Fruitbowl - Fresh Ideas from Hawke's Bay

Fruitbowl has come to life together with a new general ICT group set up here in Hawke’s Bay. This is a group targeting all things ICT at a reasonably high and strategic level. Read all about the next meeting on 30 October at http://www.fruitbowl.co.nz/infrastructure/steven-joyce-event/.

What not everybody here in Hawke’s Bay may know that for some years now several other ICT groups have been active in the Bay:

• The Hawke’s Bay sub-branch of the New Zealand Computer Society (chaired by Jane Beale)
• The Hawke’s Bay .NET User Group (chaired by yours truly)
• The Hawke’s Bay SharePoint User Group (chaired by Shane Redlick from Cucumber Software)

I will leave it to Jane and Shane to talk about their groups. The Hawke’s Bay .NET User Group (DNUG) is part of a large number of User Groups around Microsoft technology. Currently there are 27 User Groups in the country around technologies like .NET website and software development, SharePoint, SQL Server but also some more specific technologies like Silverlight, Microsoft Dynamics, Visual Studio Team System and Business Intelligence. See http://www.dot.net.nz/.

The .NET User Group in Hawke’s Bay focuses on:

• ASP.NET Web Application Development
• .NET Windows Application Development
• SQL Server

We are mostly a software developer oriented user group, but presentations often have are about an introduction to new technology and as such are potentially interesting as well for decision makers in the IT departments.

We meet around 6 – 8 times per year, normally on a Thursday afternoon, 3:30 or 4:00pm, with EIT as our venue. I have just had our next meeting confirmed for 26 November. We have Jeremy Boyd, one of the two Regional Directors of Microsoft in New Zealand presenting for us on new features in SQL Server 2008, 3:30pm at EIT. I will blog separately about this event soon. 

If you are interested in being added to the mailing list for events of the HB DNUG, just email me through my website www.birdwoodsoftware.co.nz.