JetBrains, maker of Resharper, and other development tools, is now a product sponsor for the Capital DotNetNuke User Group. We will be giving away a Resharper license at our next meeting.

Chris Hammond (a DNN Core Team member) gave an excellent presentation on developing modules in DotNetNuke on Wednesday, 21 May at the ATT offices in Tysons Corner.

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

Now Even More Reasons To Attend! 
New Sponsors Mean New Prizes at Our Upcoming Meeting
 
Thanks to our very own Director of Marketing, Hal Hayes, we are excited to announce two new sponsors to the Capital Area DotNetNuke User Group: Infragistics and Telerik. Both companies provide an exciting line of components for creating exceptional .NET applications. As a result of their gracious sponsorship, we will be giving away the following two products at our upcoming meeting. 

Hal is working hard to recruit additional product sponsors as well as corporate sponsors. If you or anyone is interested in contributing to our community and its growth please do not hesitate to let us know.

From Infragistics,  NetAdvantage for .NET

From Telerik, RadControls for ASP.NET Developer Subscription License
 
As with all of our prize packages, you must be present to win! We will be giving a license for each product at every one of our monthly meetings!

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

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

Folks:

For those of you that do business in the State of Maryland, there's great news; below is a note received from Mitch Arnowitz. I am proud, on behalf of the Capital DotNetNuke User Group, to have played a part in and contributing to this great win.

Hi Antonio,

Just in case you haven't heard the GREAT news-- late
yesterday/Saturday, the Maryland House of Delegates voted to repeal
the Computer Services Sales Tax!!!

The bill now goes to the desk of Governor O'Malley, who has pledged to
sign it. Once the Governor signs it, the Tech Tax is history...

Feel free to spread the word AND YOU CAN FIND more info here
http://tinyurl.com/66zr43 and here http://tinyurl.com/6xzxzm .

Thanks so much, Mitch

www.FightTheTechTax.com

Please fill out the below link - it effects Maryland vendors within the computer industry!  This will hopefully defeat the 6% service tax.

http://www.fightthetechtax.com/content/take-action/email-your-representatives.cfm

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

C-DUG's VP of Marketing, Hal Hayes, has been hard at work lately drafting a sponsorship plan for our User Group.

I am happy to announce that the draft is now final and has been published on our website. A PDF Sponsor KIT is also available for download.

The funds raised from sponsorship, will enable us to offer a richer experience to our dedicated members.

For years companies have found that actively participating in the user group community is an excellent way to promote their product, recruit potential employees, or highlight services offered by their firm. The Capital DotNetNuke User Group is the premier DotNetNuke and ASP.Net Development user group in the Washington, D.C metro area. Our group focuses on support and development of the premier open-source content management system (CMS) available.

This is a great opportunity to contribute to a great user group while benefiting your organization. Please visit the the Sponsorship Information page for details on the different packages.

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

A few days ago I received an email from the Tech Council of Maryland asking that I help them disseminate this information to our members.

I am posting this as some of you might find this interesting and may want to help fight the cause by taking actions described below.

Dear Antonio-

Our communications firm is helping Tech Council of Md and others *Fight The Maryland Tech Tax* and we need your help! Can you pass the following information along to Capital DotNetNuke members?

As you may know, the Maryland General Assembly recently passed the Computer Services Sales Tax. This tax is bad for Maryland’s economy and potentially devastating to its Tech sector.

To help fight for the repeal of the Computer Services Sales Tax: http://www.FightTheTechTax.com

During the November 2007 special session, the Maryland General Assembly enacted legislation to expand the state’s 6% sales tax to computer services. We are a coalition of business organizations and Maryland companies working together to repeal the computer services sales tax during the 2008 General Assembly Session. 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 public policy.

For additional information, please visit: http://www.fightthetechtax.com/pub/The-Tech-Tax

5 ways that you can help:

1. Call Your Legislators
http://www.fightthetechtax.com/content/take-action/call-your-legislators.cfm

2. Email Your Legislators
http://www.fightthetechtax.com/content/take-action/email-your-representatives.cfm

3. Spread The Word! Tell-A-Friend Or Colleague!
http://www.fightthetechtax.com/content/take-action/spread-the-word.cfm

4. Download A Banner For Your Website
http://www.fightthetechtax.com/pub/Get-Involved

5. Sign Up For Our Email List
http://www.fightthetechtax.com/content/stay-informed

Please send comments, questions or feedback to: mailto:blevine@techcouncilmd.com. 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!

Mitch Arnowitz

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!

This White Paper is provided by one of our sponsors, Robert Half Technology. Very interesting...

Link to white paper... 

Hal has posted a blog entry on improving DNN performance on large databases. Here is the link:

http://www.halhayes.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,bbb80b64-692f-418b-b31e-28da065ce1a0.aspx

Enjoy!