This is my list of sessions I want to see. A person has to choose because time is precious and I only have so much of it. And the amount I have left is going down millisecond by millisecond.

Mysteries of Memory Management Revealed,with Mark Russinovich (Part 1 of 2)

If you want to know the difference between System Committed memory and Process Committed memory,wondered what all those memory numbers shown by Task Manager really mean,or want to gain insight into the memory-related impact of a process,then this talk is for you. Using various memory analysis tools including: Process Explorer,VMMap,RAMMap,and others to highlight concepts throughout,the presentation starts with an overview of virtual memory management,describing types of process address space memory and how they impact system virtual memory. Then it dives into physical memory management,discussing how Windows manages process working sets,how it keeps track of physical memory,and how memory moves between different states.

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Mysteries of Memory Management Revealed,with Mark Russinovich (Part 2 of 2)**

If you want to know the difference between System Committed memory and Process Committed memory,wondered what all those memory numbers shown by Task Manager really mean,or want to gain insight into the memory-related impact of a process,then this talk is for you. Using various memory analysis tools including: Process Explorer,VMMap,RAMMap,and others to highlight concepts throughout,the presentation starts with an overview of virtual memory management,describing types of process address space memory and how they impact system virtual memory. Then it dives into physical memory management,discussing how Windows manages process working sets,how it keeps track of physical memory,and how memory moves between different states.

NuGet: Microsoft .NET Package Management for the Enterprise

There’s an Open Source package manager for .NET available now called NuGet. It’s supported and shipping with Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 3,but it’s not just for ASP.NET. In fact,it’s not just for open source. It’s also great for library management inside the firewall. Join Scott Hanselman as we learn all about NuGet,from the basics of consuming packages,to creating and distributing your own packages both internally and externally. Then learn some advanced Windows PowerShell techniques within NuGet packages,creating NuGet packages in continuous integration build server environments,and even how to run our own NuGet server instance inside our enterprise. There are a number of large companies with names you’d recognize distributing their internal libraries with NuGet. Come to this session and learn why zip files and file shares aren’t where it’s at anymore when it comes to enterprise libraries in .NET.

C# and Visual Basic Future: Async Made Simple

Come hear Alex Turner,Program Manager for the Visual Basic and C# Compilers,describe the language innovations for the next version of Microsoft Visual Studio. See how the async language feature and new Microsoft .NET Framework APIs will come together to simplify asynchronous programming. No more callbacks! This is a demo-focused session where we explore a variety of asynchronous programming scenarios directly in Visual Studio. Finally,we provide a peek into future plans beyond the next release.

Demystifying Debugging with Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate and IntelliTrace

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate provides a wealth of functionality for figuring out what is happening with your application or even being able to debug what happened up to that point with IntelliTrace. But for most developers pressing F5,adding the odd breakpoint and stepping through the application is about as far as they get when debugging. Come to this session if you want to learn more about how to use the debugger and also IntelliTrace to track down those hard to spot errors fast,leaving you more time to write the code you want to be writing.

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Using Microsoft Visual Basic to Build Windows Phone Applications]6

Are you a Visual Basic developer,interested in building Windows Phone applications that scale with your user base? Come to this demo-packed session and learn tips to develop these applications. Start with an idea for a killer Windows Phone app. It needs an Azure backend because it’s online and connected and is going to scale to millions of users. You want to sell it on the Marketplace. How will you develop it? This demo shows technologies that will help you pull it off! It highlights some existing Visual Basic language features like LINQ to XML,and some upcoming language features like Async for ASP.NET,that will turbo-charge your development. The only thing it doesn’t cover is what kind of yacht to buy when your app hits the big time.

Microsoft Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

Learn how to become a Visual Studio coding guru! In this fast-paced session,learn to write code faster than a speeding bullet,leap around large projects in a single bound,and become more powerful than a locomotive with the debugger. We take a wild ride through C# and Visual Basic IDE features in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and indispensible out-of-the-box solutions that will help you get your job done better and faster.

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Fundamental Design Principles for UI Developers]8

New UI technologies increase user expectations,and developers need to ramp up better design sensibilities to help meet that challenge. Billy Hollis distills out the most important concepts and ideas for developers to learn and understand when they take on a more design-oriented role. Design concepts covered include use of color and animation,progressive disclosure,prototyping processes,aesthetic-usability effect,feedback loops,recognition vs. recall and several others. If you expect to design XAML-based user interfaces,or work with a professional designer on a project,this session is a great starting point.

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Code First Development in Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.1]9

Code First has been incredibly popular since its release,and in this session we take a deep dive into how it works. See how Code First uses convention over configuration to improve developer productivity. Its flexibility allows for either automatic database provisioning or the ability to work with an existing database. We show best practices and how to use it in real-world applications,and also talk about the roadmap going forward.

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Agile Anti-Patterns!]10

The popularity of agile software development processes and methodologies is imminent and fast growing. Many organizations and projects turn towards agile to help solve the problems of traditional software development. Scrum,extreme programming,test driven development,and lean are no longer the new kids on the block. However,with the rising popularity of agile,mainly due to lack of experience or management over-expecting results,in coming years many agile projects will fail miserably. Agile is not the silver bullet. In his enthusiastic style,speaker Sander Hoogendoorn,global agile thought leader at Capgemini and involved in agile projects since the mid-nineties,demonstrates the differences in traditional and agile projects,and shows why agile projects will fail – independent of the process used. Sander elaborates on a series of agile anti-patterns that people will recognize immediately. Think of the Scrumdamentalist,Agile-In-Name-Only,the Pseudo-Iteration,Guesstimation,the Bob-the-Builder Syndrome,Parkinson’s Law,the Agile Project Manager and Student Syndrome – of course,with many embarrassing examples and anecdotes from real-life projects.

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Services Made Easy with WCF 4,Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Server AppFabric]11

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a flexible and powerful platform for building service-oriented applications. With the improvements to WCF made in Microsoft .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010,creating and consuming services is a snap! Add in the management capabilities of Windows Server AppFabric and you have a winning combination for developers and IT administrators. Come find out how you can best leverage WCF and Windows Server AppFabric to author,configure,manage and troubleshoot your service-oriented applications. Learn about the future investment we are making in further improving service developer experience.

What Can Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Do for Me? 16 Reasons to Adopt and Leverage .NET 4

If you have not yet adopted .NET Framework 4,or if you already did but you’re not positive you’re leveraging all it has to offer,this session is for you! This unique session provides an overview of what’s possible with .NET 4,and what it has to offer across client,server,and web development. Come to this session and see how .NET 4 can enhance your current .NET investments,the new tools that it gives you,and a glimpse of how it prepares you for the future.

Become a Wireshark Guru: 10 Hot Skills for Faster Troubleshooting

The packets never lie! When Fred whines and cries about network performance,it’s time to whip out your Wireshark,baby. As the world’s foremost network analyzer tool with over 400,000 downloads a month – ya gotta master packet-level life. In this session,Laura provides a master list of skills to get under your belt and demonstrates these skills live. From command-line capture and field extraction techniques to performance comparison charting to coloring the ugliest muck on the network. Bring your laptop with Wireshark installed and follow along for fun!

MVC,MVP and MVVM: A Comparison of Architectural Patterns

This session compares the architectural patterns of Model-View-Controller (MVC),Model-View-Presenter (MVP) and Model-View-View Model (MVVM). Each pattern creates testable,maintainable and reusable application components,however,there are differences that suit each approach to specific types of developer tooling. The presentation first looks at the basic theory and differences between the approaches,then uses demos that show how each apply to Microsoft ASP.NET,Microsoft Silverlight/Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Microsoft SharePoint developer application projects.

Metrics That Matter: Improving Lean and Agile,Kanban and Scrum

This session is born of the hard lessons learned from years of working with diverse companies using metrics to improve their software development processes. Come learn from my successes and be warned by my failures. This session covers what makes an effective metric,the pitfalls in designing metrics,and the basic principles for using metrics appropriately. We cover many general principles,but dive deeply in the metrics needed for lean and agile software practices,using Kanban and Scrum as our representative methodologies. You’ll leave with a number of good metrics and how to collect them,and more importantly,you’ll leave with a deepened understanding of why measuring the right things is critical,and how to measure those things. For instance,there’s one highly effective metric that can turn a frantically busy and harried team into a team that will deliver more value without feeling overworked! We even lay to rest some enticing,but ultimately harmful,measures like efficiency. In fact,I show you how reducing efficiency can dramatically improve productivity! (Sound impossible? It’s not,and once you’ve seen how,you’ll never look at efficiency the same way again.) Don’t miss this session.

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How We Do Language Design at Microsoft (C#,Visual Basic,F#)]16

Hear from the C#,Visual Basic,and F# language designers themselves,about how we create the .NET Framework languages at Microsoft. Where do we get ideas? How do we incorporate new paradigms without breaking the existing languages? Where will we go in the future,and how will we get there? We talk about all these topics and more. Come ready for an interactive session,and get your questions answered by the team!

The Future of Parallel Programming in the Microsoft .NET Framework

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 introduced a host of new features for building parallel applications that leverage the full power of today’s multicore CPUs. In this session we introduce emerging trends in the realm of parallel programming and give a preview of technologies planned for future versions of the .NET Framework. In particular,we examine language and library enhancements focused on significantly easing asynchronous programming,and library support for developing parallel applications around the flow of data.

Branching and Merging for Parallel Development

Are too many branches leaving you tired and overworked? Not quite sure where your code is? Does your teammate keep overwriting your code? Learn how to set up solid branching structures and perform merges to help avoid things like code freeze,losing your code,and how to avoid the dreaded cherry-pick merge. Learn the standard branching patterns and when to use them,as well as when not use them.