We've changed names and websites ... We are now known as the Twin Cities Developers Group. You can find our new website at www.TwinCitiesDevelopersGroup.com

For more information on the change, please visit the new site.

Note: This site will remain active until we transfer over all the previous talks (history) to the new site.

When: 6:00 PM. 
Where: Benchmark Learning (4510 West 77th Street - Edina, MN 55435)   MAP

Topic: Getting Down with MEF - Silverlight Edition

In certain .NET circles there has been a lot of talk as of late about the Managed Extensibility Framework, or MEF. You may have even heard some of this chatter, but you're probably asking yourself "What the heck is MEF and why should I care?" At its core, MEF is a library for creating lightweight, extensible applications. MEF is an integral part of the .NET Framework, and Silverlight 4 shipped with out-of-the box support for MEF. In this session we'll dive into the guts of MEF looking at what it is, why you might want to consider using it, and how to actual implement MEF in your Silverlight applications.

Speaker: Adam Grocholski is a Technical Evangelist at RBA Consulting where he spends time focusing the Windows Azure Platform as well as the latest UI technologies such as Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight. He also has a penchant for hanging around some of the darker corners of the .NET Framework (i.e. T4 and MEF). Recently, Adam was named as a Microsoft MVP for his commitment to the Microsoft development community. From founding and presenting at the Twin Cities Cloud Computing user group to speaking at the local .NET and Silverlight user groups along with code camps and local, regional, and national conferences, Adam is committed to building a great community of well-educated Microsoft developers. You can catch up with his latest projects and thoughts on technology at http://thinkfirstcodelater.com, or if that's too verbose for your liking you can always follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/agrocholski.

When: 6:00 PM. 
Where: Benchmark Learning (4510 West 77th Street - Edina, MN 55435)   MAP

Topic: What’s New in Prism 4 + MEF Bootstrapping

Prism 4 includes three main focus areas: guidance for the Model-View-ViewModel pattern, inclusion of the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) for modularity, and Navigation guidance.  In this session, you’ll see what Prism 4 provides for MVVM guidance and get a quick intro to the pattern in the process or refine your skills in MVVM if already familiar. You’ll also see how you can choose MEF for modularity in Prism and get a quick intro to MEF in the process. Finally, you’ll see how the new navigation services of Prism can help you in switching views when the user wants to navigate from screen to screen in your application.

Speaker: Brian Noyes is Chief Architect of IDesign Inc, a Microsoft Regional Director, and Microsoft MVP. Brian has also been a member of the Prism design team since the first version of Prism was started in early 2008. Brian is a frequent speaker at conferences and user groups worldwide, including Microsoft TechEd, DevConnections, DevTeach, and others. Brian is author of Developing Applications with Windows Workflow Foundation, Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce, and Data Binding in Windows Forms 2.0. Brian got started programming as a hobby while flying F-14 Tomcats in the U.S. Navy and later turned his passion for software into a second career. You can contact Brian through his blog at http://briannoyes.net or on Twitter @briannoyes.