Alek Davis
A big thank you to Alek Davis for his presentation on ASP.NET and jQuery. Here is the link to his blog. ?He will posting the example code and presentation there.
Read MoreHoliday Party Thank Yous
We would to offer a belated thanks to the sponsors of the Holiday Party we had on December 4, 2009.
- Mac-O-Rama – 2 Development books and $50 gift certificate
- New2U Computers – Gift Basket
- Bangkok Cuisine – Gift Certificate
- Polk Family – SSD, Wine
- TekSystems – Gift Certificate
- Clary’s Bar and Grill – Gift Certificate
- Gandolfo’s Deli – Gift Certificates?
We were fortunate enough to capture two nerds in their native environment at the party rocking the Three Wolf Moon shirt. Patrick accessorizes his outfit with a Nintendo belt buckle to show his status as the alpha nerd.
We look forward to the next social event for the group and hope to see you there.? Stay tuned!
Read MoreOn the Importance of RSVP
Another area we did not communicate well is the RSVP for meetings. We have always asked everyone to RSVP for the meetings, but did not say why it was important.
Like everything, it comes down to money. We need an accurate RSVP count to give the restaurant for how many attendees plan to eat. For example, if we tell the restaurant that 30 people are going to eat and only 20 people eat, we still have to pay for those 10 people who RSVP and did not show. In this case we would have to pay $120 (10 people * $12 per person). Sadly, this scenario did happen and it wiped out that night’s fundraising and more. Conversely, if we RSVP for 15 people to eat and 25 people eat, there will not be enough food prepared for all 25 people to eat.
We realize that things happen and sometimes you cannot make it. We just want to make everyone appreciate that there is a financial penalty to the group for inaccurate RSVP counts.
Read MoreWhy the Meetings Cost Money
We recently sent out a survey about the group. One of the things we found out is that we did not do a good job of explaining why there is a charge for attending the meetings. For our first blog post, we wanted to write about it.
Since the group’s inception, we have been at 4 different venues. For various reasons, the previous 3 were not as good. In choosing Bangkok Cuisine, we found a good, stable meeting place. We think we can stay at Bangkok for a while and let the group continue to grow. Choosing a new venue takes our time away from improving the group and puts it into investigating Reno’s restaurants and meeting places.
That said, Bangkok Cuisine is a business and is in the business of making money. While we are group or club, they still need to balance their books. We are charged a fee for the room as well as per person on the food. The $5 fee for the people who come, but do not eat, goes to pay for the room fee. The $12 fee for those who eat goes to pay for the food.
As of yet, we have only broken even on the meetings. Despite these fees, we have not made any actual money or had a surplus after a meeting.
If anyone has any further questions about this topic, please post a comment.
May 26th Meeting
We are pleased to announce that the next meeting will not have a charge for those who do not eat. A few months ago, we had to start charging for people who did not eat at meetings. This was due to a room charge for our meeting area. We were able to renegotiate and eliminate the room charge . For those who were put off by the charge, please understand it was necessary. We invite all of those who have not been to a meeting lately to come. Also, the need for RSVP has not changed. Please RSVP on the site’s poll , but please do not let a lack of RSVP prevent you from coming to the meeting. We have put a lot of effort into adding new features and content to the website. There is a new blog section which talks about technology and management. You can start getting all updates (meetings, forum, and blogs) about the site via a single RSS feed . You get more information about RSS feeds from this blog post .
There is a BBQ planned for Saturday June 12. Tickets for this BBQ are on sale now. It will be a great opportunity to meet other families and enjoy the long awaited summer.
For the May 26th meeting, our Speaker is as follows:
Alek Davis
Topic: “Getting the best out of ASP.NET AJAX and jQuery.”
ASP.NET AJAX and jQuery may not be the best combination of technologies for every software project, but it can offer a few advantages to developers of enterprise applications.
At this seminar, Alek will describe these advantages and explain how to use the best features of ASP.NET AJAX and jQuery for building line-of-business (LOB) applications.
You will learn how to get started and overcome the most common problems you will encounter when using ASP.NET AJAX with jQuery. The seminar is intended for novices, but if you are more proficient in either ASP.NET AJAX or jQuery, please come and share your knowledge.
Alek is a senior application developer at Intel Corporation. He has been writing software for over 10 years focusing on enterprise applications, security, and usability. Alek graduated from California State University, Sacramento with BS degree in Computer Science and MS degree in Software Engineering. Alek wrote articles for MSDN Magazine, Dr. Dobbs Journal, Visual Studio Magazine, and other technical publications.
The meeting schedule is as follows (Note: Changes in format from last year.):
* 6:00 – 6:15 – State of the Group Introduction
* 6:15 – 7:45 – Alek Davis – Getting the best out of ASP.NET AJAX and jQuery
* 7:45 – 8:00 – Meeting Wrap-up / Open Discussion Time
