Last night's meeting of the Albury/Wodonga .NET User Group was a little bit different - we held it at the local pub and combined the meeting with a geek dinner.

The meeting was the third in our Heroes Happen Here series, in which we look at the 2008 line of products from Microsoft. We've already looked at SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008, and last night I took the guys through some of the new features in Visual Studio 2008. I focused on language enhancements because to be honest, I don't do a whole lot of work in the areas in which the IDE got the most attention, like ASP.NET, VSTO etc.

The best thing about the meeting was the turn-out: We had 13 people! That's probably as many people as we have ever had to a meeting, and it included three newcomers from Border Express. Great to see new faces and they really seemed to know their stuff, so I look forward to seeing them presenting too, one day.

The geek dinner/meeting concept worked so well that we're considering moving the meeting to the pub for good. We have to bring our own projector etc, but they provided an out-of-the-way function room for us so it worked really well.

Next meeting is August 12! See you there!