A Week with the Field

Every six months, a large portion of Microsoft's technical field converges on Seattle to discuss and learn technology. This week is one of those weeks. And WCF and WF 4.0 are a hot topic.

This weekend, Michele Leroux Bustamante and Zoiner Tejada came out and did a pre-con on WCF + WF + 'Dublin', and this week we have a variety of talks on different aspects of 4.0, most of which will probably be done in webcast form as we come into the VS2010 beta timeframe.

The preconference done by Michele and Zoiner was great - they'll be representing it at TechEd 2009 in Orlando. For those attending TechEd North America this year, I would highly recommend attending their preconference session (PRC07 - A Day of WCF + WF + Dublin). Also at TechEd, we will be doing an updated Intro to WCF and WF 4.0 (that session was published last week), and (on a 3.5 note), we will be posting up a few new hands on labs at TechEd: a lab on using WCF and WF to connect BizTalk 2009 and MOSS 2007 (we're presenting it as an instructor-led-lab (ILL) this week - after a few months of working and polishing this lab...it's FINALLY going out to the world!), the test-driven development labs for WCF and WF, and a lab based on Matt Winkler's advanced correlation management blog entries (and TechEd talk). Combined with some kick-butt sessions, it should be a good time for new content.

For those inquiring on the follow-up to my blog post from a couple weeks ago, I have it about 2/3 of the way written. The event this week (and TechEd) just grabbed a massive amount of my time, but I'm in the process of putting some polish on it. I hope to get it up this week, but it will probably slip to the beginning of next (we'll see after we present the ILL on Weds - and I still have some elder coins to collect ;-) ).