This year, Tech Ed has been divided into two conferences.  June 3-6, 2008 is for developers, and June 10-13 is for IT Pros.  I’ll be speaking at the developers conference and giving three sessions (rss feed:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/jeffreypalermo):

1. Black Belt Software Configuration Management: Source Control, Builds, Database Migration, Testing, and Deployment (Development Practices track):  As part of the new “development practices” track, this session will focus on all the ways to make the development process speed up.  So many of these practices are emphasizes in extreme programming, and I’ll be sharing the combination I and my company use to make software projects manage themselves.  All tools demonstrated with only require the VS 2008 Pro sku.  You can have an awesome SCM process without purchasing VSTS.
2. Data Access Layer: Architectural Concerns for Object/Relational Mappers (O/R-M) (Architecture track):  All examples will use NHibernate, but that’s not the focus of this session.  This session will speak to the architecture of a system that uses and O/R mapper.  One of the common, early mistakes of folks starting to use O/R mappers is mixing data access and domain logic.  Having used NHibernate for over 2.5 years, I’ve worked out how to build an application that uses an ORM without the whole application knowing about it.  Lessons in this session can be applied to LINQ to SQL and EF as well.
3. Model View Controller (MVC) Architecture Pattern: Considerations for the New ASP.NET MVC Framework (Architecture track):  There will be plenty of talk at Tech Ed about the new ASP.NET MVC Framework, but this is the only talk scheduled that purely addresses architectural concerns.  I think it’s fairly easy to pick up Monorail or ASP.NET MVC and start using it, but it’s not easy to immediately understand how to set up the presentation layer when leveraging the MVC pattern, regardless of framework used.  This session will cover project references, early and late binding, testing architecture, and builds.

All of the techniques I demonstrated in my sessions will use VS2008Pro (not VSTS).  My goal is to maximize the audience that can benefit from the session, not just those whose companies have purchases team system.  With that, I’ll be showing lots of other tools, some free, some commercial.

I’ll also be planning a Party with Palermo for Tech Ed that will be held on June 2nd at 7pm, so stay tuned for those details.

This will be my first time speaking at Tech Ed, and I’m a bit surprised that they accepted all my session proposals given that I’m not one to openly evangelize the latest and greatest from Microsoft.  Each of my sessions will be focused on how to get work done, not tell you how great products are.  The ASP.NET MVC Framework is new, and lots of people are in love with it. I’m an early adopter, but I also am compelled to address challenges of the framework and how to get around them.  It’s not all gravy, so prepare to get your hands dirty if you come to my sessions.

I have an Agile/XP focus in software development as well, so that will come through regardless of the topic on which I’m speaking.  If you are planning on going to DevTeach, Toronto, I’ll be giving the Blackbelt SCM and ASP.NET MVC talk at that conference as well.