As most of you know I do a lot of speaking in the Middle East. Many people, including my Mother tell me that I should not go to the Middle East since it is “dangerous.” Someone forwarded this to me, it was a session I did in December 2007 for the Cairo, Egypt .NET User Group. I did almost die right before the meeting, but not to terrorists. Fast forward to 9:50 for the story. Enjoy!

They Keynote on Kanban I did at both the PMI day and ITCamp in Romania as well as the TechEd North America breakout session is available on slideshare. Enjoy!

Next week I will be headed to Atlanta, Georgia, for my 10th TechEd North America, and my 21st TechEd of my career worldwide. I will be doing three breakout sessions this week, all on the agile methodologies.

There are over 200 sessions at TechEd, however, my Agile Estimation session, so popular last year at TechEd Berlin, will be live streamed, so if you can’t join me in Atlanta, join me on the live stream, it will be fun. Here are all of my sessions.

DPR202 | Agile Estimation (Live Streamed)

Breakout Session | 200 - Intermediate | Development Practices & Architecture

Speaker(s): Stephen Forte

Tuesday, May 17 | 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM | Room: C305

DPR306 | The Agile Buffet

Breakout Session | 300 - Advanced | Development Practices & Architecture

Speaker(s): Joel Semeniuk (This is listed at Joel’s session, but we are doing it together)

Wednesday, May 18 | 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM | Room: B309

DPR203 | Yes, We Kanban!

Breakout Session | 200 - Intermediate | Development Practices & Architecture

Speaker(s): Stephen Forte (This is listed as my session, but Joel is doing it with me)

Thursday, May 19 | 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM | Room: B309

Thursday, May 19, 2011
Building N-Tier Applications With Entity Framework 4

Subject:
You must register at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=155176 in order to be admitted to the building and attend.
The first version of the Entity Framework (EF) did not support entity objects detached from the object context, making it difficult or impossible to use EF in any serious n-tier application. The situation is vastly improved with the release of .NET 4 and the new Entity Framework, which supports a number of strategies that enable and simplify n-tier development. In this demo-packed session, Lenni will show you how to work with EF in disconnected and service-oriented architectures. You’ll see a number of scenarios up close, along with the code that makes it work. We’ll begin with simple cases of attaching disconnected objects to the context, and then move on to richer scenarios involving basic WCF services, and higher-level abstractions with WCF Data Services and WCF RIA Services. You’ll also learn how to create POCOs (plain old CLR objects) and Self-Tracking Entities using the specialized T4 templates now available in Visual Studio 2010. Attend this talk, and learn how to build n-tier applications with Entity Framework 4 today!

Speaker:
Leonard Lobel, Sleek Technologies
Leonard Lobel is the chief technology officer (CTO) and co-founder of Sleek Technologies, Inc., a New York–based development shop with an early adopter philosophy toward new technologies. He is also a principal consultant at Tallan, a Microsoft National Systems Integrator. Programming since 1979, Lenni specializes in Microsoft-based solutions, with experience that spans a variety of business domains, including publishing, financial, wholesale/retail, health care, and e-commerce. Lenni has served as chief architect and lead developer for various organizations, ranging from small shops to high-profile clients. He is also a consultant, trainer, and a frequent speaker at local usergroup meetings, VSLive, SQL PASS, and other industry conferences. Lenni is also lead author in the new MS Press book "Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2008". He can be reached at lenni.lobel@tallan.com.

Date:
Thursday, May 19, 2011

Time:
Reception 6:00 PM , Program 6:15 PM

Location:
Microsoft , 1290 Avenue of the Americas (the AXA building - bet. 51st/52nd Sts.) , 6th floor

Directions:
B/D/F/V to 47th-50th Sts./Rockefeller Ctr
1 to 50th St./Bway
N/R/W to 49th St./7th Ave.

Yesterday Joel and I did our “Agile Buffet Table” session at GIDS in Bangalore, India.

We talked about XP, Scrum, and Kanban and how you can build your own methodology by mixing and matching the features from each of these agile brands. We had *great* audience interaction, the best I have ever had in India. We wrapped up the session by opening Excel and designing a unique process with the audience. Our exit was also very funny, there was no break between sessions(!), so the next speakers came in and were ready to start when we ended. So I impersonated the next speaker, very agile.

The slides are available here (via slideshare.) In addition we talked about a lot and have recommended the following resources:

• The Agile Manifesto: read this over, it has all the values of Agile
• Mike’s blog on his reflections on the past 10 years since the Agile Manifesto, a must read!
• The concept of seven, plus or minus two
• Slack, and how great it was in the 1980s and early 90s. 
• Certified Scrum Master certification
• The Toyota Production System and Lean

Also had some books to take a look at, they came up at various points in the discussion, check out any one of them:

• Succeeding with Agile-about implementation
• Scaling Agile well, it is about scaling
• Scrum in business from Harvard Business Review (1986)
• Kanban by David Anderson
•  Psychology of Computer Programming (remember Joel wanted to study Psychology)

Next week I will be speaking at the 4th Great Indian Developer Summit (GIDS) in Bangalore, India. I have spoken at the last three GIDS and really enjoy the “ninja” speaking style: 50 minute sessions! So my technical sessions will be all code/demo, no slides, only the “please fill out the evaluation” slide at the end. Here are my sessions:

Tuesday April 19th, .NET day:

• Building RESTful Applications with the Open Data Protocol (no slides!)
• Agile Estimation (ok, slides for this one)
• Enhancing Developer Productivity across the Entire Stack (Telerik vendor session, NO SLIDES, no marketing, just code!)

Wednesday April 20th, Web day:

• Introduction to WCF RIA Services for Silverlight 4 Developers (no slides!)

Friday April 22nd, Seminar day:

• The Agile Buffet Table (with Joel) Ok, this session will have slides, but last year it was standing room only, we got in trouble with a fire hazard, so get there early.

Visit Telerik, get free goodies, win stuff and come to our party!

GIDS is four years old and Telerik has been at each and every GIDS since its inception. On .NET day (Tuesday), we are handing out some great free goodies at our booth, so make sure you stop by before the keynotes before it gets mobbed. (Last year our Tee shirts were in such demand, the booth got knocked over in a rush!) Also look in your conference bag for some other great goodies.

We have some great prizes, but another reason to come visit our booth is that in partnership with Pluralsight, we are throwing a great party on Tuesday night. (If you went to our party last year, you know what I am talking about!) Swing by our booth for a demo, some goodies, and tickets to our party. Space is limited, so come by early!!!

See you in Bangalore. Bring your umbrella, hopefully the monsoon is not as bad as last year.

Thursday, April 21, 2011
Learning MVC for the Web Forms Developer

Subject:
You must register athttps://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=154501 in order to be admitted to the building and attend.
The biggest problem for developers moving to MVC is not being able to use a lot of the Web Forms knowledge we've already spent so much time learning. This presentation will take the developer from something they already know - Asp.Net Web Forms and move them into MVC utilizing the knowledge they already have for Web Forms. We will review a complete ASP.Net Web Forms application where we do common tasks, and then see how to do the equivalent type of task in MVC. Procedures such as Data Binding, Error Handling, URL routing, AJAX, and more will be covered. No MVC talk would be complete without discussing how to unit test our MVC code as well. This discussion will also cover common controls (grids, etc) available to the developer and how client libraries used to enhance our MVC applications.

Speaker:
Adam Tuliper, Cegedim
Adam has been developing software for over 15 years. He started his work in security and reverse engineering (x86 based - pre .NET) with the direction of going into the software protection and anti-piracy field. This gave him a foundation for learning the internals of other technologies from Win32 systems to CLR systems. Besides development, he has performed security audits and penetration testing for large and small companies alike. Adam currently works as a Software Architect for Cegedim. He has been deeply involved in .Net internals since early beta and currently works extensively with WCF, ASP.Net, SQL Server, MVC, C#, jQuery, and Silverlight.

Date:
Thursday, April 21, 2011

Time:
Reception 6:00 PM , Program 6:15 PM

Location: 
Microsoft , 1290 Avenue of the Americas (the AXA building - bet. 51st/52nd Sts.) , 6th floor

Directions:
B/D/F/V to 47th-50th Sts./Rockefeller Ctr
1 to 50th St./Bway
N/R/W to 49th St./7th Ave.