Where: UWE (University of the West of England), Frenchay, Bristol (see FAQ for directions and a map) - Room 2q50 (in Q block)

What: "A Developers Guide To Network Admin..."

Who: Dave McMahon, Developer and Network Administrator at Ridgian, co-founder of The Next Generation User Group, MVP, podcaster, game show host, singer/song-writer, conference organiser, wearer of silly wigs.

Why: Because developers just aren't too good at this bit and we should be. Stand up to your network administrators, tell them to configure their subnets and DHCP servers correctly. And also because you get to meet the face behind the voice of so many podcasts and so much giggling.

How do I sign up for this meeting: Send an email to meetings at dotnetdevnet.com and quote your user name and the November meeting.

Abstract:

After building our magnificent applications, we developers have to lower ourselves to deploy our works of art on live servers so that ... (gulp) ... people can use them ... After working as a developer AND as a company Network Administrator for 6 years Dave will take you on a Developers journey through IP Subnets, DNS, DHCP, Firewalls, Routers, Domains, Active Directory, Network Configurations, IIS Configuration, SQL Server Configuration and that all time favourite of Developers ... permissions. He will explain what Default Gateways are, and what a DNS Suffix for, what application pools do, why you should throttle back SQL Server memory, how does DNS work, and DHCP. All these things can impact our application and make deployment time a painful time. It pays to know how some of this IT Pro stuff works and Dave will pack the 2 hours full of demos and examples from the last 6 years so that you have a better understanding of how our Windows networks function and how they affect your application. After this session if some IT Pro blokey/blokess says to you "Your problem is that the IP Subnet Mask doesn't match you Default Gateway, your DNS Resolution is failing and you need a DHCP Reservation on your local subnet", you can smile and nod knowingly and have some idea of what the heck they're talking about ...

Bio:

Dave McMahon studied Theoretical Physics at York University and on graduating with a First Class Honours he moved into the obvious career path of The Royal Air Force ... After spending 10 years Skiing, Climbing, Mountaineering and carefully avoiding any posting that might involve any threat to life and limb, he took the peace dividend money and ran. There ensued a period of stocking shelves, driving forklift trucks and fitting curtains before somehow managing to wheedle his way into the software industry in 1998, something he'd always dreamed of doing since leaving the RAF in 1991.

Four halcyon years were then spent writing VB6/VBA/Access and SQL Server 7.0/2000 applications, sigh ... Then a move into .NET from version 1.0 onwards with numerious forays into SQL Server 2005 and Oracle 10g systems right up to the present day working with Windows Workflow Foundation and SharePoint 2007. For the last 6 years Dave has also been venturing into the world of IT Professionals whilst being a Developer through his role of company Network Administrator for Ridgian http://www.ridgian.co.uk.

Dave is co-founder of The Next Generation User Group http://www.nxtgenug.net and runs the Birmingham Region for NxtGenUG. He has spoken at many developer conferences including VBUG, DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper, MIX UK and TechEd Europe. He has also written articles for MSDN, Industry Insiders and IDM. When not playing with software, Dave is a keen guitartist, and if you know of a band short of a lead, rhythm or bass guitar, please let him know the details ...