Next thursday, I will be there, at the Dev Days 2008. I changed my plans, in agreement with a collegue of mine. I'll be visiting the sessions that are more Silverlight, WPF oriented, since we're not using the technology right now and I really am interested in this new technology.
Anyway, here are the sessions which I will go to:
Keynote: Why software sucks
9:00 - 10:30
Zaal : Auditorium (Begane Grond)
Users think that today's software sucks. Why? Because developers forget a principle of software development: KNOW THY USER, FOR HE IS NOT THEE. Customers only care about accomplishing the task that software does and not about applications. We show good and bad examples from commercial software and Web sites: those that understand their users, and those that don’t. Your user is not you. We put this nation on wheels not by training the entire population as mechanics, but by improving cars so they didn't often need mechanics. The same transition needs to happen to the software industry. This talk provides sound design principles so that your software won't suck.
Introduction to Silverlight 2
10:50 - 12:00
Zaal : Auditorium (Begane Grond)
Last September Microsoft released its cross-platform offering for developing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), Silverlight v1.0. In this session we introduce the upcoming Silverlight v2.0 release which in addition to XAML and script, adds support for managed development through C# and Visual Basic. The session assumes that you are familiar with either Windows Forms or ASP.NET and it makes no assumptions of any other knowledge. Come learn why you should care about Silverlight v2.0, what its capabilities are and how to get started from scratch.
Building a Silverlight 2.0 Application - End to End
13:30 - 14:40
Zaal : Zaal Forum (Begane Grond)
In this session you will learn how we can use Silverlight 2.0 to build applications that run inside the browser. We will cover calling Web services to retrieve data, do data binding to display and modify this data, and how to customize controls with styles and templates. At the same time you will see the new controls available in Silverlight 2.0 and how we can use animations to create smooth experiences. And finally we will look at Microsoft’s exciting new technology called DeepZoom.
WCF and WF: Integrating two key technologies of .NET 3.5
15:00 - 16:10
Zaal : Auditorium (Begane Grond)
Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation are two cornerstones of .NET 3.5. In this session, you will learn about different ways to combine them to workflow-enable your WCF applications and WCF-enable your workflow applications. You will also learn about other new features of WCF in .NET 3.5, like DurableServices, which provide you with alternative approaches to create stateful services.
Five Cool Things to Know and Use for Smart Client Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
16:30 - 17:40
Zaal : Auditorium (Begane Grond)
While the world builds Web applications and developers focus on the server-side, there are huge opportunities for creating rich client-based applications for the software-plus-services world. We show five enhancements in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework v3.5 for building smart Windows applications. Demos include Windows Presentation Foundation interoperability, ADO.NET Sync Services, Client Application Services, the Managed AddIn Framework, and customizing Office Applications (Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System v3.0).
You can find out more about the Dev Days 2008 at: http://www.devdays.nl/Home/Default.aspx
Hope this is usefull,
gr.
Robbert