B# .NET Blog

Readers can expect traffic caused by my blog to decrease a bit over the next few weeks as I’ll be travelling to Europe for a couple of events I’ll be speaking at (not to talk about the preparations required for the seven distinct talks <g>). If you’re attending any of those events or are in the proximity, feel free to jump by and say ‘Hi’ (or better, attend one of my talks). Here’s an overview of the topics I’ll be delivering:

TechDays Finland – 5 and 6 March

More information about the event at http://www.techdays.fi. I can’t read a word of it, so no idea how my talks (and my bio :-)) are described…

• Introduction to Oslo and ”M” – Covers the essentials of the Oslo modeling platform with a bit more attention to the language aspect of it. During this talk, I’ll be showing stuff attendees can play with immediately using the Oslo January 2009 CTP SDK, covering the repository, Intellipad, the m/mx toolchain, the M language and maybe a bit of MGrammar. Check out my blog series on the topic as well.
• Introduction to F# – One of my favorite .NET languages is without doubt F# (the first part of a blog series on the language is in my Windows Live Writer drafts folder as we speak). This session will be a gentle introduction to F#, explaining why functional matters and how it can help to solve real-world problems. We’ll also look at the more “exotic” features of F# like asynchronous workflows, that make the language unique.

I’ve never been to Helsinki, so I plan on sight-seeing half a day during the hectic trip :-). If you have any tips on must-see places, let me know!

ICTdag Belgium – 9 March

An event I’ve been speaking at quite a bit in the past when I was a full-time Belgian... The site is in Dutch, but the curious can find information here: http://ictdag.be. Basically it’s an event for education folks (teachers, ICT coordinators, etc) on how to use technology in schools. Always great to meet a different kind of audience than developers or IT Pros.

• A sneak peek at Windows 7 – What’s new in Windows 7: covers improvements to the user experience, a few looks at more technical concepts, Internet Explorer 8, etc.
• Windows PowerShell Introduction – How to use Windows PowerShell to improve manageability of school infrastructures and networks on Windows.

The event takes place in Hasselt, and a short train ride brings me to…

TechDays Belgium – 11 and 12 March

This time in Antwerp, more information at http://www.techdays.be. Looking forward to meet old friends from Microsoft Belux and the community once more.

• The Future of C# – Essentially a redelivery of Anders’ great PDC08 session on the topic, but with a couple of little “under the covers” investigations. In this talk, we’ll take a look at what’s coming next for C# in the 4.0 release. Features that will be covered are dynamic, generic co- and contravariance, optional and named parameters, better COM interop and “no PIA”.
• LINQ in Breadth – Ah, this one will be truly fun (the others too of course, but this one just that little bit more). Last year, I talked at the same conference on “LINQ in depth” (custom LINQ providers); this time, I’m rotating the approach. I have a few surprises in the cooker, but basically we’ll take a look at LINQ from a different angle: how to LINQify virtually everything, how to apply LINQ design concepts in other places, etc.
• Windows PowerShell v2: the IT revolution, part two – An overview of Windows PowerShell 2.0 features with a closer look at the WS-MAN and Remoting functionality that will be part of the second release of PowerShell. Other topics that will be covered are script cmdlets, interactive script debugging, ISE (Interactive Scripting Environment) and more.

I have a few upcoming blog posts ready that will come to your RSS feeds in auto-pilot mode, but response to feedback might be slow.