The third annual St. Louis Day of .NET was held Friday, August 19^th through Sunday, August 20^th at the Ameristar Casino & Resort in St. Charles, Missouri. By all accounts, it was the biggest, most successful year yet for the conference. I thought I would share some of the numbers and what I felt to be this year’s highlights.

The Numbers

· Registration cost: $200 ($125 early bird)
· Attendees: 684
· Speakers: 57
· Sessions: 111 , 3000+ evals collected

Highlights

Great attendance. In three years the conference has grown from 250 to 680 attendees and grew 37% from last year’s 500 attendee count. And the organizers still feel there is room for more growth next year. Wow!

High caliber speakers. This year featured the best speaking talent to date, including MVPs, book authors, industry experts, and user group leaders. As awareness of the event has grown, speakers have been attracted from way beyond our borders (Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and California). This practically guaranteed us a great mix of sessions to choose from this year.

Breadth of sessions/technologies covered. The breadth of technologies covered was simply staggering. We had over 100 sessions broken up into 30 categories offering attendees a tremendous amount of variety of world class education.

Product Team Keynote. Brian Goldfarb and David Pugmire from the Silverlight team were our headliners. This was the first time the conference featured a keynote and getting a product team to fly out and deliver was a special privilege for us here St. Louis.

Fantastic venue facilities. A large portion of the conference budget was dedicated to securing top notch facilities. The Ameristar convention center was a first class conference venue and provided all the amenities in one package. Attendees were provided with wireless access and were treated to breakfast and lunch both days.

Charity book fair. Presenters and attendees were encouraged to bring old technical books to donate to the conference’s charity book fair. All books were sold for $3 each.  Proceeds topped $315, which were donated to the United Way of Greater St. Louis.

Conference help desk. With a conference this size, adding a central help desk near the entrance proved to be a great customer satisfaction booster. An organizer was always present with up to date information and provide general concierge services.

Social Media Links

You can see the action as it unfolded through social media from these streams:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/stldodn
Twitter:     http://twitter.com/stldodn
Flickr:       http://www.flickr.com/groups/stldodn/pool/

Slides From My Presentations

Thanks to everyone who turned out for my sessions. Here are my slides:

Windows Azure Boot Camp is a two day deep dive class to get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience with Azure, as well as a series of labs so you can practice what you just learned.

How much does it cost?

Thanks to our fantabulous sponsor Perficient, this two day training event is FREE! We will provide drinks and snacks, but you will be on your own for lunch on both days. This is a training class after all.

What do I need to bring?

For most boot camps, you will need to bring your own laptop, and have it preloaded with the software listed here. An extension cord would help as well.

How do I attend?

Click the link below to see the details about the class and register. Keep in mind you will most likely need to bring your own laptop to do the labs.

St. Louis, MO      May 13 & 14, 8:00 am – 5:00 pm

Don't live in St. Louis? Check the full schedule for a city near you. If you don't see a class near you, then throw your own. We provide all of the materials and training you need to host your own class. This can be for your company, your customers, your friends, or even your family. Please let us know so we can give you all of the details.

High Speed, Low Drag: Driving Application Quality with Minimal Friction

Mark Mydland, Principal Group Manager for Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Testers

Software teams are continually under pressure to do more in less time, to build higher quality and ever more complex applications on ever increasing ship cadences. In this session we will use Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 Application Lifecycle tools to demonstrate how to deliver bugs that get fixed first time, every time; how to prevent regression with Coded UI Tests and Automation for Navigation; how to streamline build and application deployment using Lab Management and virtual environments; and how to identify the source and impact of changes even when developers “forget” to mention them. Finally, we will spend some time talking about Microsoft’s own efforts to ensure the quality of our release and what we have learned through these efforts.

Event Dates & Registration

The user groups in each city of the tour have been kind enough to reschedule their meeting nights to accommodate this special tour. Please visit your local user group sites below for more event details:

April 12    St. Louis .NET User Group, St. Louis, MO

April 13    Kansas City .NET User Group, Leawood, KS

April 14    Omaha .NET User Group, Omaha, NE

April 15    Twin Cities .NET User Group, Bloomington, MN