Two topics - Intro to Xamarin and Intro to Orleans

Xamarin offers a powerful, cross-platform development solution for .NET developers looking to target smartphones, tablets, TV's, computers and IoT devices – and without having to learn another language or IDE.
Luce will explain how to get started by creating a simple HelloWorld app from scratch and then show more complex example leveraging Cognitive Services for facial recognition. She will also demonstrate Visual Studio Team Services for Continuous Integration and some awesome examples of apps written using Xamarin including ones used to save lives!

Luce Carter is a Microsoft MVP and runs the Manchester Xamarin user group.

Microsoft Orleans is an implementation of a virtual actor framework – a way of building highly parallelised applications that can easily scale horizontally to meet dynamic demand, while keeping complexities like physical location mostly abstracted away from the developer. In this talk, Dan will explain what is meant by a virtual actor framework, how to set one up and the basics of coding, activation and persistence.

Manchester born software engineer Daniel uses Microsoft Orleans at customer data science company Dunnhumby.
Dan won best team name at Hack Manchester 2017 (he was also a runner up for his hack but is far prouder of the name).

Location

This meeting is at AutoTrader; they are in the office block in the square opposite HOME theatre on the corner of Whitworth Street West and Medlock Street. It's roughly halfway between Oxford Road and Deansgate railway stations and is a short walk from Deansgate-Castlefield tram stop. The building has a Pizza Express restaurant outside.

There will be someone in the foyer who will sign you in and then tell you how to find the venue.

If you have any special dietary requirements please let us know via the group message forum. (https://secure.meetup.com/messages/)

If you would need assistance to leave the building in the event of an evacuation then please let us know via the group message forum. (https://secure.meetup.com/messages/)

Note for recruitment professionals - we don't exclude recruiters from our meetings but we would ask you to contact Rick Garner for a brief chat before you start attending.

Schedule
Doors open from 18:00

Intro and welcome 18:40

Speaker 18:50 (with a break at some point )

Close ~21:00 (Don't feel bad if you have to leave early for a train/bus/lift home - no one will be offended)

We then adjourn to a local bar for a drink and a natter - everyone is welcome to join us!