Last week I was in Vegas to present at the DevConnections/ VS2010 Launch event. The show was well-attended and everybody I spoke to agreed it was educational and enjoyable. My three talks were all on Wednesday, 14 April 2010, including one at 8am for which I was impressed to see a large turnout in attendance.

Pragmatic ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools

My first session was on tips, tricks, and tools for ASP.NET developers. This is a talk I've given in past years, but which I refine every time. I usually like to have a full session to devote to tools, and a separate talk just for Tips and Tricks, but for this show I was only given the one 75-minute slot, so I had to cut some materials to make things fit. The talk went well, all the demos work, and the attendees seemed to enjoy it, and I like giving it, so hopefully I can continue to present on this topic in future DevConnections shows.

Download the ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools slides and demos.

What's New in ASP.NET MVC 2

My second talk of the day followed immediately after the Tips and Tricks talk, and was a brand new talk for me. I have to throw out a thank-you to Phil for letting me see his MIX slide deck before he gave his talk, as that was a big help. The official what's new document online is also worth checking out if you're interested in this subject.

Download the What's New in ASP.NET MVC 2 slides and demos.

SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application

Just because you're using a ASP.NET MVC doesn't mean your code can't still end up being a big ball of mud. This session describes a number of principles of software design that can help ensure applications remain loosely-coupled and malleable even as they age and increase in features and complexity. This was my last talk of the day and did have one minor demo failure involving a database constraint. I've given this talk many times before, and in this case I had to fit it into a 60-minute time slot, so I'm not sure I had quite enough time to drive home all of the concepts to everyone in the audience. That said, I did hear a number of positive comments on how the talk went, so that's encouraging.

Download the SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application slides and demos.

In my sessions, I promised to have these posted by the end of the weekend – they're going up at 10pm Sunday night (my time) – 2 hours to spare! Enjoy!

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