TechMaine Updates top

Work continues on the TechMaine Website. We're excited about the new functionality and resources that the new site will bring to Maine's tech community and the additional benefits that will be available to TechMaine members. We'll have additional information to share with you in next month's mailing.

We're starting to pull together the information for the next legislative session. On the top of our Public Policy Agenda will be the re-introduction of the private-equity Fund of Funds program. You'll find more information at www.MaineFundOfFunds.com.

I'm looking for a couple of volunteers to join this year's planning committee for the Annual Conference. Please send me a note if you would like to help us put this year's Conference together.

Keep an eye open for updates as we move forward with the rebranding of MESDA to TechMaine.

Post This! top

Share the listing of events with your peers and co-workers. You can now download and print a one page Calendar with the highlights of this month's technology events.

Be sure to post the calendar at your office in a location that encourages others to notice the schedule and duplicate it to share with your peers.

Metro NETpm top
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Time: 5:00 - 7:00 pm
Location: iCST, Foden Road, South Portland

Close out your summer with the team from iCST!

Join TechMaine and iCST on Thursday, September 4th for good food, good drink, and great people at the iCST offices at 55 Foden Road, South Portland from 5:00 - 7:00 pm.

We will close out the workday in style with NETpm. Meet your friends and network in a relaxed, unstructured atmosphere. Admission is free. Please register online here for this event.

Metro NETpm is presented on the first Thursday of every month by TechMaine, and iCST is our generous host for this popular gathering of TechMaine friends and associates.

iCST is a twelve year old South Portland, Maine-grown Information Technology Staffing company. iCST specializes in improving productivity and profitability of its clients. iCST provides Software Developers, Project Managers, Network Administrators and Business Analysts. iCST provides these people both on permanent and contract basis. iCST won many awards including the Governor’s award for business excellence. iCST is a minority owned small business with 8(A) certification

Ruby User Group top
Monday, September 8, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Introduction to Rails

This will be a "newbie" presentation on Rails, intended for: newbies and PHP programmers, developers on other platforms like Java, and business-office/managers who may be interested in using Rails in their company.

The presentation will include an introduction to Rails, a demo (creating a simple blog), a show-and-tell of some advanced plug- ins...

...and an Installfest: Bring your laptop, and you can leave with a running Ruby on Rails application!

Door Prize: Registered attendees will be entered in a door prize drawing, a new Ruby-related book, title TBA You must register and attend to be in the drawing.

RUG meets bi-monthly, on the second Monday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

InfoSecurity User Group top
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Topic/Speaker TBA (but you can register to attend now.)

Door Prize: Registered attendees will be entered in a drawing for a copy of the Addison-Wesley book Crimeware: Understanding New Attacks and Defenses, by Markus Jakobsson and Zulfikar Ramzan, courtesy of Pearson Education. You must register to attend and be present to win.

InfoSEC meets monthly, on the 2nd Wednesday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

Rich Internet Applications User Group top
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Adobe Air and Flex - with John Moore

There's a lot of excitement in the RIA community about the powerful combination of AIR and Flex! Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is a cross-platform desktop runtime that allows developers to use standard web technologies, like Flash / Flex, HTML, and JavaScript, to build and deploy desktop applications. AIR applications, which easily leverage services, have been developed for services such as Twitter, eBay, YouTube, and Flickr.

Come see how RIA developers use these tools to very rapidly build desktop applications that run almost anywhere. All attendees will receive a CD with several applications.

About the Presenter: John Moore is a Rich Internet Application architect who has been working on the client side of web applications for 12+ years. He is the co-founder of Quai, Inc. and RIAspot.com. He has provided cutting-edge web interfaces for many companies including Ernst & Young, Fidelity Investments, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Wachovia Bank. He is an Adobe certified Flex developer, and currently is developing a suite of components built on top of the Dojo toolkit.

Door Prize: Registered attendees will be entered in a drawing for a copy of the Addison-Wesley book, Dojo: Using the Dojo Javascipt Library to Build Ajax Applications, by James E. Harmon, courtesy of Pearson Education. You must register and attend to be in the drawing.

About the TechMaine Rich Internet Applications User Group (RIAug): RIAug is a new user group developed to support the wildfire-like growth of the Rich Internet Applications community. We meet monthly, on the second Thursday of the month. Membership is open to any member of the Maine community, and any other people the Group may invite.Please Register Here to attend the next meeting. There is no charge for this event. Please include your email address so that we can notify you if there is a change in schedule.

Web Designers User Group top
Monday, September 15, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Social Media 101: Do I Really Need a Facebook Page? with Rich Brooks

Facebook. MySpace. LinkedIn. Twitter. Blogs. Podcasts. RSS. Ning. YouTube. Flickr. FriendFeed. Bebo. del.icio.us. Digg. Arrrgh! Are these even all real words?!?

Maybe you've heard of some or all of these social media services. Maybe they're all new. Maybe you teenager is on Facebook or MySpace and you're wondering what they could possible have to do with your business.

If you're looking to learn more about social media and how you might use these free tools to connect with prospects and customers, this is the class for you.

Attendees will learn:

• About many of the most important, popular social media Web site.
• How to use blogs and podcasts to engage prospects.
• How to connect with like-minded people for business opportunities.
• How to promote events and seminars using social media.

WDUG meets monthly, on the 3rd Monday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

.NET User Group top
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: UNUM Home Office #3, Portland

Topic: Developing XSLT Applications in VS 2008

Visual Studio 2008 is a first class XSLT development platform on par with many standalone tools for XSLT development. You can use it to create and debug standalone transform or transforms that are embedded in a .NET application. Did you know you can set a breakpoint on data?

XSLT is usually one of those things you use only when you have too, but with the amount of XML floating around today you just might be making your life harder by avoiding it. VS 2008 lets you develop an XSLT based application just like you would a C# or VB.NET application; write a little bit, try it out, maybe derive a new transform from an old one because you just need to change part of it (did he say "derive"?).

We will dive into the basics of XSLT, writing an XSLT program in modules (just like you do with C# and VB.NET), debugging XSLT, using XSLT standalone, and embedding XSLT into a .NET program.

Speaker: Dan Sullivan
Dan is an independent consultant, author, speaker, and an instructor and course author for Pluralsight. He likes data; pointy data, rectangular data, even data just lying around on the floor.

He is a co-author of the book 'A Developers Guide to Microsoft SQL Server 2005'. His articles have been published in MSDN Magazine and SQL Server Magazine and he has spoken at WinDev, Microsoft events, and developer groups.

Dan has been active in computer technologies since before they were fashionable. In the distant past he wrote the microcode for one of Digital Equipment Corporation’s computers. In the recent past has taught and written about most of the development topics in Microsoft Windows technologies, from .NET, to XML and Web services, to SQL Server. He does consulting through Danal Technology Inc.

Register for the next meeting.

Agenda:
6:00 - 6:15 Food!
6:15 - 7:30 Presentation
Q & A and door prizes

The mission of this group is to provide in-depth technical coverage for developers focusing on Microsoft technologies, specifically .NET technologies. MaineBytes (MB) focuses on providing architects and developers with solutions-oriented presentations on using the .NET Platform to develop the next generation of Internet and Enterprise applications.

Location:
Meetings will be held each month at Unum's Home Office 3 building at 2211 Congress Street.

JAVA User Group top
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Using GWT and Eclipse Equinox to Build Interactive Plugin-based Web Applications - with Peter Murray, Quantrix.

About the Presenter: As founder and CTO, Peter has led Quantrix from its concept stage through development of the commercial application used today in more than 40 countries. Previously, Peter was CTO of Subx, a company that developed Java applications. Prior to Subx, he served the B-to-B Seafood Exchange Gofish.com as their CTO, successfully aligning their technology plan with their business goals.

Peter was also founder & CEO of New England Internet Services (NEIS), an early ISP and consulting organization, which was acquired by CommTel in 1999. Prior to NEIS, Peter was lead engineer at Lighthouse Design, where he led the development of Quantrix for the NeXTSTEP operating system.

Peter sits on the Technology Business Review Board for the Maine Technology Institute. Peter was named CxO of the Year for 2008 by TechMaine for his contributions to the local software industry. Peter graduated from Stanford University with a degree in symbolic systems and artificial intelligence.

Door Prize: Registered attendees will be entered in door prize drawings. You must register and attend to be in the drawings.

MaineJUG is sponsored by Starlit Software.

MaineJUG meets monthly on the last Wednesday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

Maine EPSCoR Conference top
September 29 - 30
Location: UMaine Orono

Network with a wide range of program officers from the national Science Foundation and learn more about the mission, new initiatives, and funding opportunities in NSF's many Directorates and Offices.

Participate in special grant-writing workshops

Learn more about EPSCoR/IDeA programs and funding opportunities

No Conference Fee

2008 Maine EPSCoR State Conference

User/Usability User Group top
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

UUUG Design Challenge

Hope you all enjoyed the summer break! UUUG is back

We’re holding a design challenge. You’ll be given the details of a faux project (client background, business objectives, user details, essential requirements) and will have 1:15 hours to brainstorm and sketch a design solution. You’re free to work alone or in teams, and free to bring whatever tools or technology you feel comfortable working with. We’ll then use the last half hour to go around the room and have people share their ideas on how to meet the needs of The Project. The short time frame and great minds in the room is sure to lead to some really great, inspired, out-of-the-box thinking!

So sharpen your pencils (or Wacom pad, Photoshop skills, etc) and join us for a fun night of design.

UUUG is sponsored by IDEXX Laboratories; a worldwide leader in innovative products and services for veterinary, food and water applications.

UUUG meets monthly, on the last Tuesday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.