Updates - User Group meetings, NerdDinner, etc

I've been pretty busy and neglected to report on a number of meetings I attended in the past week or so.
The highlight for me was joining the Chicago NerdDinner on Tuesday evening at the Rock Bottom Cafe. In attendance were the organizer Ryan Rinaldi, two renowned utility developers Jeff Key and Brian Scott, plus Eric (?) and Dan Ankers(?) two contractors who have worked long term at Wm. Mercer, plus myself and John(?). There was a lot of stimulating discussion along with plenty of food and drink. Eric has been programming a long time and seems to have an architectural view of his work. He offered a number of good thoughts on O-O design. When I raised a question I have been working on he encouraged the use of interfaces versus abstract base classes, which led to a heated discussion. He apparently has a well written blog, but I don't have the address yet.

Last night I attended the VS2005 'codefest' that CNUG and Chris Mayo ran at the MS Office in Downers Grove. I ended up doing the code walkthrough as pair programming with Joe Alfano, which was fun, but the whole event was rather chaotic. I suspect spending three hours there might be more produce more learning if the workshop were conducted more formally with someone leading it and questions being shared to the whole group.

more to come...

Last week's CNUG meeting had two good presentations.
One, by Rob Steward of Data Direct on data access with ADO.NET, and
another on ORM frameworks by a man from Miller Brewing.

CWUG group was a mixed event, but I wanted to attend because Bill Zielger was talking about malware, and that is relevant.
I did pick up a few tips, but have to check my notes for them...