Are you excited for Microsoft Connect(); 2018?

By Jim Bennett, Cloud Advocate at Microsoft

I’m sure you’re all aware of Microsoft Connect();, the upcoming Microsoft developer conference that is being streamed online on the 4th December (and if you are not aware - you can find all of the details on the event website). This conference will have a lot of cool content, showing off the latest updates on Azure, Visual Studio and .NET and will be completely developer-focused.

It’ll kick off with 2 keynotes, one from Scott Guthrie showing some great demos around Azure and Visual Studio, followed by a second keynote presented by Scott Hanselman with a host of special guests showing the latest tricks for building apps using Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. You will then be able to join live-coding sessions on Twitch and Mixer to connect with other developers, join interactive Q&As, and share what you’ve been building with Azure.

There’s going to be a lot of cool content being shared from a range of amazing presenters, but here are three that I’m particularly looking forward to:

What's new in Visual Studio?

I spend a lot of my life in Visual Studio on both Windows and Mac, so this session should be fantastic. Amanda Silver (PM for Visual Studio) and Unni Ravindranathan (PM for Visual Studio for Mac) will be hosting a hands-on session showing off the latest and greatest features of Visual Studio to make you a more productive developer.

.NET today and tomorrow

I’m a .NET developer and have been for years. I’m really excited by .NET Core and the capabilities it brings, and when I heard that .NET Core 3 would support WPF and Winforms I got very interested. I spent years as a WPF developer before I started with Xamarin development and it's great to see that WPF will be able to run on the newer, faster, open-source .NET implementation.

This session will be presented by Scott Hunter and Mike Harsh, both PMs on the .NET team and will feature some great demos and talk about where .NET Core 3 is heading. Bring your burning .NET questions!

Hands-on Azure IoT with Node.js and the MXChip

Recently I was given an MXChip by Suz Hinton, a fellow cloud advocate, IoT legend and Twitch streamer. This is a great little Arduino-like microcontroller prototyping board with a built-in simple connection to Azure and a load of sensors. I even wrote a blog post recently about how easy it is to control it from a mobile app.

I love this board, so I'm pretty excited for this as Suz herself will be running this hands-on, interactive session, where you’ll learn how to remotely control this board via IoT Hub, Azure Functions and NodeJS. You’ll even be able to follow along at home using the online MXChip simulator, or with your own device if you have one!

Connect(); 2018 kicks off at 4:30PM UK time on the 4th December, and all the sessions will be viewable afterwards on-demand! You can also join the Azure User Group at CodeNode in London for a Connect(); viewing party!