West Palm Beach IT Group, Annual Holiday Meeting

11 Dec 12, the West Palm Beach IT Group had its' Annual Holiday Meeting at Roxy's Pub, N. Clematis St., West Palm Beach.  A lot of fun.  Check out the pic's HERE.

Word Press Meetup, 6 Dec 12

Ft Lauderdale Word Press Meetup, 6 Dec 12. 

Nova Southeastern University, Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences
 (3301 College Avenue, Davie, FL 33314)
Thursday, December 6, 2012, 6:30 PM

The Word Press Meetup Group offered two speakers on this occasion.  First, David Bisset spoke on the Word Press Update 3.5.  Second, Stephen Allig gave the Headline talk on 'Managing Multiple WordPress Sites'.

Another really great Meet Up !  Check out the photo's / Slide Shots HERE. 

New Era of Work - East Region SMB VAR Summit - Ft Lauderdale, FL

Event Name: New Era of Work - East Region SMB VAR Summit - Ft Lauderdale, FL
Location: Microsoft Ft. Lauderdale Office
Address: 6750 N Andrews Ave, Suite 400
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33309
Start Date: 11/13/2012
Start Time: 10:30 AM

J.J. Antequino, Microsoft Partner Solutions Advisor, Microsoft SMB & D.

Here 'JJ' sets up a simple netbook to boot and run in Windows 8 on a 32 g USB stick.  No installation on the unit itself - nothing added to HD - only set to boot on USB.

Does this sound like fun?  Can you imagine booting virtually any unit up in your own Win 8 and doing a demo or just sitting down to work?   Hmmm.....  Possibilities ??  Check out the pic's on the rest of this event HERE  .  ( Happy Holiday (s))

PBIT Mtg, 13 Nov 12

Starting with a few words from our group leader, John Vighetto, " Good morning everyone!

Just wanted to thank Danielle for her fantastic presentation last night. She covered quite a bit and it was all very informative. I also want to remind everyone to please thank Lynne for her hosting our meetings at her office."

If you've never been fortunate enough to attend a presentation by Danielle, you really blew it by missing this one.  You think that you already know this subject matter?  NEWS Flash - Danielle always brings something new and fresh to the table - usually things that will create a positive effect to your bottom line.  Hit the link to the pic's and you'll see maybe 10% of what was covered and how to communicate to your client base how you can bolster their bottom line.  SEE MORE.  

Palm Beach IT (PBIT) user group meeting, 9 Oct 12

This month's meeting of the Palm Beach IT  Users Group (PBIT) featured Greg Tammany of Tammanytechs.com presenting on Search Engine Optimization.  Never forget the 'Peter Principle' .  'Cream rises until it sours'.  How do you get it to 'rise' in the first place, and then keep fresh stuff keep rising while whisking away the 'sour'?  That may be a lot of what Search Engine Optimization is about.  Check out the pic's and a few of the screen shots HERE. 

Deerfield Beach Coder's Cafe - Oct, 2012

To quote the Invitation:
"Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe - Tuesday - 10/02/2012 - SQL 2012 and Powershell 3 for the bleeding edge SQL Developer - David Cobb

Will touch briefly on Powershell in prior SQL versions with SMO, and focus on the new Cmdlets in SQL 2012 for PowerShell 2.0 and Powershell 3.0 in pre-release. Presentation will include lots of demos!

David Cobb is a Director of Network Operations for Skyline’s DirectFed Corporation, a technology startup in Deerfield Beach, Florida, since 2005. David is a Microsoft Certified Trainer as well, training people on SQL Server for Homnick Systems in Boca Raton, Florida since 2002. He is also the principal consultant for Cobb Information Technologies, Inc, founded in 1996. They provide network administration, web application and database development services. "

Dave gave us a really great presentation.   Again I was reminded and impressed over the steadily increasing importance of the role of Power Shell in the past few years.  Check out the photo's HERE.

Palm Beach IT Users Group mtg, Sep 11, 12

This month's meeting features a presentation of Firehouse Wireless's solution for a communications backup during outage.  Check out the details and photo's by clicking HERE .

Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe - Tuesday 08/07

Ok, Have I got your attention??  This was the invitation: "FlaDotNet Newsletter - Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe - Tuesday 08/07 - 6:30 PM - Casa Maya - Entity Framework Code First and Migration - Richie Rump

Traditionally, Entity Framework has used a designer and XML files to define the conceptual and storage models. Now with Entity Framework Code First we can ditch the XML files and define the data model directly in code. This session will give an overview of all of the awesomeness that is Code First including Data Annotations, Fluent API, DbContext and the new Migrations feature. Be prepared for a fast moving and interactive session filled with great information on how to access your data.

Richie Rump is a software developer, data architect and project manager. He currently helps companies solve their data challenges by using SQL Server and .Net. He holds the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification and certifications in various Microsoft development technologies. Richie is also the founder of the dotNet Miami, a community focused on enterprise development with .NET and SQL Server . His previous experience includes working with Burger King, Florida Power and Light, Ryder and Walt Disney World. Richie is a graduate of the University of Miami where he received a Business degree in Computer Information Systems."

And, thus, another wild night on Deerfield Beach.  Did you miss it, or maybe lose your notes?   No Problem, just check the link to the screen shots and photo's to send home to Mom, HERE .

South Florida IT Pro Camp

2^nd Annual Fort Lauderdale IT Pro Camp

Here is the info from the web site

"We are pleased to announce the 2nd South Florida IT Pro Camp on Saturday, July 21st 2012 from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm at Nova Southeastern in Fort Lauderdale.
Parking and admittance to this even is free. Lunch will  provided. Please Register soon and let friends and colleages know about this event.
Join system administrators IT professionals and database professionals in addition to managers at all levels in Florida that work with Microsoft technologies for an “IT Pro Camp”. IT Pro Camps are a free, one day learning event for anyone seeking professional development. This event serves IT professionals and students with a focus on IT Pro related technologies. IT Camps offer a conference style learning environment free of charge to attendees and is open to presenters of all backgrounds and expertise."

Ok, it was a really great Camp with plenty to do and learn.  Check out the photo essay by clicking HERE .

AMD Tech Tour 2012 - Miami

Welcome to :  AMD Tech Tour 2012 - Miami. 

The Westin Diplomat Golf Resort
501 Diplomat Parkway
Hallandale Beach, Florida 33009

This was a real nice presentation by AMD of their computer processors and various attributes.  You didn't make it?  Maybe you missed out on a XBox 360!  Anyways, real great show, excellent facilities and nourishment.  Check out the photo's by clicking HERE  .

Palm Beach IT Mtg, 10 Jul 12

During this evening's meeting of the Palm Beach IT group, Dave Simpson of Windstream presented Windstream's new offering, Allworx Systems.  Our colleague, Bret Bennet has summarized most of the presentation much more eloquently than I can:

"CPE Specialist David Simpson and Lynne gave a great presentation. Windstream now has a new “IP Simple” all-in-one VOIP/DATA/HARDWARE/TECHsupport bundle based on their own “Allworx” hardware platform. Given that Windstream owns Allworx, they can get very competitive with their bundles. From their site:

“ Windstream's IP Simple Solution provides network service and a state-of-the-art IP Phone System in an all-in-one communication powerhouse integrating feature-rich phone systems, advanced IP phones and powerful software features that can substantially improve your company's productivity and cost-savings. “

A few photo's and screen shots of the presentation (Click Here) will give you more technical and contact information.

Word Press MeetUp, Duncan Donuts, Davie Fl, 5 Jul 12

South Florida WordPress Meetup Group  Meeting at Duncan Donuts in Davie, Fl, 06:30 pm, 5 Jul 12.  A great meetup with lots of useful info.  First a reminder and instructions on how to apply the latest security upgrades to your WordPress site.  This is important - don't skip it!
2nd, the evenings main theme, application of the Facebook plugin on your site.  This is an important aspect of delivering more traffic to your site.  Touched on was the management of the plugin results, once enabled.  Hopefully, we'll get more feedback in this area as time goes on. 
In all a very worth the time experience.  Please check out photo essay and a few screen shots HERE .

This evening's fare:
Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe - 07/03/2012 - 6:30 - Casa May - Developing HTTP Services with ASP.NET Web API - Cecil Phillip

Interested in learning about building HTTP services? Want to know how you can easily leverage HTTP in your .NET projects? Come out and see how the ASP.NET Web API allows you to work with HTTP in interesting ways to create rich services that are easily accessible from various clients. Along the way, we’ll take a look at where Web API fits into the ASP.NET Web Stack and address topics such as Content Negotiation, Validation, and more...

Cecil Phillip is currently a Programmer Analyst at Nova Southeastern University. For over 5 years, his primary role has been developing web based solutions for both internal and also external clients using the .NET Framework. His current tool-set of choice comprises of C#, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, Entity Framework and SQL Server.. 

Please check out the screen shots and photo's by clicking HERE.

The South Florida WordPress Meetup Group  has been active lately. I was curious and wanted to enhance my Word Press background, so I attended a couple of Meetups.  I gotta say that it was time well spent.  Click HERE for more information and  details.

Palm Beach IT Group mtg at Christopher & Weisberg, P.A.

This month's meeting was hosted and presented by Karin Kennedy of Christopher & Weisberg, P.A.  The primary subject of the presentation was Service Management Agreement Contracts between IT service providers and their clients.  (Managed Services)

This story actually starts back several years ago when the Broward IT group was meeting at Citrix Hq in Ft Lauderdale.  Organizer, Scott brought in a presenter (I think from New Jersey) who had written a book promoting the concept of Managed Services for IT service providers.  Here we were introduced to concepts of service level agrements, menu of services available and bringing this together in the form of a contract.  I believe that there is also a gentleman in California that has written a similar book.

One important theme that is presented is that these contract concepts have to be modified / adapted to local city / county / state legal requirements.  One should not expect that templates for Sacramento, Ca. or Newton, NJ. to be legally sufficient in other areas.

Since that time, at locally hosted Microsoft Events, MS presenter J. J. Aquino has also given a Microsoft position talk on Microsoft's concept of IT Managed Services which (at least at that time) was highly encourage by Microsoft.

This meeting represents the first time that our groups (Broward & Palm) have reached out in a meeting to further develop the concept of Managed Services with a legal entity to address that portion of the concept.

One of the first things that we found out at this presentation was that presenters, Karin Kennedy and John Christopher are extremely technically knowledgeable.  They were quite comfortable discussing technical issues at our (tech) level.  There was a lot of education on both sides.  Among the subjects discussed were writing the contract for 'worst case scenarios' , setting of (client / vendor) expectations.  Precisely where is off-site back-up data physically stored - no cloudy answers - Shanghai may not be acceptable; how does one define the level of '(un)hackability' that is acceptable at what price level etc.

Got the drift?  Yes, if you didn't make it, you blew it again.  (Darn that ball game)  Regardless, I'm hoping that there will be follow-ups to this presentation, as ground seems to be just being broken and there is much more to learn.  Our thanks to John Vighetto (PBIT), Karin Kennedy and John Christopher (Christopher & Weisberg, P.A.) for this presentation.  See the photo's by clicking HERE  .

Deerfield Beach Coders' Cafe

 This month's Presenter was Barkha Herman.

Barkha has over 20 years of experience on mostly the Microsoft Stack. She currently owns two software companies - My-Guides.com - produces Touring software for mobile devices; Sweetleets.com create mostly Orchard based websites. Her "pet" project - Living-vegan.com; promotes a vegan lifestyle and hopes to be the premier destination for Vegans on the web.

Please click HERE to see the screen shots & group photo's.

SFTN Mtg, Microsoft Ft. Lauderdale Hq, 10 May 12

It's been since last July since I've been able to do the SFTN group.  Back then they were still at the TUA in Coconut Creek.  The group now meets at the Ft. Lauderdale Microsoft Hq. bldg.  It co-meets with the IAMCP.  This month's meeting was presented by Jon Sastre, head of the local IAMCP group.  We had a lot of hard content on transitioning our 'Office' and other product lines to an 'Office 365' / Cloud format.  This is a very different ball game and it's very important that we learn the new rules.  Jon proved to be very knowledgeable  and an excellent speaker in this area.  Thank you also for the abundant refreshments, before and after the presentation.   See photo's and a few screen shots by clicking HERE.

Palm Beach IT Users Group mtg, 8 May

Quoting from Group Leader, John Vighetto,
"

I wanted to thank Carlos, Paul & Pete for their great presentation last night. Paul did a really good job of explaining what the Forensics division is currently up against with regards to cyber-crime, and all 3 gentlemen kept the presentation not only informative, but entertaining. Once again, thank you!

Special thanks to David Simpson of Windstream Communications who stepped in for Lynne this month to allow us to once again have our meeting at this facility.

I also wanted to thank everyone who came last night. We saw some new faces as well as some old ones that have not seen in some time.

Regards,

John Vighetto

Vighetto Networking, Inc."

As John has said, Peter, Paul and Carlos put on a really great presentation.  This entire event was fully interactive on both sides and we really picked up a lot.  We also got a CD with some basic tools that were used in the forensic process.  Please check out the photo's with a few of the technical screen shots HERE.

  Surfs Up !

 The following description of tonight's presentation from the FlaDotNet newsletter:


'How do you handle growing number of sql transactions? I will be going over scaling the database layer: scaling-out vs. scaling-up. In the next segment I will present the out-of-the box scale-out solution for SQL Azure: Federations. Together we will go over the concept of Federations in SQL Azure, Management of Federations. This segment will contain demos showcasing how to create and manage federations using the Azure Portal. I will conclude with comparison of Azure Federations with other technologies for building multi-tenant database solutions.

Speaker:

Alex Koval is a CEO and President of Codemasters International, a premier provider of Software Development services.

Being a technical leader for many years, Alex pursued his dream of assembling a team of talented software professionals he met over the years. He started Codemasters International LLC (www.codemastersintl.com) in 2008 applying his best knowledge of technical leadership, team building, as well as industry best practices. The company offers quality software consulting services for Small and Medium businesses at affordable rates. Today Codemasters International is a global company of 30+ employees with offices in US, Russia, and Ukraine.

Alex Koval is happily married to his wife Anna. In his free time he enjoys family, friends, sports, and travel . Alex gives back to the community by organizing the meetings for the TulaDev.NET user group (www.tuladev.net) as well as being a speaker for Florida User groups and Code Camps.'

Click HERE for the pictures of this event and slide shots. 

Fort Lauderdale Windows 8 Developer Camp

Fort Lauderdale Windows 8 Developer Camp
19 April, 2012

Fort Lauderdale Marriott North
6650 N Andrews Ave
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33309

A very worthwhile and well presented Camp on writing Win 8 apps and what Microsoft expected as criteria in those apps. I attempted a head count and gave up with an estimate of about 200 laptops in operation. If you didn't sign up early, you didn't get in - and yes, you did miss something. Thanks to Microsoft presenters, Jim Blizzard & Rachel Appel. Check out the action a a few of the screen shots HERE.

Palm Beach IT Users Group Mtg, 10 Apr 12

This evening's meeting headlined with a presentation by Brian Betron of 'Video Conferencing USA'. This included various types of video conferencing options available including size and bandwidth recommendations. Take a look at the presentation and more information by clicking HERE.

Deerfield Beach Coder's Cafe, April 3

Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe @ Casa Maya - 04/03/2012 - 6:30 PM - Introducing SQL 2012 Business Intelligence (BI) - Joe Homnick

In case you didn't know it, Joe Homnick gives really great Event Presentation. If you missed this, you owe yourself a 'Joe-Event'. Following is the Presentation description and at the end is a link to a few of the slides and other photo's.
--

SQL Server 2012 will provide Mission Critical Confidence with greater uptime, blazing-fast performance and enhanced security features for mission critical workloads; Breakthrough Insight with managed self-service data exploration and stunning interactive data visualizations capabilities; Cloud On Your Own Terms by enabling the creation and extension of solutions across on-premises and public cloud. Specific BI capabilities investigated include Rapid data discovery with Power View. Corporate and scalable reporting and analytics, Data Quality Services

Joe Homnick is the principal owner of Homnick Systems, a Microsoft Gold Partner located in Boca Raton, Florida. He has been a featured speaker at Microsoft Tech Ed for eight years in America, Europe and Latin America, the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), all Microsoft DevDays events and the SQL PASS Summit. Joe has been selected by Microsoft as a Metro trainer for Azure, SharePoint, Visual Studio and SQL Server. He has delivered training for Microsoft on their Early Adopters program for these technologies throughout the world touching four of the five continents. He founded the Gold Coast Users Group http://GCUsersGroup.org which which serves the South Florida area delivering Microsoft SQL Server, O/S and Developer knowledge to the community for over 18 years.

Click HERE for the photos & slides.

SMB VAR Summit - Ft Lauderdale, FL

Another great SMB VAR Summit - Ft Lauderdale, FL hosted by KIM TUBBS-HERRON ,SMB&D GENERAL MANAGER, EAST REGION and her team. Please check out a few screen shots and pic's by clicking HERE . Thanks to Kim and her team for a great job!

Palm Beach Information Technology meeting with guests, U.S. Secret Service and Eaton Corp.

This month's meeting hosted a Special Agent from the United States Secret Service’s Electronic Crimes Task Force followed by our second presenter, John Schwing of Eaton Corporation. As always, if you missed this one, you missed a 'biggie'. There was also a very active 'after-the-meeting' meeting. Check out the pic's and further info by clicking here. Hope to see you again next month and thanks again to our guest speakers, Mick Walsh & John Schwing.

Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe, 6 Mar 12

Center, Presenter, Steve Gilboy, with (left) Consultis Sponsor rep, Mark Berger and (right) Organizer, Dave Noderer.

This was a really packed presentation with over 70 participants registered. Coming again next month? Get in early and remember that the food is good and reasonably priced.

Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe - 03/06/2012 - 6:30 PM - Creating Mobile Apps w/ ASP.NET and jQuery Mobile - Stephen Gilboy - AuctionAnything.com

jQuery Mobile makes it easy to turn your current ASP.NET skill set into a fully functional mobile application. In this session, you'll see an example project being created and it will be demonstrated how you can deploy the project as a Web Application to be viewed with your device's web browser as well as leveraging PhoneGap to spin out native applications for both Android and iOS

Stephen is the Senior Developer at AuctionAnything.com and deals with the full range of web applications, from architecture to SQL to UI

After the presentation there was lots of swag with at least a tee shirt for everyone and also lots of software. Check out the details and pic's by clicking HERE. Hope to see you all again next month.

Dell "Dare to Compare" virtualization event

Dell Tech Summit: Dare to Compare Virtualization: Citrix vs. Microsoft vs. VMware Tuesday, February 21st,2012 9:00am – 4:00pm Seminole Hard Rock Casino 1 Seminole Way

Another great presentation event from Dell Computers. If you missed it, check out the Photo Essay by CLICKING HERE.

South Florida Code Camp, 18 Feb 2012

Nova University, Davie Florida, hosted a South Florida Code Camp on 18 Feb 12. This event was attended by nearly a thousand IT developers and related people. There were six sessions during the day and 14 presentations to choose from each session. Some may have thought they needed 2 days to get all that they wanted. It was all cutting-edge material on most of the latest technologies. Click Me for more direct info. For a pictorial essay of the event, complete with links to many of the participants, Click Me.

PBIT Meeting, 15 Feb 12 with Paul Rogers, Logzilla presenting

Mr. Paul Rogers from Logzilla. Paul, with WEBEX assist from Clayton Dukes presented a technical explanation of the Logzilla product. It was interesting to see the applications to Small Business and Managed Services. Click HERE for pic's, screen shots and further contact information.

Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe - 02/07/2012 - Introducing PRISM and MEF for the Agile Software Developer - Sam Abraham

This month we will be meeting at Myxer.com overlooking Deerfield Beach!

We will introduce PRISM and MEF (http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/) as an example of how concepts such as IoC, Dependency Injection and Composition come into play with parallel and incremental software development.

Sam Abraham is a Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS ASP.Net 3.5, 4.0 and Silverlight 4), Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) striving to leverage proven technology solutions to produce cost-effective, quality software that meets customer needs, timelines and budgets. Sam is currently a member of the Software Engineering Team at SISCO Corp., the leader in maritime security solutions with customers including Princess, Carnival, and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines as well as the US Coast Guard.

This was again a very productive meeting of the Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe. You can see more of Sam and probably many other previous Cafe presenters February 18 at the Code Camp. Check out the pic's of this meeting and link to the Code Camp by clicking HERE.

Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe, Jan 2012 meeting.

Deerfield Beach Coders Cafe: 01/03/2012 - 6:30 PM - ASP.NET: Performance Tips and 4.0 Enhancements - Darius Liktorius - ADP Dealer Services

The latest ASP.NET 4.0 enhancements as well as performance tips you can apply to your existing, legacy web application projects. Also discussed were solutions for improving server-side processing and streamline client-side markup, from parallel code execution to output caching and a bit of everything in-between.

Darius Liktorius is a Solutions Architect with ADP Dealer Services where he specializes in identifying and quickly resolving performance and security-related obstacles on web and mobile platforms. Darius has been developing software for nineteen years and is proficient in .NET Framework related technologies and Microsoft SQL Server databases. He holds MCSD, MCDBA, MCSE, MCT and CCNA certifications.

This was a very inter-active presentation.  Please see photo's, screen shots and links to further contact information by clicking  HERE.