx

For more information about becoming a C-DUG sponsor, please send an email to
organizer[AT]capitaldug[DOT]org

Thank you for your support!

Antonio Chagoury, President
http://www.capitaldug.org

Meetup http://taxreform.meetup.com/27/calendar/7472261
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=11240944457
Follow us on Twitter @TCMMdBio

When: March 12, 9:00 AM

Where: Lawyer's Mall Annapolis, MD (directly in front of the State House and next to the Governor's Mansion)

Why: This new tax, which takes effect July 2008, will put many Maryland businesses at a severe disadvantage. Small businesses -- the least able to sidestep the tax -- will be particularly affected. This tax will hurt the welfare of industries beyond the Tech sector and will also drive some businesses out of state! Imposing a 6% sales tax on computer services like computer facilities management, network maintenance and custom programming is bad policy.

RSVP: Brian Levine BLevine@techcouncilmd.com, Facebook or Meetup.
-----

Please mark your calendar to SPEND THE MORNING IN ANNAPOLIS Wednesday, March 12. The rally will crescendo just before 10 a.m. as legislators walk past the rally to their floor sessions in the State House.

Later that afternoon, Tech Council of Maryland staff and volunteer leaders will testify in hearings on the six percent Computer Services Sales Tax issue in both the House and the Senate. If you care about this issue, please mark March 12 on your calendars. We will need a huge business presence in Annapolis for the hearings.

Fight Tech Tax Coalition members include Tech Council of Md, the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Baltimore Tech Council, the Charles County Tech Council, Montgomery County Chamber and Howard County Chamber. Thank-you for your support!

Thanks so much and please let us know if you have any questions, Mitch <mitch@techcouncilmd.com>

Hello Everyone,

As some of you may already know, on March 29th, there is an exciting event: NoVa Code Camp South.
I have been asked to participate in presenting a session on "Building a DotNetNuke module" and I have gracefully accepted.

I know some of you have expressed the desire for another presentation on building DotNetNuke Module, so this is a great opporunity!

Given that many of you have expressed interest in attending this Code Camp we have decided to cancel this month's originally scheduled meeting (Original schedule: March 19th, 2008).

Finally, CodeCamp's capacity is 100 registrants, so if you wish to participate, please hurry and register here: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=125096
For a list of sessions please visit this page: http://novacodecamp.org/CodeCamps/NoVaCodeCampSouthv1/Sessions/tabid/140/Default.aspx

About NoVa Code Camp

NoVa CodeCamp South is the first CodeCamp in the Woodbridge area serving the southern regions of Northern Virginia.  Come join us at the Strayer University Campus in Woodbridge on March 29th 2008 from 9a until 5p and enjoy some great talks by some familiar and new faces in the .NET Community.  We'll even feed you pizza!  We'll post information on speakers and sessions as we develop them.  If you're interested in speaking at this CodeCamp send me an email with a title and abstract, we're hoping to have all the sessions slotted by the weekend.

• Steve Fibich - SSIS Event Handling
• Brian Noyes - Developing Service Oriented Workflows
• Brian Noyes - WPF Databinding
• Sahil Malik - Writing WF's in MOSS
• Antonio Chagoury - Writing DNN Modules
• Chad Boyd - SQL Server 2008
• Chad Boyd - Performance Tuning and Optimization
• Jay Flowers - TDD
• Jeff Schoolcraft - Intro to ASP.NET MVC Framework (pt 1)
• Jeff Schoolcraft - Intro to ASP.NET MVC Framework (pt 2 - testing and MVC)
• Hal Hayes - SSIS; Beginners Tutorial
• Hal Hayes - SQLCLR; Writing .NET code inside SQL Server 2005
• Portman Wills - Building Facebook apps with .NET
• John Morales - Ajaxify your webpages using jQuery
• Jonathan Cogley - Refactoring in C# - Bad code to better code
• Jonathan Cogley - Web Application Testing In Watin
• Gary Blatt - OpenXML and Office 2007 Files - how to create and update files programatically

The schedule is here: http://novacodecamp.org/CodeCamps/NoVaCodeCampSouthv1/Sessions/tabid/140/Default.aspx

NoVa CodeCamp South is the first CodeCamp in the Woodbridge area serving the southern regions of Northern Virginia.  Come join us at the Strayer University Campus in Woodbridge on March 29th 2008 from 9a until 5p and enjoy some great talks by some familiar and new faces in the .NET Community.  We'll even feed you pizza!  We'll post information on speakers and sessions as we develop them.  If you're interested in speaking at this CodeCamp send me an email with a title and abstract, we're hoping to have all the sessions slotted by the weekend.

Watch these two places for news: http://thequeue.net/blog and http://novacodecamp.org
Registration is limited to 100 people, so sign up now: http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=125096

At our last meeting this week I announced that I was invited by the Web Content Mavens group to be a panelist on DotNetNuke at their event next week.

At the time of this announcement there were only 9 seats left. I hope that you will join me and attend the event.

When: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 7:00 PM

Where:
R.F.D. Washington
810 7th St. NW

Washington , DC 20001
(202) 289-2030 Info/Map

Expected Attendees:
91 people
81 Yes, 10 Maybe
There's still room for 9 more.

Organized by: Scott Mendenhall

Details

Today there exists many viable open source web content management systems. The February Web Content Mavens meeting will examine some of important issues (licensing, documentation, training, support, community, scalability, customizability) surrounding the most popular projects (Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, TextPattern, Alfresco & Magnolia).

The discussion will be moderated by Scott Mendenhall and will feature the following panelists:

• Keith Casey from Casey Software on Drupal
• Antonio Chagoury from Inspector IT on DotNetNuke
• Scott Davis from Alfresco on Alfresco WCM
• Boris Kraft from Magnolia on Magnolia
• Joe LeBlanc on Joomla!
• Martin Ringlein from nclud on WordPress and TextPattern

Folks,

I have posted the latest photos taken at the last User Group meeting we held in January 2008. Check out the Gallery pages.

These photos were made possible by Jonathan Sheely as he was our Photographer-extraordinair at the meeting - Thanks Jon!

Upgrading your websites can be a daunting experience whether you are using DotNetNuke or any other platform. On high volume websites you must ensure the least amount of downtime, that data loss does not occur and that you always have a way to revert back to an original state.

During this event I will demonstrate best practices and recommendations that should be applied before, during and after upgrading your DotNetNuke portal.

About the Speaker

To find out more about Patapsco Research Group, Inc. please visit their website at http://www.patapscorg.com or contact Joe Craig at patapscorg@gmail.com

Announcements:

Calling on Speakers

You do not have to be a Scientist, Guru, or uber-geek to be a speaker, all you need is a passion for DotNetNuke.  If you would like to present at one of our events, please drop me an email at organizer@capitaldug.org

DotNetNuke User Group Program

Have you associated your DotNetNuke.com user account to our User Group? 
If you have not already done so, please visit the following URL and follow the guided steps to complete the registration: http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/UserGroupProgram/tabid/1074/Default.aspx

Capital DUG is looking for sponsors. If you or your company would like to become a sponsor please drop me an email at organizer@capitaldug.org

You've had your turkey, now it's time for some DotNetNuke!

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 28th 2007
Meeting Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: AT&T Building
1900 Gallows Rd
Vienna, VA 22182  

Presenter: Antonio Chagoury
Topic: What is new in DotNetNuke 4.7
Description:
Please join me in welcoming Alec Whittington, the Links module Project Lead. Alec is in town and has decided to help me out with this presentation.

At this meeting I will be demonstrating and discussing all the new features, enhancements and bug fixes found in DotNetNuke's latest release, 4.7

I hope to see you all there!

Featured Product/Topic: Visual Studio 2008
Recommended Audience: Software Developers

Combined meeting for members of Capital DotNetNuke, Capital Area .Net, and Northern Virginia SQL user groups.

Join us and Microsoft Developer Evangelist G. Andrew Duthie for a night of geeking, gaming, networking. 

Microsoft will be providing DVDs for the 90-day trial of Visual Studio 2008 Professional, with vouchers for the full version for registered attendees (quantities are limited).

Extra benefits to those installing Visual Studio 2008 during the event!  (Bring your laptop, ask Santa for an external hard drive and bring that too!)

https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=123030

Often when we deploy DNN sites, we hope for the best when it comes to performance. But for high profile sites where you are expecting considerable traffic, you better plan ahead to ensure that your users have a reasonable response time.

In this presentation, Hal Hayes will talk about various means for performance testing of DotNetNuke sites for benchmarking and high load analysis.  He will discuss how to use the analysis to properly size hardware to support your DNN implementation. Setting up a test environment and what performance metrics should be used will be analyzed.

Presented by: Hal Hayes
Sponsored by: Robert Half Technology
Date: Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 (Mark your calendars!)
Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: 1900 Gallows Rd, Vienna, VA 22182-3865
Map: http://maps.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.qgk2kf8jxx3h_1900%20Gallows%20Rd%2C%20
Vienna%2C%20VA%2022182-3865%2C%20United%20States___&encType=1

About Hal Hayes
Hal Hayes is a software developer with over 15 years of industry experience. A frequent speaker in the local Virginia user group community, he has presented on numerous topics including XML, .NET, and SQL Server integration. He also worked on high performance computing and computational statistics/artificial intelligence projects with DoD. He is a Microsoft Certified Professional, and founder and previous president of the Capital Area .NET user group in Northern Virginia, and on the board with the Capital Area DotNetNuke user group (also in Northern Virginia).

Presented by: Jakub Jedrzejczak
Sponsored by: Inspector IT, Inc.
Date: Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 (Mark your calendars!)
Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: 1900 Gallows Rd, Vienna, VA 22182-3865
Map: http://maps.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.qgk2kf8jxx3h_1900%20Gallows
%20Rd%2C%20Vienna%2C%20VA%2022182-3865%2C%20United%20States___&encType=1

Topic Description:
As the adoption of DotNetNuke continues to grow so does the demand for professional services, module development, skins design and development etc.

Developers and designers all over the world have been developing a mutlitude of products, some good, and some bad.
Jakub and the Loudoun Department of Information Technology have purchased hundreds of DotNetNuke modules. More than anyone else I know.

Jakub will share his experiences with us and present what he feels are the TOP 10 commercial DotNetNuke modules.

Meeting date: Wednesday, August 15th 2007
Meeting Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: AT&T Building
1900 Gallows Rd
Vienna, VA 22182

Presenter: Antonio Chagoury
Topic: Skinning your DotNetNuke Website
Description:
DotNetNuke skinning is a topic of major interest amongst all DotNetNukers, beginners and experts alike. On August 15th, Antonio Chagoury will demonstrate how to design and develop a DotNetNuke skin from scratch.

The challenge will be to develop a DotNetNuke skin from scratch without prior preparation. A member of the user group will provide an HTML/CSS mock of what the website will need to look like at the end of the presentation (Thank you James from Affinigent!).

So come on down and join us for this totally ad-hoc presentation and see for yourself that skinning a DotNetNuke site is quite simple when you know all the tips and tricks!

This will be fun!

Meeting date: Wednesday, July 18th 2007
Meeting Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm 
Location: AT&T Building 
1900 Gallows Rd 
Vienna, VA 22182 
Presenter: Everyone!
Topic: DotNetNuke Show & Tell
Description: 
This meeting will be the most interactive one yet.
Members of the User Group will join me in a Show & Tell to share with with everyone experiences, good and bad, with everyone.

Presenting: Hal Hayes from Acritech Corporation
Topic: Database Performance and your DNN

Dynamic and volatile DotNetNuke sites can experience loss of performance due to database issues. Hal will review what you can do to keep your DNN database well-tuned for optimum performance.

Let us know if you would like us to post your topic!

Sponsored by: 
Animal Attraction (http://www.animalattraction.com)

Meeting date: Thursday, June 21st 2007
Meeting Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: AT&T Building
1900 Gallows Rd
Vienna, VA 22182 

Presenter: Antonio Chagoury
Topic: DotNetNuke Module Development
Description:
DotNetNuke is a fast growing open source portal based on the Microsoft .NET framework. Learn how you can use DotNetNuke for your business, and how you can start extending the framework with your own custom modules.

Sponsored by:

Robert Half Technology
Robert Half Technology is a leading provider of technology professionals. With over 100 locations in North America and Europe, the company offers specialized consulting services, on a project or full-time basis, for IT initiatives ranging from e-business development and multiplatform systems integration to network engineering and technical support. For more information about Robert Half Technology or to learn about online job search opportunities, please call us at (800) 793-5533 or visit www.rht.com.