Northeast Roadshow Coming to a Town Near you
| Chris Bowen and Jim O’Neil will be behind the wheel of the next Northeast Roadshow. I will not be able to take this ride as I am working on a super secret project that you will learn about in about a month! Until then I will be in an undisclosed location working on the project whose name we must not speak. |
| 08:30 | Registration |
| 09:00 | Understanding the ADO.NET Entity FrameworkAbstraction is frequently used to create difficult-to-appreciate artwork, but when applied to software, abstractions can improve flexibility, independence, and the ability to compose higher-level concepts. ADO.NET Entity Framework, now shipping as part of Visual Studio 2008 & .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1, helps you create models of your data that enable a familiar object-oriented programming experience. Entities map flexibly to data sources while providing insulation from schema changes at the same time. LINQ makes an appearance as well, using the familiar syntax we’ve seen with LINQ to Objects, SQL, and XML to query entities. You’ve got the picture, so get out there and model some works of art! |
| 10:30 | Discovering Dynamic DataASP.NET Dynamic Data, introduced with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release, breathes immediate (i.e., code-less) life into LINQ To SQL and Entity Framework data models by providing a customizable, template-driven, scaffolding framework. Put on your wizard hat, you now have dynamic power at your fingertips . |
| 11:15 | Exploring Internet Explorer 8Ahoy, developers! The release of Internet Explorer 8 is just around the bend. Of course, we’ll pull out the spyglass and take a look over the sea of new consumer features, but what does this next version mean for you as developer, and what should you do to navigate to glory? You’ll see how treasures like accelerators and web slices can be a differentiator for your company, see the new wave of compatibility features and options, and unearth the tools available for developers to make for smooth sailing on the sometimes turbulent web development waters. |
| 12:00 | RoboLunchGrab a lunch and join in as we delve into the world of robotics programming with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. Think robotics is mostly for manufacturing systems, toys, and those cool little floor cleaning bots? You may be surprised at how the things we cover may come to affect your professional development life! Perhaps you’ll find yourself saying, "Thank you very luncho, Mr. Roboto!" |
| 01:00 | UI, UX, U Confused?One thing not missing from Microsoft’s development offerings is a choice of options. In this session, we’ll compare and contrast the various .NET technologies available for building client experiences (Windows Forms, WPF, XBAP, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and Windows Mobile) to give you some insight in to making the best choices for reaching your applications’ target audience. |
| 01:45 | A RESTed DevelopmentREST (Representational State Transfer) is what all the cool developers are using these days to communicate among distributed resources and services. So that you’re not left standing idly by on the sidelines, we’ll look at the rationales of the approach, why it’s cleaner than SOAP, and how Microsoft has adopted REST in technologies such as WCF and ADO.NET Data Services. |
| 03:15 | Befriending Unit TestingUnit testing could be your new best friend, and we’re here to help make the proper introductions. A practice that ultimately results in reduced overall efforts, unit testing is a focus on crafting test code that verifies your application code isn’t misbehaving. In this session, we’ll focus on what unit testing is, how it can be done, and some of the proven and effective practices you can employ to help your unit tests pay dividends over time. If Humphrey Bogart were a developer, he would have agreed, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. |
| 04:00 | Wrapup, Giveways, and Bon Voyage! |
To register, select the date we'll be near you; maps are available via the venue links below.
| Sept. 23 | Burlington VT KnowledgeWave |
| Sept. 24 | Troy NY Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Bruggeman Auditorium |
| Sept. 25 | Rochester NY Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County Kate GleasonAuditorium |
| Oct. 3 | Augusta ME Riverview Psychiatric Center Sebago Room |
| Oct. 14 | Farmington CT Microsoft Corporation MPR |
| Oct. 15 | Waltham MA Microsoft Corporation MPR A, B, C |
Some Words of Thanks and Notes on Venues The seasoned Roadshow "roadies" among you will note that we have a few facility changes due to scheduling conflicts, and of course we have our new stop in the Albany/Troy area. We'd like to thank the folks at KnowledgeWave for use of their facility in South Burlington, as well as to the Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta (yes, we expect to hear plenty of comments about this one!). While we realize the Augusta location is a bit outside of our traditional Portland site, we hope it will provide an opportunity to engage the community there as well as from Bangor, while keeping our friends from the immediate Portland area.
Those of you in the Hartford and Boston areas can just put yourselves on auto-pilot - no need to reprogram the GPS - as we'll be in our familiar Microsoft quarters for the stops in Farmington and Waltham. Technorati Tags: northeast,roadshow,northeast roadshow,chris bowen,jim o'neil,ado.net,dynamic data,internet explorer,ie,ie8,robotics studio,WPF,Silverlight,ASP.NET,SOAP,REST,WCF,Unit Testing |
For our Rochester stop, we'll be meeting in the Kate Gleason Auditorium of the