Introduction to Visual Lightswitch
Wondering what Visual Studio LightSwitch is all about? Have you heard it's the greatest thing since sliced bread or the most evil tool ever released by Microsoft? Learn how LightSwitch makes it simple to build business applications, deploy them to the desktop, web or cloud environment, and how .NET developers can use their existing .NET skills to work with LightSwitch applications. We will cut through the marketing and you will learn how to quickly build rich business applications that involve rules, validation, security, and unending customization opportunities.

Speaker: Matt Milner

Date: 1/24/2012 6:00:00 PM

MVVM, Oh Great Another Pattern!

Model View View Model (MVVM) has become the Pattern of choice when developing WPF and Silverlight applications. In this presentation Brette will discuss the core principles of the MVVM pattern and how the pattern diverges from the other major Presentation Patterns (MVC, MVP). The core MVVM principles (commanding, event aggregation, and validation) will be explored using a small sample application that acts as an Ec2 control panel.


Speaker: Brette Esterbrooks

Date: 11/22/2011 6:00:00 PM

Tips, Tools, Code and Strategies for Tracking Down Memory Leaks

Did you know that memory leaks can be found in most applications. Typically memory leaks aren't addressed until the application begins to perform slow or crash unexpectedly. In this talk we'll cover a wide range of topics to help you understand the difference between a memory leak and poor use of memory. We'll spend some time talking about the Garbage Collector and the coding patterns that result in leaks in the managed world. I will share some code that can help solve common memory leak patterns. I'll demonstrate tools I have built to help track down leaks and share those tools with you. And most importantly I will show you easy and proven strategies that you can use to detect memory leaks in your applications.

Speaker: Shannon Braun

Date: 10/25/2011 6:00:00 PM

Rock Paper Azure on Windows Phone
Does what I know about you, and what I know that you know about me, lead me to believe that you’re the type of person who would throw a Rock, Paper or Scissors in this next round? Coming this fall Microsoft will be running Rock Paper Azure tournaments online and at conferences where participants are able to design and build logic into a ‘bot’ for some friendly competition for prizes and prestige as we have fun with the cloud and learn how we can use it to extend out applications.  In this session we look at how we can start from a blank slate to build a mobile client to practice the game on the Windows Phone, where we connect it to the cloud to try our hand to see if we can beat the system.  From designing and deploying WCF Services, to Authentication to SQL Azure and Cloud Storage we will have some fun and see if we have what it takes to become a Rock Paper Azure Grand Master.
Speaker: Mike Benkovich - Microsoft

Date: 9/27/2011 6:00:00 PM

Introduction to Powershell

Learn how to use Powershell to automate just about anything. We will walk through how to get started writing Powershell scripts. We will learn to use parameters, functions, data structures, .NET objects, and how to host Powershell in your own application, and much more.

Speaker: Loren Halvorson - Birch Cove Software, LLC.

Date: 8/23/2011 6:00:00 PM