.NET Conf Focus on Windows

>> I'm having some deja
vu because it seems like
we had a.NET conference
a couple of months ago,
but we're having another one
that's all about Windows.
Join me with Beth Massi as
we learn more about the
upcoming.NET Conference on this
episode of Visual Studio Toolbox.
[MUSIC]
>> Hey, everyone welcome to
another episode of
Visual Studio Toolbox.
I'm your host, Leslie Richardson.
Today I'm joined by Beth Massi,
who is a Product Marketing Manager
on the.NET team. Welcome Beth.
>> Hey, thanks for having
me, Leslie, I appreciate it.
>> Sweet. Nice to have you here.
It's always cool that I'm here.
I'm the host, so what do you know?
Word on the street, is that there is
a conference coming
up that's.Net Conf.
But didn't we just have.Net
Conf a couple of months
ago. What's going on?
>> That's right, we
have it every year,
the main three day event,
happens every year and
from now on it'll happen
every November when we
launch a new version of.NET.
It happened with.NET Core 3 were
released in September 2019.
But then we went on the every
November release train.
Now we're going to have
it every November.
Last November, you're right,
in 2020, we had done it five.
That happens every year and we've
been doing it for a long time.
It started out in the community.
Javier Lozano is still
on the Planning Team.
He started it ten years ago.
Last one was the ten year
anniversary of the main event.
Now what we started last year though,
is these series of smaller
events that are just one day.
The main event has an
open call for content and
we run it like a real
conference basically,
except it's always been
a virtual conference.
It's a little easier
for us to adjust to
this pandemic situation to be honest,
we were pretty set up for that.
But we started a series of
smaller events actually
before the pandemic hit.
It was started in January last year,
we did a Focus on Blazer.
It was a test to just say,
hey let's invite some of
the community experts and
get some product team members
together for just a one day thing.
We had no idea how it would
perform or what it would do.
Well, it turned out it was an
actually very successful event.
We had a lot of viewers.
We're like, "Hey, this
is an easier version,
a little scaled down
version of.NET Conf."
People understand
what.NET Conf is about,
so we're like let's call
it Focus on- something.
Because you can do
anything with.NET so it's
nice to be able to focus
on a topic for the day.
We actually started that last year,
we had Focus on Blazer in January,
it was on January 14th.
I remember we flew up
there and it snowed in.
We got completely snowed
in to the studio.
We ended up bringing
up all the speaker.
Nobody could come in
the studio at all so
we had to bring all
the speakers remote.
We really only had half the speakers
remote and then the product team
members coming in the studio.
Well, they couldn't even do that.
We literally were like, okay,
we're going to have to go pick
up the crew from their house in
an SUV and bring them.
Then we planned one from March
and that was Focus on Xamarin.
We were doing all the mobile
development with Xamarin.
That one was March 23rd,
which was actually one day
before Governor Inslee,
the governor of Washington State
shut down the state
because of the pandemic.
>> That feels like an eternity ago.
>> Yeah, it feels
like an eternity ago,
it was literally less than a
year ago that that happened.
We didn't plan on traveling
because we knew this
was going to happen.
I ended up staying home.
Javier, stayed home,
Jeff stayed home,
so we were all at home except that
James Montemagno was the host
and they did go into the studio.
But we ended up calling everybody
in remotely for that one,
except we had a few
like a skeleton crew.
Then we did a third one and this
is full blown into the pandemic.
We did a third one on
microservices in July,
and that was our first real test
run of everything in the Cloud.
We basically built a
studio in the Cloud.
Instead of having these
channel line studios,
we created a big
Azure VM running OBS.
We actually still at that,
we didn't use StreamYard.
I think we were still using
Skype to call people into it.
But it ended up being a
super successful event.
We ran it through Learn TV.
That one is probably our
biggest event that we've done.
They'd been successful. We've
got another one coming up.
We think we have
streamlined the process,
almost like a cookie-cutter
blueprint of doing these events.
As you know, you guys
are using StreamYard,
we're using Learn TV
to do the player.
Everything is pretty smooth,
let's knock on wood.
It's a live event so you
never know exactly what's going
to happen on that moment.
But yeah, so we've got Windows,
I got my screen up here.
If you go to "Focusdotnetconf.net",
Focus on Windows is
happening on February 25th.
I'm going to blow it, Leslie. This is
recorded so by the time. [inaudible]
>> Yeah, don't pay attention to
the countdown here, it's a lie.
>> The countdown is a
little off you guys.
>> Yeah.
>> It's happening 15 days.
>> Look at the date,
not the countdown.
>> We've got some speakers
from the community
and the product teams,
so guys are all working on,
you're making Windows desktop
apps and Windows development
awesome with.NET 5.
You can see a little bit about
what is.NET Conf here and you
can check out our past events
which I just walked through.
All the content, the
code, the slides,
all the stuff that our
speakers did in the past,
you can grab here, and
even the main event,
this was the one you were
mentioning at the beginning.
That's the main.NET Conf 2020,
go ahead and grab all
the content there.
But anyways, we've
got a great lineup.
We just announced, or just
maybe published the agenda.
I haven't actually announced it,
this is my announcement right now.
The agenda: We've got
Scott Hunter and Olia.
They're going to kick off the
day with the Welcome Session,
which is an hour-long session.
We're actually building
that, it's like the keynote.
We're building that right now.
I can't tell you-all the details
because we're building it,
but it's going to be pretty cool.
We're going to focus
a lot on the What's
New in WinForms and WPF
development on.NET 5.
Then Cathy is going
to come in there and
she's going to talk about how to take
your.NET Framework-based apps
and get them to.NET Core/five.
There's a tool we're working
on to help you do that too.
She'll walk through the
preview of this tool.
That's a little teaser on
the slip out a little.
We're going to have a
little announcement there.
Okay. So cool. Don't tell anybody.
>> My lips are sealed.
>> We figure we had a
ton of what's new in C#.
We do a lot of C# content
because we know we have
a lot of C# developers.
We also have a lot of
Visual Basic developers.
So we said, you know what,
on.NET 5, that we've done a
lot of work in Visual Basic.
To light up the Visual
Basic framework,
it has a whole
development framework for
building wind forms apps actually.
Klaus, who actually used to be an
MDP and now works for Microsoft,
super passionate about Visual Basic,
is going to be speaking with
Kathleen Dollard on taking
full advantage of
Visual Basic and what's
new for Visual Basic
developers on.NET 5.
So hopefully, that's an appreciated.
>> Yeah.
>> That's really cool,
because I get questions
about Visual Basic on my
day job sometimes too.
I'm like, "Oh, shoot."
I feel like that's
underrated language,
but as like being used and
it deserves more love.
>> It's very close to my heart.
People might know me
from 20 years ago,
I'm a huge developer.
When I was hired by Microsoft, I was,
a Visual Basic developer advocate
and I definitely love VB,
it will always be close to my heart.
I don't really code anything
anymore because I'm in marketing.
Sam Basu from Progress is
going to come in and show
us how to use Azure SignalR
service with your desktop apps.
I think a lot of people
think like signalR,
it's a web real-time communications,
web communications protocol.
I don't need that from a desktop app.
Sure, there's a lot
of scenarios where
desktop apps can take
advantage of this as well.
Your stock trading apps and those
things that have really rich,
rich UIs and or built native on
native platform like Windows
and can totally take
advantage as well.
He's going to talk to us
about setting that up.
The cool thing about
Azure SignalR service
is it's a total turnkey service.
You don't have to host
it or do anything
yourself so that's really cool.
Jessica Engstrom is a
Windows Developer MVP
and she is all about UX.
She's going to talk to us
about some UX principles
and how as developers,
we stroll and socket
building great UIs,
what we can do to build better UI,
and usability in general.
Then we have Dmitry, your friend,
he's probably come and talk about-
>> Yeah, I know Dmitry.
>> He's basically the XAML tool guy.
He's going to show us some
of the new enhancements,
NBS for billing XAML-based,
WPF and UWP apps,
and Visual Studio so this
should be pretty cool.
>> I'm going to pivot
you for a second.
Obviously, people should definitely
check out this conference,
especially if they're into Windows
Apps and Windows desktop apps.
But what if people want to
be able to have a say in
what the next focus conference
events are, what should they do?
>> That's a good point. How we
usually do it is this one was
based on feedback that we
got from a survey that
we did at the end of the last
conference, the main event.
We looked and saw, the
people loved the main event,
it was really good,
good feedback from that event.
But I saw some comments
around it would've been
nice to have more Windows content
because it was really web heavy.
I thought I looked back and I'm like,
"Hey, we did a Blazer event,
and we did Microservices,
we did a mobile thing,
but we haven't done anything
for Windows developers."
This was already pretty much based on
the feedback that we got from
the survey on the last event.
I did say, you can add Beth Massi
and I take that as feedback too.
As the Executive
Producer of.NET Conf,
I do take feedback that way.
But we also send a survey out,
join that mailing list.
So if you subscribe to notifications
just down at the bottom here,
that just puts you on a
list that anytime we have
another.NET Conf or a survey
or asking for feedback,
we just e-mail people and then they
fill out the survey and
then we know what to do.
Then a lot of times, it coincides
with something we're
doing in the product too,
like Blazer, for instance,
was newly released at the time,
Blazer's serverless, and we were
working on the WebAssembly,
so it's like right in between.
We saw just a ton of
people asking questions about
it and how do I use this thing.
We provide these scaling events.
We just look and see
what's the community
doing and asking questions
all up and then we pick.
It has a lot to do with
feedback but it also has a
lot to do with marketing
as well and where do we want to
drive people next based
on what the product is.
Some of the things that I don't
think other people know about
Windows or at least WinForms and
WPF is that they're open source.
They'd been open-sourced
for like over a year.
So we're going to bring
in some contributors
from the WinForms and WPF
projects to talk about how
people could actually get
started contributing in
generals on GitHub or to those
particular projects as well.
It's not always like our
shiny web technologies
that are open source.
Now Wind Forms is like 20
years old, the framework.
To actually take something that
wasn't initially ever meant as
an open-source project
to actually get
it open source was actually
an accomplishment in itself,
and now see the
community contribute to
it is even more rewarding
was put that way,
so we'll have some of
those books on as well.
Take a look at the agenda, I
hope that we've covered a lot.
You'll see most of the content
is about what you can do today,
but we do have some future sessions.
If we look at the end
of the day, here we go.
We're building.NET
hybrid apps with Blazer.
Dan Roth will come in and
we'll talk a little bit about
hybrid apps using their native
apps that use web technologies.
If you want to use
more of a Webby syntax
or Blazer syntax to do
native development,
he's going to show us where that's
going and what it'll be like,
the experience would
be in like in.NET 6.
We've got someone from
the Windows team.
[inaudible] about
the project reunion.
Project reunion is about
making that experience
a lot better and across
all the different Windows
10 versions and basically
building one app that can take
advantage of all those devices.
Then we'll have Maddie and
David in to give us an update
on the.NET multi-platform
app UI,.NET MAUI,
which is in Preview,
actually by the time this airs,
I think it'll be in Preview,
one will be dropped.
By the time we release in November,
it's a new app model for building
apps that not just mobile apps,
but also desktop apps as well,
all native applications using XAML.
Hopefully, we'll have
a good show for you.
>> Yeah, that sounds great.
Hopefully people go
check out that site,
get hyped about all the different
talks on different ways
and get involved with the
community as a whole.
>> Don't forget the swag. We
did have free digital swag.
Take a look at the swag.
We've got free digital swag,
we've got [inaudible] code theme,
you can create your own little bot.
We also have sponsors.
Our sponsors are sponsoring
a bunch of swag this time.
This is the first time we're
doing swag for a focus event.
This was swag bag was really
popular for the main event,
and so our generous sponsors are
donating 25 different prizes.
You'll have a bag of stuff basically.
You can enter to win right here.
Especially the mystery prize pack.
Apparently, Progress did that
last time and they're like,
people love the mystery part.
>> I personally hated
mystery surprise pack.
I was like, I don't know what
I'm getting myself into.
I want to know what
I'm going to get in,
but it's each their own.
>> I hope you get items
in the stores and
people can pick from more t-shirts
and that kind off stuff too.
Hopefully we make it fun.
>> Awesome. February
25th is the magic date.
>> Starting at 8:00 AM Pacific.
>> Great. Thank you so much
for coming and sharing that.
I think that is super cool.
I'm sure there's a lot of people
out there who would love to
have a full conference of
nothing but Windows apps,
both desktop and mobile and
beyond. That's really exciting.
>> Awesome. Thanks for having me.
>> Remember February 25,
don't look at the countdown
on this video is wrong.
>> Save the date.
>> All right. With
that, happy coding.
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