The Ann Arbor area is ripe with events this week (apologies to our spouses).
Join up with fellow coders tonight at NSCoderNight, at Sweetwaters in Kerrytown.
Tomorrow night (Wednesday April 15), you will have to choose between attending a JavaFX talk at the Detroit JUG and a Microsoft Surface talk at GANG (Great Lakes Area .NET User Group). Jim Weaver has solidly embraced JavaFX, and is working on his second book. I'm thrilled that he's returning to the area, since I missed his talk at the Ann Arbor JUG late last year. The meeting will be held at ePrize, 1 ePrize Drive, Pleasant Ridge, MI. I had a hard time finding the location the first time I went there, so definitely check out the directions. The meeting starts at 6:30.
The Microsoft Surface is also pretty exciting. VectorForm is a Michigan company that has been doing Surface development perhaps as long as the device has been available. My first view of the Surface was in the James Bond movie (Quantum of Solace), and then I was also lucky enough to see one at CodeMash. So if you haven't seen the Surface, definitely head out to the Microsoft office in Southfield (1000 Town Center Drive, Suite 1930, Southfield, MI 48075) tomorrow night. Joe Engalan and Jennifer Marsman will co-present. The meeting starts at 6:30.
And after the meeting (around 9 pm), join up with CoffeeHouse Coders in person at Mujo's in the Duderstadt Center on North Campus or on their IRC channel.
On Thursday 4/16 for lunch, choose between the monthly A2 Nerd Lunch or the weekly A2B3. They're about a block apart, so perhaps you can hit both.
On Thursday evening, you have several choices in Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Startup Drinks at Grizzly Peak, and the Washtenaw Linux Users Group at WCC.
Also on Thursday, but a little further from home, Dennis Burton is speaking at the Greater Lansing .NET User Group with his talk on "Test Driven Development is Driving me Insane". Dennis will discuss patterns and techniques for writing tests that are more robust and provide better information, including techniques that you can apply to your design when writing new code to make testing easier, as well as tools for working with existing applications that do not have good test coverage. If you miss his talk on Thursday, catch this talk again the following week 4/21 in Toledo, at Northwest Ohio .NET User Group.
On Friday, you can learn how (and why) to join a non-profit board in the Ann Arbor area. A2Geeks is helping to sponsor training at the NEW Center, for just $35.
This is your last chance (mine too!) for the 2008/2009 academic year to visit the MPowered Entrepreneurship Hour at UM. The speaker this week is Joshua Pokempner of Entrepreneur Toy Company. The meeting is held from 3:30-4:30.