Mission
Founded in 1995 as a user group focused on Visual Basic language, the group is now dedicated to .NET technologies with eitheir C# or VB.NET. Our mission is to help Visual Studio developers exchange ideas and solutions on new products, techniques. The group is not part of Microsoft but an official MSDN user group.  As all the Visual Studio info on the Web is in English, this site is in French to help French speaking people find information about Visual Studio in French.  Feel free to contact us in English.

Contact
Contact us at: info@guvsm.net

Mailing List
To receive notifications of future events, make sure to subscribe to our mailing list.  If you have an RSS reader, you can also copy paste the RSS links found on some of our pages.  Look for this symbol:

Associations
The Group is a member of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) and the International .NET Association (INETA).

Special Interest Groups
Beside our regular topics, the group has three special interest groups: SQL Server, Software Architecture and Application Life Cycle with Team System. Check these symbols that identify the meetings in our schedule.

Meetings
Monthly meetings are held twice a month. They are presented in the language of the speaker, again, any questions, comments or ideas are welcome in French or English. No need to confirm you presence, all you need is show up the night of the meeting. Volonteers will be at the front desk to take your membership and to answer the questions you may have about the group. Check the schedule on our home page.
Meeting place: Microsoft, 2000 McGill College, 4th floor (corner Maisonneuve W.).
Check this map.

Membership
Meetings are free for members. A $5 fee is required for non members. The annual membership is $25 for a year (from the date you become a member).  You pay cash at the beginning of the meeting (receipts are available).

Postal address
Montreal Visual Studio User Group
8457 Newman
Suite 131
LaSalle, QC
Canada
H8N 0A2
Canada

The group is managed by Guy Barrette.

Guy Barrette is a Solutions Architect based in Montreal, Canada.  He is the Microsoft Regional Director for the Montreal region and a MVP for ASP/ASP.NET. He has been working and developing with Microsoft development tools since the launch of VB 3 in 1994. His focus is helping organizations build better software using Microsoft technologies like Team System and also architecturing and developing Web applications.  He's been a speaker at developers' conferences like Microsoft DevDays and DevTeach. Speaking of DevTeach, Guy is the tech chair for the French.  Guy has the following Microsoft certifications: Site Builder and Solution Developer. Guy is also president of the Montreal Visual Studio User Group, he organized the first Code Camp in Montreal, he writes a monthly .NET book review column for the Level Extreme Magazine and he his the Visual Studio Talk Show Internet radio show co-host.  More info at www.dotnet-expertise.com

The software architecture special interest group is managed by Mario Cardinal.

Mario Cardinal is a Software Architect specialized in enterprise application architecture. He possess over fifteen years of experience in designing large-scale information systems. His primary areas of involvement are in object-oriented software development, Domain Driven Development, Unified Modeling Language (UML), Test Driven Development, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (PoEAA), Microsoft Enterprise Library, code generators and software development process. Mario is a Microsoft MVP (Solutions Architect) as well as a member of the MSDN Canada Speaker’s Bureau and he lead the architecture special interest group at the Montreal Visual Studio User Group (www.guvsm.net). Furthermore, for the French spoken developers in Canada, he host an audio Internet talk show about software development with Microsoft .Net (www.visualstudiotalkshow.com).  More info at www.dotnet-expertise.com

The SQL Server special interest group is managed by Jean-René Roy.

Jean-René Roy has been developing IT systems for large and small enterprises since 1987. In 1991 he founded the consulting firm Technologies SoftDesign Inc. Since that time he has worked on projects for Bell Canada, CGI, ArchiDATA, Sun Telcom, Accent de Ville, Kraft, ADN Medical and many other clients. He has been and is still very active in the developers’ community by acting as a user group leader for more then ten years with the MFUG, SSMUG and GUVSM user groups in Montreal. Jean-René is also the founder and president of www.DevTeach.com an international developer’s conference.

Part of the audience at our November 2004 meeting in Microsoft's Montreal offices
downtown Montreal.  In averrage, 60 to 90 people attend the Group's meetings.

Guy Barrette, Group's president and Barry Gervin, partner at ObjectSharp in Toronto
and Microsoft Regional Director.  Barry was our guest speaker in November 2004.