Marc Gregoire’s Blog

The next meeting of the Belgian C++ Users Group is planned for Monday November 4th, 2013 at 18:00 at LMS International, a Siemens Business.

LMS International ( http://www.lmsintl.com/ ) is sponsoring this event by providing the location, drinks and catering.

This time, there will be one speaker, giving two presentations of one hour on one subject. The agenda is as follows:

• 18:00: Sandwiches.
• 18:30: Session 1: Strings and String Manipulation in C++, Part 1 (Lieven de Cock) Once there were c-arrays, evolution brought us std::string. This made life easier, and less manual reimplementation was needed because of the power std::string brought to the table. Nevertheless we still keep on reimplementing basic and advanced string manipulation functionality. By this continuously reinventing the wheel we spend a lot of time fixing the same mistakes, while out there are tried and tested and proven libraries. C++11 also brings more power, but we will focus on boost string manipulations. Basic manipulations, like replace, find, erase, split, join, trim, …, next to lexical_cast, boost tokenizer, regex (both boost and std) will be explained and show cased. Next to the lexical_cast we will mention std::to_string. Similar library functionality provided by the POCO libraries will be shown too. String power is at your fingers for free, just say the magic word.
• 19:30: Break
• 19:45: Session 2: Strings and String Manipulation in C++, Part 2 (Lieven de Cock)
• 20:45: Demo of an LMS International software product followed by a drink.

Read the official announcement.

Register for this free event.

The next meeting of the Belgian C++ Users Group is planned for Wednesday June 12th, 2013 at 18:00 at Nikon Metrology HQ.

Nikon Metrology ( http://nikonmetrology.com/ ) is sponsoring this event by providing the location, drinks and catering.

• Joel Falcou is an assistant professor at the University Paris-Sud and researcher at the Laboratoire de Recherche d’Informatique in Orsay, France. His work focuses on investigating high-level programming models for parallel architectures (present and future) and providing efficient implementation of such models using high-performance language features. He’s an active member of the Boost community and CEO of MetaScale, a French start-up valorizing his research. He is also a member of the ISO C++ Standards Committee.
• Jens Weller is a self-employed C++ specialist, working with C++ for over 14 years. He is organizing the C++ conference “Meeting C++” in Düsseldorf, and also runs http://meetingcpp.com. Jens has some vast C++ experience gathered as a freelancer in the IT Industry.

The agenda is as follows:

• 18:00: Sandwiches.
• 18:30: Session 1: Qt5 – Multimedia Overview (Jens Weller) The talk will give a short introduction into Qt5, and focus on its Multimedia Framework, showing how to write an MP3 Player or a video recorder in Qt5.
• 19:30: Break
• 19:45: Session 2: Boost.Proto (Joel Falcou) C++ Embedded Domain Specific Languages Made Easy.
• 20:45: Guided tour of Nikon Metrology followed by a drink.

Read the official announcement.

Register for this free event.

The Belgian community is organizing the 7th edition of Community Day! Community Day 2013 will take place on June 20th 2013 in Utopolis Mechelen.

14 user groups will outperform themselves to bring you their view on Microsoft products in more than 25 sessions. 2013 is not a release year for Microsoft so far, so that gives us, the community, the opportunity to do deep-dive sessions in interesting topics. The biggest goal of this edition is bringing you high-quality sessions. And we’re pretty sure we have achieved that. Why don’t you take a look yourself at our agenda? Oh and don’t forget to take a look at our sponsor page, because it’s thanks to them we can organize this great event!

Convinced you need to be part of the experience again? Want to register? Great! Registration opens in the second week of May so come back soon to reserve your seat. Remember that last year, the event was sold out very fast, so make sure you’re on time!

The Microsoft Community Day 2013 is powered by:

• AZUG
• Belgian C++ user group
• BIWUG
• CLUG
• Pro-Exchange
• SCUG
• SQLUG
• ACCB.net/VBIB
• Visug
• WinSec
• WinTalks
• DotNetHub
• MADN
• TechNine

We hope to see you on June 20th!

After last years great success, there will be a Meeting C++ 2013 with 2 days full of C++ in Germany this Fall. Meeting C++ 2013 will be again at the 2nd weekend of November (8/9.11.2013). This time the conference will take place at the Lindner Congresshotel in Düsseldorf. For this year there will be 25 talks and up to 2 keynotes for the 250 attendees at the conference!

Like last year, this event is organized independently, covering most its costs over the ticket price. There will be 3 tracks about C++ this year, with the 3rd track being a theme track about C++ and UI. Talks about Qt5, XAML, wxWidgets, GTK, Apps and QML could take place in this theme track. The other two tracks will offer general C++ talks like last year. Meeting C++ 2013 is looking again for sponsors, with sponsors from last year already being contacted.

The call for papers for Meeting C++ 2013 has started and will end on May 15th. The process will be a bit different then last years. Talks will be collected, and then anonymously rated by a Program Committee consisting out of community members, organizers and sponsors. All ratings will be combined and used to do the final placement in the schedule. Speakers will have the opportunity to publish an entry about their talk at our blog this year! Tickets will be available soon, starting with the early bird ticket sale. This year there will be 250 tickets available for the conference, early bird tickets will cost €399, normal tickets €499. Early bird tickets will be sold till the end of June, after the schedule is available for one month, or till the 100 available tickets are sold out.

Microsoft is organizing a Superhackathon in Belgium on 27th of March. Starting at 9AM for the Day part, and continuing until midnight for the Night part. This is a hackathon organized simultaneously in Brussels, Genk, Mons, and Kortijk.

Code, build, eat, drink & win.

Experts will be on site to help you with the last phase of building your first Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 application. The event will be streaming live everywhere to the world.

There will be experts (many!), breakfast, pizza, coffee (lots!) and Red Bull. You can win prizes and rewards such as tickets to TechEd, Asus Vivo Tab, Lumia Phone and more.

Read more and register.

The next meeting of the Belgian C++ Users Group is planned for Monday February 4th 2013 at 18:30 at Materialise HQ.

Note: The deadline for registrations is January 18!

The agenda is as follows:

• Session 1: Effective WinRT with C++ (Francisco Almeida)
  This will be a brief overview of implementation of Windows Store apps using C++, along with its most useful libraries, new language features and, of course, common pitfalls and traps one may encounter.
  We will go over the multithreaded design of WinRT, and how modern C++ allows us to effectively cope with it, including exception handling. We will, of course, refresh some general knowledge of Windows Store app development, in the perspective of its implementation while using C++.
• Break
• Session 2: Threading in C++11 (Lieven de Cock)
  Threading has been a challenging and non portable job for many years, and it is one of our basic tools for the future. Though several libraries came to aid (POCO / boost / …), now it’s finally part of the language, C++11 is bringing us threading support. In this crash course we will dive into basic uses of std::thread, std::mutex, std::condition_variable, std::atomic, … Life is easier and more portable now, but did we get all we wanted ? And as always, C++ is powerful, providing constructs mere mortals should better not touch, unless you are that 1% of the user base, but most of us are not.
  We will see simple code examples explaining the std::thread basics. So lock your mutex, wait for your condition variable and atomically spin up that thread, C++11 threading is here for you. Thou shall async till eternity, or untill the future has delivered its promise.
• Guided tour of the Materialise facilities.
• Drink

Materialise ( http://materialise.be/ ) is sponsoring this event by providing the location, drinks and catering

The event is free for everyone, but you need to register for it.

TechDays 2013 is planned for 5-7 March 2013 in the Kinepolis in Antwerp.
The agenda planning is still in full swing but the first speakers and sessions have already been announced.

There will be two pre-conferences on March 5th:

• Modern application lifecycle management with Visual Studio 2012 (Brian Keller and other speakers to be announced)
• SharePoint 2013 Platform and App development (Dan Holme, Lieven Iliano and TBA)

Content on March 6th and 7th: focus is on developing Windows 8, Windows Azure and Windows Phone apps, of course supported by sessions on EF, tools, ASP.NET, identity and more.

There will also be a corner with MEET members and MVPs who can help you with any questions or problems you might have.

You get an early bird discount of 15% if you order tickets before January 1st 2013.

More information on the official TechDays site.

Microsoft is organizing a Windows App Day on November 23rd, officially described as follows:

Don’t miss the first Windows App Day, packed with national and international speakers to talk about App Development, User Experience and Design. Our speakers are all actively working on apps and ready to share learnings and best practices.

Your App Day kicks off with a joint keynote with Belgian app cases, by Belgian companies, on Windows Apps.

After the keynote we split into two tracks: one focused on UX, designers and web experts; a second one for developers. You are free to switch tracks during the day to compose the schedule of your taste. Find detailed info on the sessions and our speakers on our Windows App Day page!

Scoop: On the Windows App Day, Microsoft will be announcing a contest around Windows 8 where they’ll have devices as prizes for developing apps, so start thinking about possible Apps that you could develop for the contest. Details about the contest will be made public at a later date.

When: Friday 23 November 2012, 9AM to 6PM
Where: ALM Meeting Point
Filip Williotstraat 9
2600 Antwerp (Berchem)

On 28th of September a colleague of mine (Francisco Almeida) and myself participated in a Windows 8 App-a-thon organized by Microsoft. I was pleasantly surprised when I received an email a couple of days ago informing us that we won the first prize in the contest 🙂  The winners have been announced on the Belux MSDN blog. Winning this contest is an extra encouragement to finish the little puzzle game we started and to put it on the App store. If everything goes well, the plan is to have an internal Beta version next week, and to submit the puzzle game for App store certification towards the end of next week or the week after. We have created a temporary landing page for our game which you can find here.
 

WOWZAPP 2012 is a worldwide hackathon running from Friday November 9^th to Sunday November 11^th 2012. The official description for the global WOWZAPP 2012 event is as follows:

Eat. Drink. Code. And get a chance to win a tablet. Be part of the app revolution. Join thousands of developers around the world as we build apps for the next generation of Windows. There will be dozens of event venues from college campuses to Microsoft offices, all buzzing with energy, music, free food and more. Expert help, free resources. Microsoft app experts, developers and trainers will be available to assist your learning and coding. Take part in the tablet giveaway.

In Belgium the hackathon will be organized on Saturday November 10^th, from 8:08 AM to midnight at the following location:

HUBrussels
Warmoesberg 26
1000 Brussels
Belgium

The hackathon is free for everyone, lunch and dinner is included, and you get a chance to win a tablet.

More information and registration info here.
Hashtag: #wowzapp

There are a couple of seats left for the Windows 8 App-a-thon that will be held on Friday September 28th at the Microsoft Offices in Zaventem. Register your place now.

What’s in a name? Of course you know hackathons. App-a-thon is your version of the ‘Windows 8 apps hackathon’.

Mark your calendar for 28-9 and spend your day coding/designing at last app-a-thon before GA on October 26th!
Team up with your best UX or developer friend to build a killer team, come alone, sign up with a group, whatever you want!

Hands on. Code. Build. Shine. Totally Windows 8.

There will be 2 coding sessions, 1 for Day Birds from 10AM – 4PM and one for Night Owls from6PM – 12AM. You can join us for one or both sessions.

Build an app, have fun and go home with fantastic prizes!

1st prize: Xbox 360 + Kinect
2nd prize: Deluxe App’ero Bongo Box
3rd prize: Professional Sharp Knife Set

No app idea yet? No problem! We have a bucket full of ideas and scenarios you can use right away to kick start your project!

Questions about UX & design? Don’t worry, we’ve got that covered. You’ll be able to talk to a Windows 8 UX Expert (will be there for 4 hours) and a designer (will be there the entire day!) to help out with logo’s, graphic design, etc.

Technical pre-requisites (for developers)
– Familiarity writing either desktop apps, mobile applications or developing websites. Familiarity with either Javascript, C# or C++.
– Bring your own laptop: any device capable of running Windows 8 and Visual Studio Express
– Required software:
Windows 8 RTM via MSDN downloads  (for MSDN subscribers) or Windows 8 RTM via Evaluation Center
Visual Studio 2012
Windows 8 SDK samples

UX designers: Photoshop or your familiar wireframing tool
• Check out the Windows 8 UX Guidelines
• You might want to download Windows 8 Style Apps Assets

The dates for TechDays Belgium 2013 have been nailed down: 5-6-7 March 2013 🙂

The location hasn’t been determined yet, so stay tuned…

The next meeting of the Belgian C++ Users Group is planned for Tuesday October 16th 2012 at 18:30 in the Microsoft offices in Zaventem.

The agenda is as follows:

• Session 1: An introduction to the C++ Network Library (Glyn Matthews)
• Break
• Session 2: Comparison between Unit Test Frameworks (Mark Van Peteghem)
• Drink

Microsoft is sponsoring this event by providing the location, drinks and sandwiches.

The event is free for everyone, but you need to register for it.

On 12 September 2012, there will be a launch event for Visual Studio 2012. You can follow this event from where ever you are. See here for details.

It was an honor to have Kate Gregory and Rong Lu speaking at our BeCPP meeting. A big thank you to both of you.

If you couldn’t attend the meeting in person, or if you would like to go over the slides again, you can download them from the BeCPP site.

Here are the slides of my presentation I gave on Community Day 2012.

The third meeting of the Belgian C++ Users Group is planned for Wednesday June 27th 2012 at 18:30 in the Microsoft offices in Zaventem.

There will be two presentations, and we are proud to announce that they will be given by 2 international top speakers:

• Kate Gregory is the author of over a dozen books, and speaks at DevTeach, TechEd (USA, Europe, Africa), and TechDays, C++ Connections (with fellow speakers Herb Sutter and Bjarne Stroustrup), among others. Her speaker ratings are consistently in the top 10%. Kate is a C++ MVP, a founding sponsor of the Toronto .NET Users Group, the founder of the East of Toronto .NET Users group, a member of the INETA speakers bureau, and a member of adjunct faculty at Trent University in Peterborough. Since January 2002 she has been Microsoft Regional Director for Toronto and since January 2004 she has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional designation for Visual C++. In June 2005 she won the Regional Director of the year award and in February 2011 she was designated Visual C++ MVP of the year for 2010. Kate develops courses on C++, Visual Studio, and Windows programming for Pluralsight and is writing a book on C++ AMP.
• Rong Lu is a Program Manager in the Visual C++ team at Microsoft. She holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from Shanghai Jiaotong University. She is now working on Visual Studio vNext Application Lifecycle Management Tools for C++. Before that, she worked on the Visual Studio 2005 SDK, Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 releases, mainly responsible for designing architecture tools and SharePoint development tools. She has been a speaker at TechEd since 2007

Both are experienced speakers, and it’s a perfect opportunity for networking. If you ever wanted to ask a question to a member of the Visual C++ product team, now is your chance.

The agenda will be as follows:

• Session 1 (18:30 – 19:30): What’s new in VC++11 (Rong Lu)
• Break
• Session 2 (19:45 – 20:45): C++ AMP (GPGPU Computing) (Kate Gregory)
  It is time to start taking advantage of the computing power of GPUs. C++ AMP can deliver orders of magnitude performance increase with certain algorithms by utilizing the GPU to perform mathematical calculations.
• Drink

Microsoft is sponsoring this event by providing the location, drinks and sandwiches.

The event is free for everyone, but registration is required. Register now.
A limited number of seats are available.

( PS: If you know anyone interested in C++, please forward this invitation to them. )

There is now an official mechanism to become a member of the Belgian C++ Users Group.

Follow this link and register for the newsletter.
This will make you a member and from that point on you will receive announcements for future events of our users group.

TechEd Europe this year will be in Amsterdam from 26th of June till 29th of June.
If you register before 31st of March you’ll save €300.

TechEd offers over 400 breakout sessions spread across 12 tracks featuring diverse technologies at a level of detail unmatched in the industry – from understanding the latest business productivity solutions to diving deeper on Microsoft’s Cloud strategy. TechEd also features over 250 self-paced labs created by product experts, and is an ideal place to pick up new ideas and skills to increase productivity and build better solutions.

Plus TechEd Europe offers an additional day of deep training via the pre-conference seminars happening on Monday, 25 June. These day-long sessions will enhance your learning experience through supplemental in-depth, comprehensive training. Take an accelerated path to the certifications and skills you need to increase your professional appeal and prepare to add new value in the real world, with an extended skill set you can put to use immediately.

One of the pre-conference seminars is all about C++, “C++ in 2012: Modern, Readable, Safe, Fast”, see details.

All the recorded content and slides from TechDays 2012, including related downloads and content, is now online.
Enjoy 🙂