A Message From Our
Conference Co-Chairs

Redmond is perhaps most beautiful in August, with blue skies and views of the mountains! And there’s no better place to learn about the latest and greatest Microsoft technologies than on the Microsoft campus itself. In today’s world, this starts with cloud-based deployment where you can move traditional workloads from Windows servers to virtual machines and PaaS solutions. With all the changes for developers using just about any platform including .NET and Java, we see serverless and containers becoming central to many solutions. Not to be left out, the client stack continues to surprise with native frameworks like Windows Forms and WPF getting new life; JavaScript frameworks continuing to impress with their power, and the dynamic, new world that’s being opened up with C#, Blazor, and WebAssembly.

We’re Andrew Brust, Rockford Lhotka, and Brian Randell, and as Conference Co-Chairs for Visual Studio Live! Microsoft HQ, we’d like to personally invite you to join us this August at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, WA. You need to keep up with all the exciting changes in technology. As veterans of the show and longtime speakers, we may be biased, but we firmly believe that an in-person experience, where you get to have two-way conversations about the latest tools and technologies, with some of the finest expert speakers in the business—and with the chance to network with your peers—continues to deliver the highest level of value.

Visual Studio Live! Microsoft HQ gives you more of what you’ve asked for: pre-conference Hands-On Labs, pre-conference workshops, brilliant keynotes, and more than 50 breakout sessions, covering a wide array of development technologies for everyone. From security to databases to the latest Web and mobile technologies, to Docker & Kubernetes, and DevOps, we’ve got you covered. Our speakers include industry luminaries & practitioners, as well as a large group of Microsoft product team members. They will present on machine learning & analytics, bots, and enterprise software solutions in-depth, based on their experience with Windows, macOS, Linux, and mobile platforms.

We have picked every workshop, Hands-On Lab and session with the goal of transferring knowledge to you, so you can be a better developer and help your organization succeed in this ever-changing technology world.

You’ll find coverage on .NET Core, C# 8, mobile development with Xamarin, container technologies, SQL Server, Cosmos DB, and Power BI. If the Web is more your style, you’ll find coverage of TypeScript and Angular on the client as well as ASP.NET Core on the server. Feeling confused about .NET Core? We’ve got sessions to clear it up. Want to improve the quality of your software? We’ve got sessions on unit testing and continuous delivery. Mystified as to how you can bring DevOps to your organization? Our speakers will answer your questions with practical guidance on DevOps for the cloud, the data center and more.

Our Hands-On Labs content provides coverage of Cloud-Native .NET Development using Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry, and Dependency Injection in .NET. If that’s not what you’re after, we’ve got great workshops on Azure DevOps, Web Development in 2019, and SQL Server for Developers. Our sessions, Hands-On Labs, and workshops drill deep into the subjects you need to master and the fundamentals that are always important.

Our industry continues the march toward the future. To keep up, you need to absorb rapidly and adapt. When you compare Internet-based content to a live experience, where you get to ask questions in real-time and engage directly with the experts and your peers, we’re sure you’ll agree with us you can go deeper, more quickly and get to the heart of your questions. Find a way to get to Visual Studio Live! Microsoft HQ and get the tools to help yourself grow.

Come celebrate 26 years of great learning and make your own memories with us! We hope to see you there!

Visual Studio Live! Conference Co-Chairs

Andrew Brust, Founder & CEO, Blue Badge Insights
Rockford Lhotka, CTO, Magenic
Brian A. Randell, Partner, MCW Technologies