Live From Bethmond Webcasts (The VBeth Webcast Series)

I'll be doing a series of webcasts next month that you should check out if you're trying to get started with the new features in Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2008. (BTW, if you haven't downloaded Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Basic 2008 Express what are you waiting for!?)

If you're interested in seeing what's new in the Visual Basic 9 language then join me for the always popular:
 
Live From RedBethmond: VB9 - What's New in Visual Basic 9
3/14/2008 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 3/14/2008 10:00 AM | Duration:60 Minutes
Visual Basic is evolving in dramatic ways to help people be more productive when developing enterprise, data-aware applications. In this Webcast we'll go over the major new features in Visual Basic 9, and how these new features can help you write applications much more rapidly than ever before. You will be introduced to XML Literals, Object Initializers, Anonymous Types, Type Inference, Extension Methods, Lambda Expressions and much improved IntelliSense. We'll take a look at how these features tie into Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and how working with XML in Visual Basic provides ultimate performance and productivity. 
 
If you keep saying "Man, I really should learn LINQ" or "I wonder if I'm writing this LINQ query correctly?", then you'll want to join me for this one (UPDATED NEW DATE/TIME:)

Live From Redmond: VB9 - Introduction to LINQ in Visual Basic
3/14/2008 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) | Duration:60 Minutes
LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query and it allows you to query over things like objects, databases and XML in a standard way with a new syntax available in the latest versions of Visual Basic and C#. In this Webcast you will learn how to get started writing LINQ queries using the simple but powerful query syntax available in Visual Basic. We'll walk through a variety of basic queries as well look at aggregates and groups over different data sources. You will also see how writing queries over XML using specific Visual Basic syntax like XML literals and axis properties can help you be much more productive when working with XML.

UPDATED 2/26: Webcast added! Rob Windsor and I will be presenting a bonus webcast on VB6 to .NET migration. If you're involved in a migration push and don't know where to start this webcast is for you. We'll show some proven strategies as well as walk through the Interop Forms Toolkit which can dramatically speed up development in a phased migration approach.

Live From RedBethmond: Migrating Your Visual Basic 6 Investments to .NET
3/28/2008 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) | Duration:60 Minutes 
Visual Basic (VB) 6 was used by millions of developers world-wide to build applications ranging from thousands to millions of lines of code representing significant organizational investments. The path from VB 6 to .NET has not always been clear, there is no one size fits all approach. We’ll cut to the chase, exploring the pros and cons of each option using real world examples. You will leave this webcast with the framework and tools to develop the right strategy for your organization to leverage your existing investments while taking advantage of the power and productivity the .NET Framework provides. Presented By Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community PM With special guest Rob Windsor, Visual Basic MVP

Do you wade through the XML DOM all day? Interested in dumping XSLT for a real language? Or are you just interested in some highly productive language syntax? Then join me for this webcast: (UPDATED NEW DATE/TIME:)

Live From RedBethmond: VB9 - Working with XML in Visual Basic
4/4/2008 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) | Duration:60 Minutes
XML permeates every modern application today from XHTML, XAML, RSS, SOAP, Office Open XML just to name a few. Even your Visual Studio project files and configuration settings are XML files. The latest version of Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2008 supports a new language syntax aimed at making you much more productive when working with XML. In this Webcast we'll walk through language features like XML literals, embedded expressions and axis properties in order to create, query and transform XML with this powerful but easy to use syntax. Say goodbye to XSLT and hello to Visual Basic 9. 

I hope to see you all there! It'll be fun to see if I recognize your user names from the comments here on the blog. If you can't make it live, the On-Demand downloads will be available the day after the webcast.

Enjoy!