Ok..so.. I promised to write some sort of roll-up from the DevConnections trip after all the speakers had posted their final slides. As you can see, there is a lot of content I have thrown in here.. Rather than add to the mayhem by writing lengthy paragraphs of explanation about each item...I would invite you to dig in as you please and just ask me any clarifying questions as you have them. I would have put these in order or importance or something if I thought there was such a way to order them by importance...as fast as Microsoft is moving these days, reading a little bit or a lot of everything seems to be key.

Levi Broderick and Scott Hunter Sessions:

http://devconnections.com/updates/lasvegas_spring10/ASP/

• AMS02 Whats New In MVC 2
• AMS05 Whats New In ASPNET 4 Runtime

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any updates or posts associated with the final talk by these two which involved inserting MVC and Dynamic Data elements into traditional WebForms projects. There is some old documentation out there on the web about this stuff, but it isn't worth including here. If nothing surfaces in the next little while, I will e-mail Scott Hunter to see if he can shoot the presentation materials to me. Also, unlike all the other speakers, neither Levi Broderick (a member of the Asp.Net team at Microsoft) nor Scott Hunter (Senior Program Manager Lead on the Asp.Net team) have active blogs, so they actually posted their slides and samples to the DevConnections site (see above). Also, the Asp.Net 4 Runtime talk had no samples or complicating demos, so I took pretty comprehensive notes which are attached as "AMS05 Whats news in the ASP.NET 4 Runtime.pdf".

Tim Laverty Sessions:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ex6y04yf(VS.100).aspx

(Bad news here...looks like there are no post or updates to this talk...instead, I have dug up the MSDN post on "What's new in EF4...should be most of the same content…) Also, remember to check out the Visual Studio Gallery for the POCO templates created by the ADO.NET team for the Entity Framework:

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/site/profile?userName=Diego%20B%20Vega

• Overview of the Entity Framework 4

Dan Wahlin Sessions:

http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/archive/2010/04/21/code-from-my-devconnections-talks-and-workshop.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/archive/2010/04/18/slides-and-code-from-my-silverlight-mvvm-talk-at-devconnections.aspx

• Get Started Building Silverlight Applications
• Building Architecturally Sound Silverlight Applications
• Using WCF RIA Services in Silverlight Applications
• Silverlight Data Integration Options and Usage Scenarios

MVVM Library used by Dan Wahlin : http://www.galasoft.ch/

Brian Noyes Sessions:

DevConnectionsVS2010LaunchEventSessions.aspx

• Workflow 4 Service Applications
• Workflow 4 Custom Activities
• Unit Testing Workflows and Services

Michele Leroux Bustamante Sessions:

DevConnectionsVSLaunchApril2010NdashCode.aspx

• AppFabric Access Control

• RIA applications and WCF

• Data Access Methodologies

• WCF, Workflow Services and AppFabric

Rick Strahl Sessions:

http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/459197.aspx

• Using jQuery with Asp.Net
• jQuery Extensibility and Integration with Asp.net Server Controls
• jQuery Tips and Tricks

Steve Smith Sessions:

http://stevesmithblog.com/blog/vs2010-launch-presentations/

• Pragmatic Asp.Net Tips, Tricks, and Tools
• What's New in Asp.Net MVC 2

• SOLIDify Your Asp.Net MVC 2 Application

Shawn Wildermuth Sessions:

http://wildermuth.com/2010/04/16/Back_from_DevConnections_with_SourceCode

• Ninja Data Binding in Silverlight 4

• Building Behaviors in Silverlight 4

• Silverlight 4 Data Validation

• Will it blend?

Markus Egger Sessions:

http://www.markusegger.com/Blog/Blog.aspx?blogid=6a0addce-851e-4579-9306-0297254a1473&messageid=e1e9c1f4-501f-4808-a85a-91e6cc277c1e

• Graphic Design Lessons for Developers
• Efficient UI Design

• Polished Interfaces with Blend

Other useful silverlight links:

• Silverlight 4 Training Course
• Expression Blends SketchFlow Syncs Up Silverlight Designers and Developers

• Sketchflow in 90 seconds

Channel 9 Live From DevConnections

• http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/watch-it-live

• http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/silverlight-4-launch/

Session Recordings From Mix10 (there are tons of these...watch as many as you can)

• ASP.NET MVC 2: NINJAS STILL ON FIRE BLACK BELT TIPS

• WEB DEPLOYMENT MADE AWESOME: IF YOU'RE USING XCOPY, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

• BEYOND FILE | NEW COMPANY: FROM CHEESY SAMPLE TO SOCIAL PLATFORM

• WHAT'S NEW IN MICROSOFT ASP.NET MVC 2

• BUILDING A NEXT-GENERATION WEB APPLICATION WITH MICROSOFT ASP.NET MVC 2 AND JQUERY

• BUILDING INNOVATIVE WINDOWS CLIENT SOFTWARE

Other Recent Links worth a look:

• TechDays 2010 Developer Keynote by Anders Hejlsberg

• Hanselminutes on 9 - Debugging Crash Dumps with Tess Ferrandez and VS2010

ScottGu's .Net 4.0/VS 2010 Series

• http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/08/25/vs-2010-and-net-4-series.aspx

It would seem that I am coming way late to the blogging party.  Twitter has truncated most thoughts worth sharing into 140 characters and so much information is shared, traded, and duplicated on the web today that the best blogs are mostly just aggregates.

I am considering starting a blog for what seems to be the oldest reason – I want a way to journal my own process during development.  I want a historical account of my learning and growing process.  This problem has been solved over and over again, but sometimes I just want a place to dump some source code or a tutorial or a link to remind myself of something I once considered important.

Ultimately, after I attended DevConnections09 last year I felt a need to get plugged into the greater development community (read Microsoft Development community).  I jumped on twitter and fired up a Google Reader account and started building websites for my friends and community.   The result has been pretty significant.  I have had the most amazing year of personal and professional growth (whether anyone else noticed or not) and I owe it mostly to a new attitude about how I digest information on the internet.

In order to continue my personal education (and maybe one day post something novel myself), I jumped on the web.  To quote a giant in the realm of software-blogging, “We’ll see how long this lasts.”