Deeper in .NET 2006 is just around the corner!

We have quite a line-up this year.  This is our 4th annual event, and, like the last three years, we've gone out and found some of the brightest, most entertaining speakers in the .NET community.  Jason Beres will be returning this year for his fourth consecutive year.  Additionally, we are excited to have Julia Lerman, Michele Leroux Bustamante, Scott Hanselman and Bill Hatfield.

Want a reason to register early?? Register by April 18th for a chance to win a copy of MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite, worth over $10,000. The drawing will be held the day of the event, and you must be present to win.  In addition, a number of other prizes -- totalling over $15,000 (and counting) -- will be raffled off throughout the day.

Mark your calendars for April 22, 2006, and sign up now!  Space is limited, and registration (FREE!) will be required for this event.

Free training!  Free food!  Free books and software!  Sign up now using the link on the left.

Here is a tentative schedule of the day's events.  For more information about speakers or session details, please keep reading.

Jason Beres is Director of Evangelism.  Prior to joining Infragistics, Inc., Jason Beres served as a .NET Architect and .NET Evangelist for Computer Ways, Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.  Before exclusively focusing his time on .NET, Beres taught Visual Basic and Windows DNA at a Microsoft CTEC.  Beres also founded the Non-Profit Ways Community which enables developers to write .NET applications for non-profit charities that are otherwise unable to afford the technology required to write real-world .NET applications.  In addition, Beres co-founded the Florida.NET Users Group.  As Infragistics Director of Evangelism, Jason spearheads the entire Evangelism program with responsibilities that include the creation and implementation of Infragistics reference applications, the composition of numerous .NET technology articles, as well as the world-wide delivery of Infragistics’ technology demonstrations.   Jason is a Microsoft .NET MVP,  a leading member of the INETA Speakers Bureau, and is the chairman of the INETA Academic Committee. He writes a monthly column for Visual Studio Magazine and is the author of  numerous works including Teach Yourself Visual Studio .NET 2003 in 21 Days (Sams, 2003), and the coauthor of the Visual Basic .NET Bible (Wiley, 2001) and the C# Bible (Wiley, 2002).  (Back to Agenda)

Scott Hanselman is Chief Architect at the Corillian Corporation, an eFinance enabler. He has over a decade of experience developing software in C, C++, VB, COM, and currently VB.NET and C#. Scott is proud to have been appointed the MSDN Regional Director for Portland, OR for the last three years, developing content for, and speaking at Developer Days and the Visual Studio.NET Launch in both Portland and Seattle. Scott was in the top 5% of audience-rated speakers at TechEd 2003 in Dallas. Scott also spoke at the Windows Server 2003 and VS.NET 2003 Launches in 4 cities. He's spoken internationally on Microsoft technologies, and has co-authored two books from Wrox Press. In 2001, Scott spoke on a 15-city national tour with Microsoft, Compaq and Intel featuring Microsoft Technologies and evangelizing good design practices. In 2002, he was a highly rated speaker at TechEd Malaysia, giving 3 sessions, including one on the .NET Framework. This year Scott spoke at the Windows Server 2003 Launch event in 4 PacWest Cities. Scott and Corillian also participate in a number of Working Groups with the Web Service Interoperability Organization (WS-I). He's thoughts on the Zen of .NET, Programming and Web Services can be found at http://www.computerzen.com.  (Back to Agenda)

Bill Hatfield is the best-selling author of numerous computer books, including ASP.NET 2.0 For Dummies, Active Server Pages For Dummies (on Classic ASP), Visual InterDev For Dummies (all from Wiley). He's a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) and Co-Founder of the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association. He has worked in software development for over 15 years, in the roles of architect, analyst and developer for projects in a broad variety of industries and technologies. Currently, he works as a corporate instructor for New Horizons in Indianapolis, IN.  (Back to Agenda)

Julie Lerman is an independent consultant and .NET Mentor who has been designing and writing software applications for 20 years. Julie is well known in the .NET community as a Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider and a former INETA Board member. She is a prolific blogger, a frequent presenter at technical conferences in the U.S., Canada and even some far reaches of the world and author of articles for MSDN Online, MSDN Magazine and other well known technical publications. Julie presents on a wide variety of topics including ADO.NET, Web Services, Tablet PC development and other aspects of just getting your .NET applications to work the way you want them to. You can get ideas for possible presentations she can do for your user group at thedatafarm.com/talks.aspx. Julie lives in Vermont where she runs the Vermont.NET User Group, is a board member of the Vermont Software Developers Alliance and a member of the Champlain College Software Engineering Advisory Board.You can read Julie's blogs at www.thedatafarm.com/blog and blogs.ziffdavis.com.  (Back to Agenda)

Michèle Leroux Bustamante is Chief Architect of IDesign Inc., Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, Microsoft MVP for XML Web Services and BEA Technical Director. She has over a decade of development experience development applications with VB, C++, Java, C# and VB.NET and working with related technologies such as ATL, MFC and COM. At IDesign Michele provides training, mentoring and high-end architecture consulting services, focusing on Web services, scalable and secure architecture design for .NET, interoperability and globalization architecture. She is a member of the International .NET Speakers Association (INETA), a frequent conference presenter, conference chair of SD’s Web Services track, and is frequently published in several technology journals. Michele is also Events Director for IASA (International Association of Software Architects), Web Services Program Advisor to UCSD Extension. Her book, Windows Communication Framework (O’Reilly) is scheduled to release in the first half of 2006 (book blog: www.thatindigogirl.com). Reach her at mlb@idesign.net, or visit www.idesign.net and www.dasblonde.net.  (Back to Agenda)

WCF Top to Bottom
with Michele Leroux Bustamante

The Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is the “now” generation messaging platform for .NET that unifies the programming model for how components communicate: be they distributed or not, accessible beyond firewalls, or available through interoperable interfaces. This session will introduce you to the core features of WCF technology stack including service and contract design, deployment patterns and binding choices, and how to apply enterprise system features such as security, transactions, asynchronous and reliable messaging.  (Back to Agenda)

Anatomy of a Successful ASP.NET Application: Inside DasBlog
with Scott Hanselman
 
Scott Hanselman heads the DasBlog Open Source project along with Omar Shahine, following in the footsteps of Clemens Vasters and his dramatic modification of the BlogX engine. DasBlog is now on version 1.8 and is arguably the most successful ASP.NET blogging engine for the single user. DasBlog is now the work of many folks over many years and while it has some very hairy sections of code, it's full of design techniques and reusable components that you can use in your work today. In this talk Scott will cover creative use of HttpModules and HttpHandlers, using background threads within ASP.NET, internationalization, caching, skinning, creating a macro language, Web Services that are more than SOAP, as well as other techniques that transcend blogging. Did I mention the code is all free?  (Back to Agenda)

ADO.NET 2.0 Integration with SQL Server 2005
with Julia Lerman

There is a fantastic amount of integration between ADO.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. Come to this session to learn about things like new data types, CLR inside of SQL Server, leveraging the SQL Server Service Broker through Query Notifications and ASP.NET Caching, using the Asynchronous Command object, understanding and using MARS, Bulk Inserts and more.  (Back to Agenda)

AJAX and Atlas
with Bill Hatfield

AJAX stands for asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It's the newest rage in user-interface design for the Web. Used by Google Maps, Flickr.com, Microsoft's new Start.com and many other sites, AJAX provides users with a level of interactivity more akin to what they're used to seeing in a desktop application. If you're eager to begin integrating AJAX technology into your ASP.NET applications, Microsoft is hard at work on a project codenamed "Atlas" that will make it easy for you to do exactly that. Atlas promises to make the client side almost as powerful a programming platform as the server side. In addition, Atlas provides several new server controls that combine the power of the server and client script to provide a deeper, richer user interface experience.  (Back to Agenda)

Using WPF to Create Compelling User Interfaces
with Jason Beres

The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (or WPF, formerly code named "Avalon") provides the foundation for building applications and high fidelity experiences in Windows Vista and Windows XP, blending together application UI, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of your computer. The functionality extends to the support for Tablet and other forms of input, a more modern imaging and printing pipeline, accessibility and UI automation infrastructure, data driven UI and visualization, as well as the integration points for weaving the application experience into the Windows shell. In this talk, you will gain an understanding of how WPF works, how composition, nesting, data templating and data binding are implemented and how you will be able to take advantage of the platform to create your next generation rich client applications.  (Back to Agenda)