Messages from the President of VANTUG

VANTUG March GM Cancelled

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:03:00 GMT

Unfortunately, Charlie Russel can no longer make March 29th to talk on Vista. He sends his sincere apologies and we will arrange for another date. At this late date it is impossible to know if we can fill that slot with another speaker/topic. If we can you will receive an email invite in the usual way.

Immediate Opportunity for .NET development guru/architect

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:25:00 GMT

There is an immediate opportunity for a 1 week engagement in Victoria for a .NET development guru/architect. If you are interested please contact:

George Muenz

Senior Consultant

TES - The Employment Solution

1-866-412-0377 ext. 2046

604-707-9018 ext. 2046

www.tes.net

MSDN Code Awards

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:52:00 GMT

Here is your chance or a chance for a colleague or friend to show off their coding skills. Microsoft Canada has created a competition called the:

The MSDN Code Awards

This award is open to individuals or teams and Prizes include $2,000 plus a $1,000 charity donation for the best developer of the year and $4,000 plus a $1,000 charity donation for the best development team of the year.

We all know that we have the best developers in BC. So let's show the rest of Canada what we are mode of.

Cheers

Graham Jones

President,VANTUG

VANTUG GM - February 1, 2007

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:52:00 GMT

Last night Dana Epp (Security MVP) gave a very informative and entertaing talk on the approach to be taken in planning for and handling Security Threats in software development. His slide deck can be obtained via the following link:

http://silverstr.ufies.org/blog/archives/001000.html

My thanks go to Dana.

Cheers

Graham J.

Update on IT Volunteering

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:39:00 GMT

A few months ago I announced the formation of IT Volunteering and was very pleased to see the very positive response. I thought that a quick update might be in order. I would like to recognize the contribution of Scott Stauffer of the local PASS Chapter. Scott is assisting with a DB rationalization project for the BC Paraplegic Association.

I recently did some PowerPoint 2003 and Excel 2003 training for the Surrey Food Bank (SFB). We are also in the early stages of an infrastructure overhaul for the SFB. This should prove to be an interesting project since it could involve the use of virtualization, Windows Server 2003, SBS and Terminal Services. In the near future we expect to be refining the project definition for presentation to the SFB Board. I recently met the people who currently volunteer to maintain their desktop systems to introduce them to the project and get them involved. The meeting went very well. It also looks like there may be some rationalization of data handling required for the SFB to improve their efficiency. Some data is apparently handled up to 4 separate times (sounds familiar)!

Although we have a limited number of opportunities for involvement right now (early days) please consider if you can give some of your valuable time to help. Also if you know of charities in need of help please contact me.

Cheers

Graham Jones

Executive Director

IT Volunteering

VANTUG GM - February 1st at SportBC (welcome time 6pm)

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:40:00 GMT

Here we go again! 3rd time lucky right? Thanks to all who have registered for the two previous aborted attempts to have this event. I also have to thank Dana for his patience and willingness to keep fitting us in. So let's show our appreciation by a good turnout. If it snows again I will %^^&^....

Although normally by February Santa would be starting to hibernate I have it on good authority that he still has the 'goodies' that he promised to deliver on the previous 2 occasions. I am also told that he might try to throw in a few extras by way of compensation for the false starts and any inconvenience that may have arisen.

Dana Epp, Security MVP, will be speaking on:

“Understanding and evaluating risk to information assets in your software projects”

In this presentation, attendees will discover methods to explore risk to information assets within software projects developed on Windows, with emphasis on modeling threats and determining the attack surface of their applications.

Please use the following link to register:

http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=115209

Our thanks go to HITECHBC.ca for sponsoring this event.

Cheers

Graham Jones

President,VANTUG

VANTUG - Longhorn Opportunity with Redmond

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:42:00 GMT

The following is a message from Ben Guterson at Redmond. If you meet the requirements (please read them very carefully) then this is an outstanding opportunity to be involved. If you know of someone who may qualify please pass this message on to them. They don't have to be members of VANTUG (if not why not :)).

I am a project manager with the Microsoft certification team, and I’m wondering if you would have interest/availability to participate in a five-day session, February 5 through February 9, in Redmond to create objective domains for two Longhorn Technical Specialist exams (TS: Windows Server 2007 Network Infrastructure, Configuring and TS: Windows Server 2007 Applications, Configuring); or for a three-day session, February 12 through February 14, in Redmond to create objectives for one Longhorn Professional exam (Pro: Windows Longhorn Server Administrator). The sessions are designed to flesh out the basic scoping of the exams and enumerate a detailed definition of skills/product expertise exam candidates should have--basically, we will be creating the specs for the exams. A facilitator will guide the group through exercises that will move us from a simple exam title to a fully fleshed out domain of objectives that we can eventually test candidates on—these sessions are the crucial first steps and will completely determine the direction for development of the exam questions.

The requirements from you are simply your time, expertise, and your ability to remain engaged and active over the course of five full days or three days, depending on the session--we need folks who will not be distracted by other work during the eight hours a day we'll be meeting; we also need folks who are comfortable working with a group of other subject matter experts and are able to contribute consistently and productively across the full session length. There is no prep required, just five or three days sequestered away in sunny Redmond, WA! Compensation will be $4k for the five days or $2.4k for the three days, plus T&E.

Regarding technical aptitude, we need people who know Longhorn inside and out--if there is the slightest question about this in a prospective attendee's mind, then she/he is not a person who should be in our session.

Please let me know if you are interested and available.

Thanks,

Ben Guterson

Cheers

Graham Jones

President, VANTUG

VANTUG - Community Launch Event

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:56:00 GMT

The VANTUG Community Launch has been scheduled for 6:30pm (welcome time 6pm) Tuesday, February 20th at the Holiday Inn Downtown, 1110 Howe Street, Vancouver. It is very important that we make this a successful event. A lot of kudos is associated with these events when it comes to MSFT. So encourage your friends and colleagues to attend.

There will be 4 topics:

Vista (Jose Pereira)
Exchange 2007 (Doug Cowie)
Framework 3.0 (Sergio Aquino)
Sharepoint 2007/Groove (Ciarana McAuliffe)

Each session will be roughly 40 mins with approx. 20 mins devoted to presentation/demos and 20 mins to Q&A/discussion. This is a community event so I would like to see as much audience participation as possible. Although we have presenters I want us all to benefit from the entire knowledge/experience/interest in the room. The presenters will be largely responsible for the presentation content but since this is a "community" event so, if you wish, I would like you to reply to this email with content suggestions for any or all of the topics and we will do our best to incorporate the most popular.

My target attendance is a minimum of 150. Let's show MSFT and Culminis that we are worthy of the high standing that we have with both those organizations.

To register please use the following link:

http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=115032

Cheers

Graham Jones

President,VANTUG

PS Don't forget to register for TechFest 2007 on February 24th at BCIT

VANTUG - January GM Cancellation

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:51:00 GMT

Clearly the weather gods are not on our side! Dana Epp, who is scheduled to speak tomorrow night, lives out in Chilliwack and is understandibly reluctant to tackle the Sumas flats at night. Even if it isn't snowing the forecast is for cold temperatures and windy which could mean blowing snow out there.

Therfore, yet again, I reluctantly have to cancel the GM for Thursday, Jan 11th. I will try and rearrange with Dana and when I have the details I will get in touch again. Last time that I tried to cancel the MSFT clicktoattend system let me down. So I am using all means available to me to let people know.

Cheers

Graham Jones

President, VANTUG

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Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:57:00 GMT

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This is an extract from the INETA January 2007 newsletter. You can read the monthly newsletter and archives at www.ineta.org/newsletters.

Cheers

Graham J.