Now that was Entity-tainment

Last night saw another cracking NxtGenUG - Southampton user group session with a grand total of 36 attendees, the support we are receiving for the group is phenomenal and its going from strength to strength.

This was our first session after the arrival of British summer time and highlighted a small flaw in our venue which has glass walls on both sides which had the effect of bleaching out the early part of the session, but as the sun went down life was good again. If anyone knows where I can get hold of a large black cloth to drape over the windows I would be most grateful.

Neil Robbins, NxtGenUG Southampton member, kicked off the evening with a quick 10 minute walk through IIS 7.0 and permission controls, something useful to know about to let your local IT pro hand over permission to you as a developer when managing the IIS server remotely.

Mike Taulty then did a brilliant presentation, as we have come to expect from him, on ADO .NET Entity Framework. I always enjoy talks by Mike, he seems to have a way about him that keeps your interest all the way through the talk and continually provides the right level of technical content and humour ensuring an enjoyable session. For anyone that wants to check out the resources Mike mentioned in his talk have a look here.

I am personally really interested in the Entity Framework and I think it is going to have a big place in the development world in the future, I can't wait for future releases and to finally get my hands on the real thing.

Mid-way through the session we broke for the usual pizza and a quick chat. It was nice to see some new faces. 

Finally, the obligatory swag was distributed to the attendees, with swag ranging from a Tech Net baseball cap, Microsoft socks, a funky travel adapter, a really cool MSDN tool kit (it's a mini screw driver set that I personally think is really, really useful), the kind guys at JetBrains gave us another Resharper license to handout and last but by absolutely no means least a bunch of Visual Studio 2008 Standard Editions packs that were left over from our Install Fest Launch event last month, finally a whole bunch of T-Shirts were thrown out to the screaming masses.

All in all I think it was another successful event, many thanks to both Neil and Mike for the technical content and thanks to all the attendees for helping make Southampton the fastest growing NxtGenUG region!

P.S. If you did attend the event any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated, please go here to fill out your comments.