You are probably looking at the title of this course and wondering ‘What is he talking about’? Many readers of this blog are aware of the fact that I am a born again Christian. To this end one of my core values and beliefs has been a simple phrase : “Blessed to bless”. One of the thoughts that has been running through my head ever since I started teaching the Nothin But .Net courses is a way that I can make a difference not just in the lives of developers that I come in contact with, but also the community in general.

This is where Nothin But .Net – Help The Homeless edition comes into play. Every year in Calgary at winter time; the temperature drops from anywhere between -15 to -40 celcius. This is also a time of year where homeless shelters and drop in centers in and around Calgary get flooded with scores of people who would not be able to survive the night on the streets. As you can imagine, the resources that it takes to coordinate the shelter and food for these people is a big task. There are several shelters in Calgary that try to make this time of year a blessed occasion for those less fortunate, and I want to do my part to help them do their job and spread a little of God’s love and warmth during the Christmas season.

Ok JP, what does this course have to do with any of this? Here it is. All proceeds for this course (100%) will go to a number of the shelters in the Calgary area. I will be working with a friend who works with the homeless in and around Calgary, and he will be making the decision as to which shelters will require the resources most. The reason for the November timing, is so that funds can be made available to the shelters as close to Christmas as possible.

When I say 100% this means that any fees that I incur for hosting the course such as :

• Venue
• Books
• Licenses
• Meals

Will all be paid for by my company. I am trusting in God to help me take care of what I need to take care of thus allowing all of the proceeds to go to those who really need it. I am also going to be talking with local (and remote) companies to see if they are willing to make pledges based off the total amount of money raised by the course. For example, since Calgary is made up of a lot of oil and gas companies, I am hoping to approach a couple of them and see if they would be interested in some form of money matching. It does not have to be dollar for dollar, but any little bit will help ensure that we can give as much back to the community as possible.

So spread the word about this course, I am hoping that it will help make the lives of many homeless Calgarians this Christmas much brighter. Here are the details for the course:

The course runs for the week of November 5^th – 9^th, 2007.

Overview

Nothin’ But .Net is a five day boot camp that will focus on pragmatically applying .Net within the context of developing a working N-Tiered application. Registrants will learn about advanced features of .Net (2.0/3.0) as they are applied to the task of building a complete application from the UI layer all the way down to the mapping layer.

WARNING!!!!

If you are expecting to come to this course to learn about how to have VS.Net automatically generate an “application” for you, then this course is NOT for you.

This course is all about taking control of the .Net framework and having it work the way you want. This course will place a heavy emphasis on getting back to the basics and making .Net do things the way you want it to, in a predictable and testable way.

This course will focus on a code centric view of application development vs. the typical databinding/designer magic covered by many typical .Net courses. You will walk away with a deep understanding of fundamental aspects of .Net and how these pieces can be used to develop and deliver enterprise scale applications.

Core Concepts Overview

Although the list may look rather daunting, the majority of the bullet points will be covered during the evolutionary design and construction of the sample project.

One of the main goals of the course is to show how to effectively use behavior (test) driven development, design patterns and a solid toolset to develop a portion of a non-trivial application.

The course will allow students to pragmatically apply BDD practices as well as teach people how to utilize fundamental OO concepts and techniques that will allow for them to have cleaner, more loosely coupled architectures. It will also be an opportunity for students to see what is involved in creating applications that utilize a Rich Domain Model,and the supporting infrastructure that is required to use "Plain Old Objects".

I have successfully delivered this course several times with great success. I anticipate that people who are interested will find that this is a very unique course offering, not typical of what is being delivered in the mainstream.

Seats are limited. The course costs $2500/US for a full 5 days. The fee covers:

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me at jp@jpboodhoo.com.

Requirements

• You will be required to bring your own laptop ( VMWare / VPC images will be deployed to your machine on day 1 of the course)

To Register for the course please use the following link:

• Course Registration