1. An event you know and trust. Visual studio Live! is celebrating 20 years of education and training for the developer community in 2013.

2. Da' Deals. Get in-depth .NET education (and lots of it) at a reasonable price.

3. More views than the Sears (ahem, Willis) Tower. We feature both unbiased industry experts and Microsoft insiders, so you'll hear every side of the story on the most recent software and industry updates.

4. Network with Your Neighbors. Developers, software architects and designers will all be at the conference – take advantage of meal times and networking events to get to know your fellow attendees and speakers.

5. More stuffed than a Chicago deep dish. The information-packed 4-day agenda offers multiple sessions in tracks such as Visual Studio 2012/.NET 4.5, Azure/Cloud Computing, Cross-Platform Mobile and Windows 8 /WinRT.

6. Speakers coming outta your ears. Come hear your favorite industry speakers all in one place, including Jason Bock, Miguel Castro, Billy Hollis, Leonard Lobel and Brian Randell — just to name a few.

7. Now. New. Next. Find out what's happening in the Microsoft and developer landscape.

8. Full-Day Developer Workshops. Come in on Monday and attend a pre-conference workshop on Windows 8 Applications, SharePoint 2013 for developers, Using WCF and ASP.NET Web API, Visual Studio 2012 or SQL Server 2012.

9. Not quite the Blues Brothers, but . . . our conference co-chairs Andrew Brust and Rockford Lhotka are still on a mission. They've been working hard all year to bring you the most up-to-date and relevant information on the Microsoft stack.

10. Sweet 127.0.0.1 Chicago! After a too-long hiatus, we're thrilled to be back in Chicago! Bring on the windy streets, pop, deep dish pizza and hotdogs (no ketchup)!