Topic: Windows Server AppFabric Cache

Developers are also increasingly tasked with requirements to deliver highly responsive and highly scalable applications. This is true not only for middle-tier services, but also for Web, mobile, and desktop applications. As demands on applications increase (e.g., a Web site becomes popular, or other groups start consuming your shared service), expensive data access can often present serious limitations to application performance and scale. While caching is a well-established solution in the database world, it is also becoming increasingly recognized as a fundamental component in delivering high-performance Web applications and composite services. In both cases, you can use the AppFabric Caching Services to improve the performance and scalability of your data-intensive .NET applications and services. The AppFabric Caching Services provide a highly available, distributed, in-memory cache that can easily scale elastically (scale-out/scale-in) independently of your application or data tiers. With a .NET API and seamless integration with ASP.NET and PowerShell, AppFabric Caching Services ensures that you can introduce caching into your solutions with minimal code disruption and a consistent management experience.

Speaker: Rick McGuire

Rick McGuire has over 20 years of experience developing with Microsoft technologies and leading software development teams. He is currently a Sr. Application Development Manager with Microsoft. Rick is a Certified ScumMaster and Scrum Developer and is focused on finding ways to improve the ALM processes for large enterprise customers. He is very passionate about the Microsoft stack and .NET development. Rick's hobbies include recording music in his home studio, playing guitar, XBOX, Windows Phone 7 development, and building various .NET applications. The most recent development experiment is a Taco Bell finder for Windows Phone 7 that leverages the Bing Maps API.

Topic: Windows 8

TBD

Speaker: Jeff Brand

Jeff has been with Microsoft for over 12 years, starting with the company soon after the release of Windows 95. While at Microsoft, he has been a consultant, an ecommerce specialist, and an enterprise technology advisor. Prior to Microsoft, Jeff was in the Air Force stationed at Offutt AFB in Omaha, NE where he was Chief Network Engineer (his pre-developer days) for the USSTRATCOM LAN. Today, Jeff is a .NET Developer Evangelist for Microsoft's North Central District. He lives in Minneapolis and often travel to the surrounding states of Nebraska, Iowa, and the Dakotas. In his current role, he is responsible for working with developers and customers that are evaluating or using .NET and assisting in them in understanding and using Microsoft's developer platform.

Topic: Intro to Node.js for .NET Developers

Node.JS is a popular server-side JavaScript framework for handling real-time and distributed data processing. In this session you'll learn what Node.JS is, how it works under the hood, and what scenarios it's useful for. You'll also learn how to deploy it to Windows Azure and manage it inside of IIS 7.

Speaker: Adam Grocholski

Adam Grocholski is a National Solutions Lead at RBA Consulting where he focuses on cloud computing and mobility. In 2011 Adam worked in cooperation with Microsoft to deliver 12 two day Windows Azure Boot Camps across the country. In 2010 he was selected as a Microsoft MVP for his contributions to the development community including speaking at local .NET and Silverlight user groups along with code camps and a number local, regional, and national conferences. Put simply, Adam is committed to building a great community of well-educated Microsoft developers. When not working he enjoys spending time with his three awesome daughters and amazing wife. You can catch up with his latest projects and thoughts on technology at http://thinkfirstcodelater.com.

Topic: Demystifying CQRS

CQRS is the latest architectural shiny object that's been spreading like wildfire across the blogosphre and social media. It's been touted as the next generation architecture for scalable systems and the cure for complex monolithic applications. The purpose of this talk is to get real about what CQRS is, the problem it solves, and when it's appropriate in your solutions. It may not be what you think it is. Along for the ride will be discussion about the fallacies of distributed systems so that you can properly set the stage in your system to take advantage of what CQRS has to offer.

Speaker: Joshua Ramirez

Joshua has 12 years experience in .NET Software Development and is currently a Principal Consultant at ILM. He's passionate about developing, designing, and integrating enterprise class systems through service oriented principles. Recent work has included building distributed and enterprise systems at Ally Financial (GMAC), General Mills, Lender Processing Services, and other firms across the Twin Cities.

Topic: Intro to PhoneGap for .NET Developers

Mobile development is a mess. Building native applications for each platform--iOS, Android, Windows Phone and more--requires different frameworks, languages, and skillsets. In this session we'll take a look at PhoneGap, an open source project that attempts to minimize the effort of writing mobile applications for different platforms by using standards-based web technologies. In this session we'll look at how you can use PhoneGap to

• Take advantage of HTML5 and CSS3
• Use JavaScript to write your code
• Access Native Features
• Deploy your app to Multiple Platforms
• Take advantage of PhoneGap

Speaker: Adam Grocholski

Adam Grocholski is a National Solutions Lead at RBA Consulting where he focuses on cloud computing and mobility. In 2011 Adam worked in cooperation with Microsoft to deliver 12 two day Windows Azure Boot Camps across the country. In 2010 he was selected as a Microsoft MVP for his contributions to the development community including speaking at local .NET and Silverlight user groups along with code camps and a number local, regional, and national conferences. Put simply, Adam is committed to building a great community of well-educated Microsoft developers. When not working he enjoys spending time with his three awesome daughters and amazing wife. You can catch up with his latest projects and thoughts on technology at http://thinkfirstcodelater.com.