SSW Update - FireBootCamp Sydney ended successfully

[the cutting edge ]

G'day Developers!

FireBootCamp Sydney ended successfully

It has been an amazing, intense 9 weeks, and while I’m sad that it is over, I couldn't be more proud of the guys and what they've achieved. They've all improved in different ways:

Some of them arrived with a lot of experience… now they are awesome.
Some were juniors straight out of uni… they’re still juniors but now with great experience. They surely know the right way to do things. These guys could spot a smell if you wanted to architect a dodgy solution that was untestable.
Some are recently arrived from India with many years of experience but big gaps… they now leave with much improved communication skills, giving clear explanations in Sprint Reviews. They are now able to manage a Product Owner much better. They even shake the PO's hand with confidence!

Everyone did Scrum well by the end, knowing and following the 8 Steps to Scrum. We know all the boot campers found at least the first 4 or 5 sprints very hard, but they stuck it out as the Product Owner turned up the heat, while always changing his requirements. The proof is in the pudding… test the apps yourself at www.scrumcommitments.com and sugarlearning.com.

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet." Aristotle

Why we created FireBootCamp

We didn’t jump into running a boot camp like this lightly. There was a few problems that kept arising at SSW:

Corporate training – lots people were taking our training – we still do it for large corporates around the country and it costs them a lot of money. We love teaching the newest technologies and methods along with our best practices, but when we followed up with them later they were not using what we had taught them to its fullest – they would tell it was “still on the backlog”… basically they were seeing but not doing.
UTS lectures – A number of the SSW guys lecture at the University of Technology. We were seeing people going through a 10 week course but the theoretical knowledge gained was not transferring into results. They needed practical experience beyond simple exercises.
Work Experience – SSW often get juniors who are happy to work with us for 3 months or more for free, but when they are blocked we don’t really have a great reason to pull off one of our consultants (that is working for our clients) to help them out, so the work experience guy might stay stuck for days or weeks.

This is why we started FireBootCamp, to integrate the theory with the practice in an environment where experienced consultants could support the learners through the process by:

Doing the theory in the morning
Then practicing the real project in the afternoon
Learning Scrum and ALM along the way
All while making "Bob" (the Product Owner) happy

The course is not a panacea, and not everyone will graduate a guaranteed expert – but every attendee is definitely many steps above where they were before starting. Plus they are more confident and competent, with a solid skill-set that they can build on:

Know the right way to attack problems
Work with people very different from themselves
Worked in cross functional teams
All while providing incremental deliveries of real business value in every sprint to "Bob" (the Product Owner)

Keep reading to find out about the projects we gave out boot campers

-Adam Cogan, SSW

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SSW TV reaches 300,000 hits!

A big congratulations to the video team at SSW for having reached 300,000 hits on the SSW video channel.

In the two short years it's been running, they've made almost 200 videos, got more than 2,000 subscribers, and spread the .NET love to thousands world wide. Great job, guys!

New SSW TV videos!

Building and running a large scale service on Windows Azure – Grant Holliday

In this session Grant Holliday – Senior Service Engineer for Microsoft – takes us through an exclusive look behind the scenes of the Team Foundation Service and explores what it takes to build and operate a large scale service on Windows Azure.

Watch more videos on SSW TV

Become a World Class Developer in just 9 weeks with FireBootCamp!

Special Intensive Course

Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, San Francisco

Cost: $6,000 + GST

The FireBootCamp program is an intensive, full-time, 9-week program. Participants learn, work and code together for 10-12 hours per day, 5 days a week. There are exercise and food breaks, but for the main the program is continual hands-on learning.

The program focuses on real world skills including Agile software development practices, enterprise architecture, application life cycle, end-to-end testing and user interface design. The technology stack covers .NET MVC, TypeScript, JavaScript & jQuery and uses Microsoft Visual Studio 2013.

Scheduled Boot Camps:

San Francisco BootCamp #1 23rd JUN 2014 – 22nd AUG 2014	Sydney BootCamp #2 21st JUL 2014 – 19nd SEP 2014
Melbourne BootCamp #1 8th SEP 2014 – 7th NOV 2014

Which City do you want FireBootCamp to be run in next: Europe (Slovenia) or East USA (New York)? Let us know

Find out more and Register

Get Agile with 3 Day Scrum Training!

Intensive Professional Scrum Developer Course

Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide

Cost: $2,995 + GST

Professional Scrum Developer courses teach students how to work in a team - using modern software engineering practices - to develop an increment of potentially releasable functionality using a specific technology platform.

Classes are exercise-driven, with students working in self-organizing teams to develop "done" increments from Product Backlog items.

Course at a Glance:

This 3-day Professional Scrum Developer .NET course is a mix of lecture, demonstration, group discussion, simulation, and hands-on software development. The bulk of the course will be spent working as a team on a case study application delivering increments of new functionality in mini-sprints. Here is the course at a glance:

Scrum

Note: Scrum fundamentals are not covered in this 3-day course. If you are not experienced with Scrum fundamentals, the 5 day course is still available on site by appointment.

Brisbane 16 JUNE 2014		Perth 23 JUNE 2014
Canberra 30 JUN 2014		Melbourne 5 AUG 2014
Sydney 25 AUG 2014

Find out more and Register

Sydney .NET User Group

The best place to learn .NET for free in Sydney

User Group

Sydney .NET User Group
Wednesday 16th April 2014
6:00pm - 8:00pm
SSW Office
Gateway Court, Suite 13
81-91 Military Road, Neutral Bay NSW 2089

"Twitter in the Courtroom, Defamation and Copyright Infringement on Social Media" - Tom Griffith

One of Sydney's best lawyers will be here to answer all your legal questions. This is sure to be a great follow up to Cameron Shaw's user group presentation "Software Development Contracts and Contract Disputes – Tips and Tricks".

Piper Alderman Partner Tom Griffith will explain how traditional laws of defamation apply on social media, and will discuss how Courts have adapted to widespread use of social media, including in the courtroom. The seminar will also cover Copyright and other intellectual property issues arising in social media.

About the presenter:

Tom is a partner in the Dispute Resolution division based in Sydney. He has more than 14 years’ experience in disputes in Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane.

Tom has experience in regulatory hearings and enquiries, corporate fraud investigations, disputes involving breach of fiduciary duties, defamation and reputation management, (particularly online defamation and issues arising from social media) and in Corporations Law and ACCC matters. Tom has a diverse practice, ranging from employment disputes, advising in respect of directors’ duties and corporate governance, administrative law review and intellectual property disputes. He has also acted in retail tenancy disputes in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Administrative Decisions Tribunal (NSW) and is the head of Piper Alderman's Social Media Focus Group.

To see more details and RSVP, please visit our Facebook .NET Group, our LinkedIn .NET Group or our Meetup Group.

Can't make it to the Sydney .NET User Group?

Watch the Live stream!

Tune in from anywhere!

Sydney .NET User Group Live
6PM AEDT (UTC+11)

The team at SSW TV are now streaming our User Group sessions live. Each session will also be published on the SSW TV site after the event so you can review what was said in the sessions.

Then join us at the NerdDinner

Where nerds meet and eat

NerdDinner - Where geeks eat
Wednesday 16th April 2014
8:10pm - 9:30pm
The Oaks Hotel
118 Military Road, Neutral Bay

SSW and Telerik invite you to join us for pizza at The Oaks. A fantastic opportunity for networking with peers and sharing thoughts after the Sydney .NET User Group presentation.

Sydney .Net User Group and NerdDinner proudly sponsored by:

Canberra .NET User Group

The best place to learn .NET for free in Canberra

Canberra .NET User Group
Monday 14th April 2014
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Microsoft Canberra Branch
Level 4, 6 National Circuit
Barton, Australia

"The modern Office developer: Why SharePoint and Office development are cool again" - Brian Farnhill

In this session Brian Farnhill (Premier Field Engineer with Microsoft) will talk you through the new app models for Office and SharePoint 2013, and why they matter to a wider audience of developers now more than ever. He will highlight what has been problematic in developing for Office and SharePoint in previous releases, and highlight why the new model addresses these issues, and opens the platform up for the use of modern web technologies. This session is a must see for anyone who is interested in developing for Office, SharePoint or Office365, as well as anyone who has ever talked trash about developing for SharePoint... I know you’re out there ☺

About the presenter:
Brian Farnhill is a Premier Field Engineer with Microsoft and is based in Canberra, Australia. Brian has an extensive background in the development of custom solutions and UI cusotmisations for SharePoint. His background of working in Canberra has meant that he has worked with a number of federal government based clients and has been able to help them make better use of their investments in SharePoint by customising and extending the platform to suit the needs of the business, their staff and their clients. Brian is known throughout Australia for his work in the SharePoint community and is a regular speaker at the SharePoint Conferences as well as other events across Australia and New Zealand. Brian is passionate about all aspects of technology and development, and also actively contributes towards open source software and apps for Windows Phone and Windows 8 on top of his SharePoint related work.

To see more details and RSVP, please visit our Facebook .NET Group, our LinkedIn .NET Group or our Meetup Group.

Canberra .Net User Group proudly sponsored by:

Advertise with SSW

If you would like to advertise your product or service with SSW or would like to find out more about various advertising opportunities, please email your enquiry to info@ssw.com.au or call: +61 2 9953 3000.

April 2014

Employment

Senior SharePoint 2013 Developer - SSW Brisbane office

SSW is looking for an experienced and talented SharePoint developer who is passionate about implementing awesome SharePoint solutions. This role requires great communication skills and solid experience delivering production-ready SharePoint solutions.
SSW has been the leading Microsoft technology company in Sydney for 21 years. We require an enthusiastic Senior SharePoint developer to start at our Brisbane branch ASAP.