Announcing the Northeast Roadshow "Driving Toward a New Horizon" Tour

Driving Toward a New Horizon Join Chris and me this March as we kick off a new decade of the “Northeast Roadshow,” a quarterly, free series of deep technology sessions for developers and architects.

On most of our stops, we’ll be doubling up with our TechNet brethren who will be presenting a complementary “Next Wave” tour focused on the IT Professional audience in the morning, followed by our Roadshow for developers and architects in the afternoon. 

Registration is open now – follow the links below – and read on for more details about this quarter’s program

 

Date City Venue Registration
March 10 Rochester NY Hyatt Regency Rochester Northeast Roadshow
March 12 Troy NY Hilton Garden Inn Northeast Roadshow TechNet: The Next Wave
March 24 Waltham MA Microsoft Office Northeast Roadshow TechNet: The Next Wave
March 26 Farmington CT Hartford Farmington Marriott Northeast Roadshow TechNet: The Next Wave

 


Cloudy (but Clear) Skies, Driving Data,
and Visual (Studio) Sights

Session 1 - Windows Azure: What? Why? And a Peek under the Hood

What is Cloud Computing and where can it take you?  In this session, we’ll first focus on showing the potential benefits of creating applications for the cloud with Windows Azure.  Then, we’ll pop open the Windows Azurehood to show you around the main parts of the engine, including web roles, worker roles, and queues.  You’ll see how Windows Azure plugs in for interoperability with other on-premises and cloud applications via the App Fabric.  You’ll also learn how Windows Azure can be used to host technologies other than .NET – such as Java and PHP – and get a glimpse into what’s coming next with project “Sydney” and the integration of Windows Workflow into the cloud.

Session 2 - Data: At Your Service

Data at Your Service Services are more than just executable bits of business logic; data too can be provided as a service, and the Microsoft stack offers a number of ways to host your data on and off-premises.  Windows Azure provides highly scalable table and blob storage, and SQL Azure brings the relational model to the cloud, but there’s other options as well including exposing your domain data via WCF Data Services and leveraging vetted data service providers such as the Associated Press and the Data.gov via Microsoft “Dallas”.  Think of this session as a pit stop to help you examine the data and modeling options best suited to tune your applications.

Session 3 - Visual Studio 2010: That’s a 10-4, Good Buddy

 Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 are arriving soon, and they’re bringing plenty of cargo that developers will enjoy, from new features to improved productivity.  We’ll hop on and take a tour, giving you the lay of the land in terms of what will help you as a developer.  The sights will include parallel application development, new editor features and debugging capabilities (including a new historical debugger), improvements for web and Windows development, new .NET language features, and much more.