Creating an ouroboros

[the cutting edge ]

G'day Developers!

Creating an ouroboros, or: how coding boot camp students created SugarLearning, a tool that now runs their course

I'm having a ball this month – I've been to Melbourne to give 3 presentations at TechEd and I get to do the same again at TechEd Sydney in a couple of weeks. I'm also enjoying the hubbub and excitement of getting ready to release the beta version of SugarLearning, which was made by the students of the first FireBootCamp course back in January.

As part of this, we've put together a video that shows how we used SugarLearning in our second FireBootCamp course, and will also be sending out a press release.

Watch the video, have a read of the press release, and let me know what you think.

SugarLearning Press Release

SSW is announcing the beta release of SugarLearning. SugarLearning is an online training tool that was built by the students of SSW's first intensive 9-week .NET coding camp, FireBootCamp, in January 2014.

In a circle of fruition, SugarLearning was used by the mentors of the FireBootCamp when the course ran again in July. Lead mentor Adam Stephensen used it to set and track completion rates of homework and required readings for the students. Thus, the student-created tool was wielded to help the newest batch of students acquire the same knowledge used to make it.

At SSW SugarLearning is designed to simplify the induction process for employees and employers alike. FireBootCamp mentor and Microsoft Regional Director Adam Cogan described the usefulness of the tool:

"The goal is to integrate new employees as soon as possible. The employer can choose from core and job-specific learning tasks to customize the induction to ensure the learning meets the needs of both the employee and the unique requirements of each role."

Adam Stephensen, .NET and Azure expert, and mentor of the FireBootCamp students responsible for SugarLearning, talked about his experience using it for his students:

"While the application is simple, it has a fully featured gamification engine. There is the option to assign illustrative "achievement badges" to any categories considered especially important and all achievements are tracked online. I used it during the last FireBootCamp and, as a teacher, enjoyed the easy to read progress summary and leaderboards."

The students built SugarLearning with modern technologies including ASP.NET MVC, HTML5. It is deployed to Azure, Microsoft's cloud technology. FireBootCamp was established to train and guide developers while building a real world app for a real Product Owner. The intensive course focuses on in-demand skills to ensure that when they graduate the students will have the enterprise web development skills to hit the ground running.

You can test drive SugarLearning now at sugarlearning.com

-Adam Cogan, SSW

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New SSW TV video!

Xamarin University – Experiences from the frontline with Glen Stephens & Alec Tucker

Adam Cogan interviews Xamarin employee Glen Stephens. Student Alec Tucker talks about his experience doing Xamarin University part-time.

New course: Modern Enterprise Best Practices with ASP.Net MVC and AngularJS

TechEd Satellite Workshop

If you're writing MVC applications for the enterprise (or want to start) you need to go beyond the simple technology demos. In this 2 day course you will learn proven tools and techniques for building enterprise-quality, maintainable, scalable, and robust applications.

The training doesn't stop there - in addition to two jam-packed days on ASP.NET MVC, AngularJS, dependency injection, unit testing, loosely coupled architecture, SOLID principles, Windows Azure, continuous deployment and design patterns like Repository and Unit of Work, you'll leave with hands-on exercises you can take back to work and implement immediately. As an attendee you'll also have ongoing access to our comprehensive library of video training so that you can share your newfound knowledge inside your organisation.

Length: 2 days
Sydney course: 29-30 October 2014
Price: $599 + GST

About the presenter:

Adam Stephensen

Adam Stephensen is a Solution Architect at SSW, and head mentor at FireBootCamp.com, the gruelling 9 week boot camp for .NET developers. He loves delivering high quality, scalable, enterprise solutions. He has a passion for Scrum, Continuous Delivery, and software craftsmanship. This has led him to mentor and contribute to many .NET projects across a broad range of technologies.

Adam is currently excited by the multitude of new tools and platforms coming from Microsoft, especially the combination of Visual Studio Online and Windows Azure.

Webinar: Dev Superpowers - Xamarin

Native iOS and Android Development

Getting started building cross platform native mobile applications with Xamarin and Visual Studio

Thursday 30th October
11.00am - 12.00pm AEDT
Cost: No Charge

During this session we will build an application that runs natively on both Android and iOS. Topics we'll cover include:

Options for Cross-platform Development
Cross-platform Architecture
iOS and Android Fundamentals
Using Native UI and Controls

More webinars coming soon:

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

Special Intensive Course

Redmond, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, San Francisco

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. Apart from exercise and food breaks, the guys in the program are hands on learning all day every day.

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, AngularJS, TypeScript, jQuery, Windows Azure and uses Microsoft Visual Studio 2013.

Scheduled Boot Camps:

Sydney, NSW, Australia 19th Jan - 20th Mar 2015	Redmond, WA, USA 26th Jan - 20th Mar 2015
Redmond, WA, USA 20th Apr - 12th Jun 2015	Redmond, WA, USA 29th Jun - 31st Aug 2015

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 15th October 2014
6:00pm - 8:00pm
SSW Office
Gateway Court, Suite 13
81-91 Military Road, Neutral Bay NSW 2089

"Tour of the Physical Internet" – Grant Holliday

Have you ever wondered how your bits and bytes travel between your PC to all the servers on the Internet? In this session, we will take a virtual road-trip out your router, through some Internet Exchange Points, under the ocean in some submarine cables and speed along some of the widest sections of the Internet Superhighway.

About the presenter:

Grant Holliday

Grant Holliday is a Senior Service Engineer for the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Service. Team Foundation Service offers a version of Team Foundation Server hosted in Windows Azure, accessible from anywhere using existing and familiar tools, and supporting all languages and platforms. As a Service Engineer he works behind the scenes to keep the service up and running smoothly for customers around the world. Prior to this role, he travelled around Australia visiting customers and performing TFS and SQL health checks. He also spent three years in Redmond, Washington as a Program Manager in the TFS product group. He was responsible for the internal TFS server deployments at Microsoft, including the largest and busiest TFS server in the world used by Developer Division. Grant shares his experiences managing TFS at his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/granth/

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
15 October 2014
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 17th September 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 13th October 2014
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Microsoft Canberra Branch
Level 4, 6 National Circuit
Barton, Australia

"Tour of the Physical Internet" – Grant Holliday

About the presenter:

Grant Holliday

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.

October 2014

Fun stuff

Ruby Cogan (Adam's daughter) is a star! Check her out in the music video for Karise Eden's hit new song, Dynamite.

Proudly developed by SSW Sydney Web Design