Join us on Thursday May 16th at 6:00 PM as Jeff Bollinger and Jeff Smoley present Scaling w/ Cassandra.

NativeX (formerly W3i) recently transitioned a large portion of their backend infrastructure from MS SQL Server to Apache Cassandra. Today, its Cassandra cluster backs its mobile advertising network supporting over 10 million daily active users producing over 10,000 transactions per second with an average database request latency of under 2 milliseconds. Going from relational to noSQL required NativeX’s engineers to re-train, re-tool and re-think the way it architects applications and infrastructure. Learn why Cassandra was selected as a replacement, what challenges were encountered along the way, and what architecture and infrastructure were involved in the implementation.

The Details:

When: Thursday March 14th, 6:00– 7:30 PM

- Networking and Food at 6:00 PM

- Presentation starts at 6:30 PM

Where: W3i, 1900 Medical Arts Ave South, Sartell, MN 56377
Cost: FREE!
Food and Drinks sponsored by NativeX

Join us on March 14th as Josh Ruis presents Unity – Beyond Games!

The presentation will be on the benefits that Unity can offer beyond just game design. Unity offers many tools to make it easy to make any kind of application. The presentation will highlight some of the tools Unity offers for doing this, and the huge benefits gained through using Unity, such as being cross-platform with a single bundle.

Join us on February 21st as Paul Jonas and Tony Feick present the essential steps to get started with Corona SDK.  Corona is a cross-platform mobile game development SDK that advertises 10x faster development than native code.  Tony & Paul recently released Scuba Steve for Android and will be talking about their experiences:

• Installing and setup
• Creating a sample project
• An overview of the basics: such as sprites, animation, collisions, etc

Join us for a presentation by SaltyCactus founder, Jeremy Stowe.  Catch a demo of Jeremy’s currently in development game Strategery, play the beta on demo devices, and have your questions answered about implementing an almost real time strategy game on Windows Phone using an Azure back end.

The Details:

When: Thursday January 17th, 6:00– 7:30 PM
Where: W3i, 1900 Medical Arts Ave South, Sartell, MN 56377
Cost: FREE!
Food and Drinks sponsored by W3i

This month’s meetup features a presentation by Stephen Fluin, head of Strategy and Innovation at MentorMate.  He’ll discuss developing cross-platform applications, targeting Android.  If you’ve ever wished you could use Python for your Android games, you’ll want to be here!

The Details:

When: Thursday December 6th, 6:00– 7:30 PM
Where: W3i, 1900 Medical Arts Ave South, Sartell, MN 56377
Cost: FREE!
Food and Drinks sponsored by W3i

Join the Mobile St. Cloud User Group for an evening of Android rooting! Joel Braun & Carl St. Pierre, Senior Software Developers at W3i, will be helping root your Android phone or tablet, and applying different ROMs of the Android operating system. We’ll have a couple phones along to demonstrate the different methods of Rooting; the basics of ClockworkMod bootloader, how to do a nandroid backup, and other tools. We’ll also show some methods of applying different Android ROMs your phone once rooted.

Everyone is welcome, whether you plan to root or not. If you are planning on hacking your device please remember to bring the following:

- Your phone
- USB cable (if not standard MicroUSB)
- Laptop (if you want to root/rom your own phone yourself)
- Hacking spirit

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Details:

When: Thursday October 18th, 6:00– 7:30 PM
Where: W3i, 1900 Medical Arts Ave South, Sartell, MN 56377
Cost: FREE!
Food and Drinks sponsored by W3i

Mobile St. Cloud and the St. Cloud .NET User Group invite you Lean Security 101 presented by Josh More on Tuesday August 28th at 6:00 PM.

Slide deck from the talk can be found here:

http://www.rjssmartsecurity.com/LeanSecurity101Comic/Lean-Security-101-Comic/Lean-Security-101-The-Comic-Book/

For years, we’ve been told the key to security is technology. We purchase and deploy technology to create layers behind layers, making our walls taller and taller to keep the bad guys out. Sadly, it’s not working.

What does work is combining lessons learned in other industries to the security world. By examining best practices within Lean Manufacturing, Agile Development and Rugged DevOps, this presentation delivers ways you can be successful in security, not by purchasing technology, but by:

Effectively using what you have and what you can get for free

Re-allocating security budget from the point of diminishing return

Identifying and maximizing learning opportunities

Engaging in small, inexpensive test projects

Choosing custom and rational metrics to measure what matters

Replacing defective systems with ones that grow with you

Turning security from a catch-up game into one of strategic and competitive advantage.

Success in security depends on the right mix of people, technology and process. Without all three, you are doomed to failure.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Details:

When: Tuesday August 28th, 6:00– 7:30 PM
Where: W3i, 1900 Medical Arts Ave South, Sartell, MN 56377
Cost: FREE!
Food and Drinks sponsored by W3i

Disc Golf & BBQ

Mobile St. Cloud and the St. Cloud .NET user group invite you to our summer Disc Golf Tournament and BBQ!

Agenda:

• 5:00 – Arrival
• 5:15 – Disc Golf Scamble (9 holes)
  • If you have discs, bring em.  If you don’t, we have a bunch of extras.
  • 4 person teams.  Come with a team or we can hook you up with one.
  • Prizes for 1st and 2nd place, longest drive, longest putt!
• 6:30 – BBQ – Food and beverages will be provided

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Details:

When: Thursday August 16th, 5:00– 8:30 PM
Where: Riverside Park, St. Cloud
Cost: FREE!
Food and Drinks sponsored by W3i

Join us Thursday July 12th for a talk by Justin Peck, developer, gamer, and co-founder of QONQR: The Geosocial Game of World Domination.

Everyone now carries around powerful gaming devices that know where they are and who their friends are. With conditions ripe for geosocial gaming, there is still a surprising lack of successful titles. Why is that? What are the challenges and opportunities for this new, uniquely-mobile, gaming genre?

We look forward to seeing you there!

When: July12th, 6 – 7:30 PM
Where: W3i – 1900 Medical Arts Ave, Sartell, MN 56377
Cost: FREE!
Venue, Pizza and Drinks sponsored by W3i

Join us on Thursday May 10th for an evening of lightning talks!

Presenter Rules:

• 5 minutes, no shorter, no longer.
• 20 slides, timed to automatically advance every 15 seconds whether you are ready or not.

Curious how this works? Check out some examples here: http://igniteshow.com/browse

We are looking for presenters! Please contact @jbollinger if you’re intrested in presenting.

Agenda (more to come):

• UDID Deprecation by Matthew MacGregor
• PhoneGap by @grantpexsa
• Mobile User Acquisition by @petenovotny
• Windows 8 Metro by @carlspierre
• Audio Recording by Chris Frechette
• jQuery Mobile by @mattneubert

We look forward to seeing you there!

When: May 10th, 6 – 7:30 PM
Where: W3i – 1900 Medical Arts Ave, Sartell, MN 56377
Cost: FREE!
Venue, Pizza and Drinks sponsored by W3i