Announcing the Fall 2008 Northeast Roadshow!

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The Northeast Roadshow

We’re fueling up the car, stocking up on munchies, packing in a bunch of giveaways, and heading out on the open roads for our sixth Roadshow! It’s also our biggest one yet, as we'll pile on the miles heading to six cities across the northeast:

[Please note that, in addition to adding Albany, we have new venues in Burlington, Rochester, and Augusta. Details are in the event registration pages, plus a few notes at the bottom of this post.]

Join my fellow road and code warrior, Jim O'Neil and me for a free, relaxed day of deep content for developers and architects.  Somewhere Between VT and NY(Roadshow partner Bob Familiar can’t make it this time around – he’s working on a secret hush-hush type of project – but he’ll be back when we return to the roads this winter!)

We’re trying out a different kind of session plan this time. We’ve added a few extra sessions to this series, including topics that fit more comfortably into a smaller amount of time. These “turbo sessions” are a great way to bring a more diverse agenda to you, while staying deep with others.  Speaking of the agenda...

THE AGENDA

8:30 – Registration
9:00 – Understanding the ADO.NET Entity Framework

Abstraction 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 Data

Hartford Roadshow

ASP.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 8

Ahoy, 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 – RoboLunch

Grab 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!”

1:00 - 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. 

1:45 - A RESTed Development

Blizzards Can't Stop the Roadshow

REST (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.

3:15 - Befriending Unit Testing

Unit 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.

4:00 – Wrapup, Giveways, and Bon Voyage!  

Thanks!

Thanks very much to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for donating use of the Bruggeman Auditorium to enable us to add the Albany area to our list of stops.  Waltham RoadshowSincere thanks as well to KnowledgeWave in Burlington, VT and The Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, ME for donating space in their facilities so we could return to those areas!

We unfortunately couldn't make a visit to our friends at the Rochester Institute of Technology work for this series (though they very helpfully tried), so we're working with the Rochester Public Library for this visit (and not just because they're ridiculously close to Dinosaur BBQ!)

Jim and I can't wait to get out there since we always have a blast with the Roadshows!  We’ll see you soon!

-Chris and Jim