An Introduction to Akka.NET

Akka.NET is an Actor Model Framework that helps .Net developers create powerful concurrent & distributed applications more easily. The Actor Model is a well-established paradigm for building fault-tolerant and scalable applications that has recently seen a resurgence as distributed and asynchronous systems gain popularity. In this introductory talk, Sean will walk you through the concepts of the actor model, its benefits over traditional approaches, and the basics of how to use Akka.NET to achieve these advantages in your .NET applications.

We need your voice! A guide to putting yourself out there

Have you ever wondered whether you have something to contribute to conversations in the tech industry? YOU TOTALLY DO. In this session, Sean will walk through ways to think about adding your voice to help shape our industry, and what benefits you and your community may gain as a result. He'll share prompts to get you started, and tips to help you follow through. His hope is that you will leave with a renewed conviction that your voice matters, and a pathway to put it out there and feel good about it.

Level up Your Team with Better Technical Interviews

Have you ever been stuck at a whiteboard or solving a brainteaser and thought "there must be a better way"? Good news: there very much is. Technical interviews can be a nightmare for both the interviewer and interviewee. In this talk, Sean walks through his philosophy & practical tips for running technical interviews that are primed for success.

Better Operational Visibility in .NET With Structured Logging

Too many developers underestimate the power that is hidden away in their logs. In this talk, Sean will take us through the "why" of structured logging and the basics of how to attain it via Serilog and Seq, with plenty of examples along the way. You'll learn how to log better, how to search those logs, how to use logs to identify performance issues, and how Sean once substituted good log messages for an entire UI in order to provide business value quickly.

The Dark Art of Just-in-time Tech Talks

I once, to my colleague's chagrin, thought through a tech talk during a drive, wrote slides in an hour, and gave a presentation that was well received and lasted exactly as long as it was scheduled. After doing this a few times (for better and worse), I've picked up some tips along the way on how to deliver a talk no matter how rushed or pressured you may feel. We'll discuss some of my tips, as well as how to know when you're in over your head & adjust.

(Fr)agile: How Agile Falls Apart, and What You can do to Hold it All Together

Working in an agile mindset -- especially when favoring specific approaches -- can go wrong in about 100 ways. In this talk, I describe some lessons as a technical lead and member of agile teams, holding it together with duct tape and a little help from my friends.

Stretching .NET: An Introduction to ElasticSearch

NEST is a fantastic client for the ElasticSearch DB, which has a number of performance advantages and great use cases for solving modern development problems. In this session, you’ll learn some background about ElasticSearch for .NET, and will work through a real-world use case for utilizing it in your applications.

An Introduction to Graph Databases in .NET with Neo4j

Modern development shops are fast discovering that tables & rows aren't the only way to store data. In this talk, I introduce .NET developers to the advantages of graph databases using Neo4j. You'll learn how graph databases differ from traditional SQL DBs, when it makes sense to use a graph database, and what the advantages are. We'll also work through an example project to get a feel for some of the concepts, and sprinkle in a littler Docker goodness for some added fun.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Feedback Loops

In this talk, I discuss what feedback loops are, why they’re important, and the myriad ways that shortening feedback loops can improve your code, your team, and your career.

Casting a Wider .NET: Working Toward More OSS Maturity in the .NET Community

This talk discusses how to bring a model of open-source maturity to the .NET community in the hopes of getting others involved to realize our shared vision to make .NET a great space for open-source.

Previously delivered at the .NET Fringe conference

Serverless-is-more: An Introduction to Azure Functions

In this session, Sean will walk through how to use Azure Functions and Azure Key Vault to create a system to continually share his RSS subscriptions with the world. Follow along as we discuss concepts of serverless computing, build a functional application, an marvel at all the things we *didn't* have to do.

Workshop: Modernizing Your Apps to .NET Core / .NET 5

With Microsoft's announcement about .NET 5, it's clear that .NET Core is the future, and a migration strategy is important for businesses and developers. In this workshop, we'll review some of the conceptual differences of .NET Core, and outline strategies for migrating a codebase with minimal pain. From there, we'll get into specific strategies and tactics for migrating .NET Framework applications, along with pitfalls along the way. This specific session will focus on web-based and services based applications, but many of the strategies will apply to desktop applications as well. Attendees will leave with .NET Core demystified, and a playbook for how to modernize their applications over time while providing value along the way.

Workshop: Fast, versatile build pipelines using GitHub, Azure DevOps, .NET Core, and Docker

In this hands-on workshop, attendees will take an existing application and apply a little DevOps magic with a modern toolset. We'll explore how to navigate GitHub, integrate Azure DevOps with GitHub, test pull requests before they're merged, version our packages, and deploy to preview and production environments with Azure. We'll then containerize the application and explore the difference in our workflow as we deploy with Azure Container Service (ACS) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Workshop: Test Automation in .NET

In this full-day hands-on workshop, you'll learn the benefits of automated testing and thinking in an automation mindset. We'll cover how to consider trade-offs in your testing strategy, patterns for great automated tests, approaches to legacy code, and the tools in the .NET ecosystem that help you test at all levels of the testing pyramid. Whether you've never written a test before or are interested to learn more, this workshop will inspire you to achieve greater confidence in your code, and you'll leave with hands-on experience in how to do so.

The Joy of Functional Testing with SpecFlow

Functional testing is a great way to ensure we're not just building the thing right, but building the right thing. In this session, we'll example the testing pyramid, the place of functional testing, and how to write Gherkin syntax with SpecFlow to move toward acceptance test driven development. We'll use real world codebase and show a few cycles of acceptance tests in the language of the business, and talk about one project's real-world functional testing journey.

The Future of CI: Learning to Love Feedback Loops

A presentation about how feedback loops strengthen your team and organization, which ones matter most, and how to embrace smaller feedback loops for positive change.