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NorDevCon 2015: .Net Heaven at NorDevCon


Take your mind off Dry January and the gym and check out our next instalment of NorDevCon 2015's sensational sessions. From C# to the cloud and Docker to data and even dinner - NorDevCon has got it covered.

C# 6 – the future is (nearly) here!

Jon Skeet

Jon Skeet, Java developer for Google in London, is self-confessed C# obsessed. Outside of his day job Jon loves writing and talking about C#, and the third edition of ‘C# in Depth’ was published in September 2013. Writing less formally, Jon spends a lot of time on Stack Overflow… where ‘a lot’ is an understatement. Give him a puzzle about how C# behaves which gets him reaching for the language specification, and Jon is a happy bunny.

C# 6 is nearly upon us, and after doing the feature hokey-cokey for a little while, it’s all looking pretty stable. It’s a pretty special release, as along with the language changes themselves, there’s a whole new compiler to use – and poke at. The Roslyn compiler allows ordinary (at least, enthusiastic and persistent) developers to build their own warnings and refactorings, amongst other things.

In this talk, Jon will demonstrate all the new features, show how they’ve already made the Noda Time code base cleaner, and then take a look at how I’ve been using Roslyn to check my code more thoroughly… maybe it’ll give you some ideas about concepts you want to be able to express and check within your code, too.

Fun and games with Docker and Build Smarter Systems with Rainbird 

Dom Davis

Docker has been a hot topic in recent months but what exactly is Docker and why do we need Linux Containers (LXC)? After all, we’ve already got virtualisation and can spin up an AWS instance in seconds for mere pence.Dom Davis, a veteran of The City and a casualty of The Financial Crisis, is now a technology evangelist for a small startup. Dom is an enthusiastic and impassioned speaker who uses a blend of irreverent sarcasm and flippant humour to bring complex technical subjects to a broad audience.


In this talk Dom looks at using Docker to provide homogeneous, vendor agnostic environments, environments on demand – including local development environments, and investigates some deployment tactics that can be used with containers. All of this will be done from within Docker instances configured and spun up on a laptop during the talk. What could possibly go wrong?

Build Smarter Systems with Rainbird: A hands on workshop where you’ll get to grips with the basics of Rainbird and building a knowledge map. No technical expertise beyond basic computer literacy is required for this workshop as it will focus mainly around Rainbird graphical editor and publishing to a website/wordpress. For users wanted to move onto more advanced subjects an understanding of XML would be useful.

Understanding Cloud, Big Data, Mobile and Security – do they play nicely together?

Colin Mower

The IT industry is undergoing the biggest change since commodity distributed computing almost killed the centralised model of large systems. Definitions and labels describing this future state of computing change almost monthly, but the IT industry is largely in agreement that Cloud, Big Data/Analytics, Mobile and Security are the key themes that are driving this change.

In this session, software architect at IBM, Colin Mower talks about the challenges companies large and small are facing with this paradigm shift, how they can take their business forward with the off-premises model, and how all four themes can work together to achieve business value.

Colin specialises in Enterprise systems, with many of his 17 years in IT working with or on IBM Mainframes. He has also spent many years designing and architecting solutions across Windows, Unix and AS/400s. He is a chartered member of the BCS, and has had speaking roles in Large System working group conferences, Universities and at Norfolk Developers.


Conference Dinner and Kurasie Wine Reception

Make the most of your time at NorDevCon and join us for a wine reception (free), also at The King’s Centre, generously sponsored by Kurasie. Discuss what you’ve learnt, raise any questions or introduce yourself to other delegates and share insights.

If you’re unable to attend the conference then you’re still very welcome to attend the drinks reception and mingle with conference delegates, speakers, organisers, Norfolk’s tech community and beyond.

The drinks reception will be followed by the conference dinner (£35 + fees for 3 courses and 2 glasses of wine) where you’ll have the chance to sit down and dine with all your favourite speakers in turn and pick the minds of those that are most relevant to you and your business. Places must be booked in advance and, like the drinks reception, invitations extend to those unable to attend the full conference as they also provide invaluable stand-alone networking opportunities.

View the menu here.

Pre-conference special & dinner

You can now RSVP for the pre-conference special and dinner on the evening of Thursday 26th of February(the evening before the conference). If you're able to make it, please do come along to both. The details are below.

Everyone is welcome at both events and you don't need to attend the conference to attend the pre-conference events.

Pre-conference Special with Allan Kelly and Kevlin Henney

Thursday, 26th February 2015 @ 5pm
The Kings Centre, Norwich

The Rule of Three - Kevin Henney

The three-act play, the given–when–then BDD triptych, the three steps of the Feynman problem solving algorithm... a surprising number of things appear to come in threes. This talk walks through — and has some fun with — a number of triples that affect and are found in software development.

Every business is a software business - Allan Kelly


Pre-conference Dinner at All Bar One

Thursday, 26th February 2015 @ 7.30pm
All Bar One, Norwich

This year the pre-conference dinner will be at All Bar One (a short walk from the Kings Centre) at 7.30pm. All are welcome and the fixed price menu is here:

View the menu.

When you RSVP you'll need to pay £11 for the meal and then for your drinks on the night. Please specify a starter, main meal and dessert when you RSVP.


Student & Unemployed Discounts

If you’re a student or are unemployed you can attend NorDevCon for just £25 + fees. If you purchase a discounted ticket you will be required to prove your status when you register on the morning of the conference.

Click here for student tickets and here for unemployed tickets.

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