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  • When

    Thursday, February 7th, 2008 8:30am-5:00pm Breakfast and lunch will be provided

  • Where

    Hyatt Lodge/Hamburger University 2815 Jorie Blvd. Oak brook, IL 60523 [see map]

  • Cost

    $75 per person Includes sessions, attendee bag, t-shirt, breakfast, lunch, and raffle tickets

Agenda

Break

8:30a-9:00a

Registration & Expo

9:00a-9:30a

Keynote: The Microsoft Product and Strategic Roadmap for 2008

This session will cover the cover the overall product roadmap for the Microsoft Technology Stack. It will highlight the value of Microsoft technology to information workers, business decision makers, technology decision makers, developers and technology infrastructure professionals. It will provide a view of the current shipping Microsoft products as well as picture of where the Microsoft Technology is headed over the next several years.

Presented by: Mike Porter, Midwest Area General Manager Microsoft, Microsoft Corporation Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners Group

9:30a-9:45a

Three Tracks:

Visual Studio 2008

SQL 2008

IO

9:45a -11:00a
Session 1
Silverlight

Silverlight is the new web technology that enables web developers to build rich interactive applications that leverage rich media and other technologies. Silverlight leverages existing technologies such as XAML, Javascript, JSON and AJAX, and has a programming model that uses languages that you are familiar with, like C#, Visual Basic, Python, and Ruby. We’ll walk through the capabilities of Silverlight 1.0 and 1.1 and demonstrate how you can get started building Silverlight apps today.

Presented by: Rich Weston, Principal Consultant, Neudesic
Enterprise Data Platform

Microsoft has cast a new vision for data management. They are looking to harness, secure, and keep available all data regardless if is in the datacenter, on a mobile device , on a desktop machine, or even in the cloudSQL Server is becoming a data development platform.

Presented by: Steve Muise, Practice Manager, Neudesic
An Overview of the Microsoft IO Model

The Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization model provides a mechanism for IT organizations of all sizes to improve the effectiveness of their investments in technology. Rather than increasing the cost of IT budgets, the IO model focuses on improved integration with the business, resulting in more efficient leverage of the IT assets and budgets. As organizations progress through the stages of the IO model, they are capable of accomplishing their work more efficiently, resulting in increased overall capacity. This presentation provides an overview of the Microsoft IO model, and describes how you can utilize it to move your IT department from a cost center into a technology force that is fully integrated with your business.

Presented by: Mickey Williams, Technical Director, Neudesic

11:00a-11:15a

Break

11:15a-12:30p
Session 2
LINQ

The upcoming release of Visual Studio 2008 includes significant updates to the Visual Basic and C# languages. The most significant of these enhancements is Language Integrated Query (LINQ), which adds general-purpose query syntax to the Visual Basic and C# languages. Using LINQ, you can query collections, databases, and XML content using a clear and consistent syntax. This talk will describe LINQ, including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to XML, and LINQ to Objects. We’ll also spend some time on some fundamental changes to C# that enable LINQ, such as anonymous types, extension methods, and Lambda expressions.

Presented by: Mickey Williams, Technical Director, Neudesic
Beyond Relational

As Microsoft continues to pursue the Data Development platform, one of the areas they want to progress in, is the handling of binary and unstructured data. The next release has a number of enhancements to the handling of large and non-relational types of data. This might include video, audio, documents, etc.

Presented by: Steve Muise, Practice Manager, Neudesic
Business Productivity Optimization

This session will focus on the Business Productivity discipline of the Infrastructure Optimization model including Collaboration, Search, and Enterprise Content Management. The goal of this session it to provide a maturity roadmap that will allow you to begin the assessment and implementation process of each of the core capabilities of the model. We will drill into specific scenarios that demonstrate the fully realized vision of Enterprise Collaboration and Search

Presented by: Jason Noble, Practice Manager, Neudesic

12:30p-1:30p

Lunch & Expo

1:30p-2:45p
Session 3
ADO.NET

Visual Studio 2008 includes support for a major update to ADO.NET that is part of .NET 3.5. A new design-time experience simplifies mapping relational data into .NET entities. Building on the previous talk on LINQ, we will see how LINQ can be used in a typical business scenario. We will also spend some time looking at the upcoming Entity Data Model, a significant feature that will be released as an update to Visual Studio 2008.

Presented by: Chris Rolon, Architectural Consultant, Neudesic
Pervasive BI

Business Intelligence is the largest growing portion of the data world currently, with advances in dashboards, scorecards, ad-hoc query tools, the need for a stable scalable data platform both relational and OLAP have never been greater. SQL 2008 will provide a number of enhancements in performance, new features to ease development and insure best practices, as well as provide a more scalable and functional reporting environment.

Presented by: Steve Muise, Practice Manager, Neudesic
Application Platform Optimization

The Application Platform Optimization model includes the capabilities that organizations leverage for their core application development needs, including Business Intelligence, Application Lifecycle Management, and User Experience. In this talk, we’ll walk through the various capabilities that serve as components to the APO model, including some extensions created by Neudesic to supplement the existing APO model from Microsoft.

Presented by: Mickey Williams, Technical Director, Neudesic

2:45p-3:00p

Break

3:00p-4:15p
Session 4
Team Foundation Server

Visual Studio Team System 2008 includes a number of enhancements that enable teams to work collaboratively. In this talk, we’ll present the new features that will help you be more productive than ever, including improved developer metrics, integrated unit testing in the Professional edition, and other improvements in managing your ALM process. We’ll also discuss the enhancements that have been made to Team Foundation Server, such as direct support for Continuous Integration.

Presented by: Chad Thomas, Principal Consultant, Neudesic
Dynamic Development

The ability to then integrate the development process more directly with the data objects in a model-based way (abstraction) etc will be key to having a dynamic dev environment. With introductions of Entity Data Models, LINQ, HTTP Endpoints, CLR integration SQL 2005 and now SQL 2008 will continue to extend the database into the application development space, continuing to reduce the number of moving parts required to build large scale, high performing applications.

Presented by:Steve Muise, Practice Manager, Neudesic
Looking at IO Enablers

Return on Investment (ROI), User Acceptance (UA), and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) are the benchmarks that line of business applications are measured by. This session will cover how to achieve real, measurable business value from your business solutions by extending the leverage of your Microsoft technology investment. Specific application platforms including Dynamics CRM 4.0 (CRM), Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), Workflow Foundation (WF), and Performance Point Server (PPS) will be demonstrated in an integrated environment around real-world business scenarios.

Presented by: Bryce Calhoun, Director-Midwest District, Neudesic and Matt Keenan, CRM Technical Specialist, Microsoft

4:15p-5:00p

Raffle & Expo