Brent Stewart
Co-Founder of Alien Arc Technologies
Blue Springs, Missouri, United States
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As a professional software developer with over two decades of experience, I have seen many development trends come and go and learned that there is not a shortcut to being a great developer. I enjoy teaching others what I have learned and try to mentor others whenever I can. I am a co-organizer of the Kansas City .NET User Group and love speaking at conferences.
I am a creator at heart and have started multiple businesses over the years in a variety of industries. My latest venture is Alien Arc Technologies which allows me to take my ideas and give them form. I love quality in all things and I always try to provide the best quality in everything I do. If it is worth doing, then it is worth doing right.
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Securing Your Stuff
I love gadgets, home automation, and my technology addiction-enabling wife. Needless to say, my house is chock-full of "life-improving" gadgets and devices. So many cool things, and so many possible security risks. These devices seem so innocent with their cheery bright lights and instant never questioning obedience, but they can present real security risks to your home. Many are equipped with cameras or microphones and most have your Wi-Fi password, some can even unlock your doors, so we need to ensure that these devices are secured and not given the keys to the kingdom. If you are like me and enjoy playing with the latest toys, you will want to hear the tips and tricks that can make you and your home a little bit safer.
Introduction to the Uno Platform
Write once run everywhere. That is the dream that has been promised for many years in the software world, but it is an elusive goal that always seems just out of reach. The Uno Platform is an open source project that is trying to make this dream a reality. Using their platform, you can target the web, iOS, Android, and Windows with a single code base. Uno is not trying to reinvent the wheel from the ground up, but rather building on top of proven solutions. They are leveraging Web Assembly, Xamarin, XAML, UWP, and C# to create a magical mix of technologies that brings us closer to the one code base to rule them all. Come join us as we take a look under the hood of the platform and see if Uno may be the One platform for you.
IoT for the .NET Dev
IoT is becoming more and more prevalent in our lives. Everything from home appliances to industrial warehouse sensors are getting connected to the Internet to leverage the power of the cloud. There will be great opportunity for those developers who understand how IoT can help industries move to this new frontier. Come explore how to leverage your .NET skills to reach the cloud with Windows 10 IoT on a Raspberry Pi. These days there are many ways to connect your IoT devices to the cloud, but in this talk we'll look at how we can utilize Azure services to integrate with physical devices. We'll show everything from how to interact with GPIO (General Purpose Input Output) to hooking up to Azure Functions with the Raspberry Pi. Come see how to put your Pi in the sky (cloud)!
Productive Developer == Happy Developer
We all love those days when everything goes right and we just knock it out of the park. What makes some days great and others a real chore? For a lot of developers, the biggest factor to having a great day at work is a sense of accomplishment. So come explore how we can get the most from our hours and increase the number of awesome days. In this talk we will examine what motivates us, how to stay focused, and cover some powerful productivity tips and tricks. We will look at some tools and techniques that will help you be a more effective developer. Don't just refactor your code, refactor your life.
Computer Vision: Don't turn a blind eye to the future
Whether we are talking about automated cars that need to avoid children playing in the street, a sales app that reads the emotions of a shopper, or an augmented reality game, computer vision plays a significant role in the future of computing. Join us as we take a look at some of the readily available computer vision services that you can leverage today. We will examine some of the use cases for computer vision and explore why you should consider it for your apps. During this session, we will create a simple app that consumes some of these services and shows just how easy it is to add vision to any application.
Breaking down the blockchain
Blockchains are revolutionizing how we think about and handle secure transactions. While blockchain was originally created for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, other uses are continuously being discovered. Join us as we demystify the inner workings of the blockchain and take a look under the hood at the techniques used to create this game changer. During this session, we will build out a simple implementation using .NET and look at how the blockchain can be leveraged in your apps.
.NET Core on a Raspberry Pi
The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the hottest technologies going right now, and the demand for Internet connected devices is only going to keep growing. Everything from home appliances to industrial warehouse sensors are getting connected to the Internet to leverage the power of the cloud. There will be great opportunity for those developers who understand how IoT can help industry move to this new frontier. So how does a .NET developer leverage their experience to build powerful, secure, and robust IoT devices? Using .NET Core of course! While there are many options when it comes to building an IoT device, we are going to cover how to use an inexpensive off-the-shelf Raspberry Pi. We will look at how to setup and configure our Pi, how to write an application, how to deploy to the device, how to access the cloud, and even how to interact with the real world through the general purpose input/output (GPIO) pins. Come see how to put your Pi in the sky (cloud)!
SOLID Interfaces: A pattern for success
Defining and using interfaces is one of the core tenets of modern software development. Interfaces are fundamental to making an application testable and keeping it loosely coupled, so why do so many get it wrong? As with many principals of software design, the benefits and goals are often misunderstood and therefore they are misused and abused. In this session we will examine what interfaces are and why you should care about them. We will also discuss when interfaces should be used and look at some of the common pitfalls and mistakes people make. Join us and make you software design fundamentals more SOLID.
Automate all the things
Home automation has been an interest of mine for many years, but it has always been a frustrating mashup of proprietary systems. Performing the simplest of tasks was often impossible or required herculean effort to accomplish. This has improved over the last few years as we have seen an influx of opensource home automation projects and standards based communication. This new opensource software and hardware has opened up many opportunities to create increasingly advanced solutions. In this talk I will share my experiences of one of my most recent projects where I built out a lighting/security control system for my workshop. The technologies we will look at include: Home Assistant, Arduino, EPS32, Raspberry PI, MQTT, LIFX, 10v dimming, POE cameras, voice assistants and more. My solution combined many off the shelf components, open source software, a bit of custom code, and even some homemade hardware. Join me for a fun discussion on how we can automate all the things.
Modernizing My Micro-Manufacturing
As an avid maker with an ever growing list of things I want to bring to market, I am always looking for ways to leverage my software development skills to make me more efficient in my workshop. I love CNC machines and dream of the day where I have all my tools under control of software. Unfortunately for me, all the companies that have amazing cutting edge tooling want vast quantities of money in exchange for their products, so as a startup/hobbyist I am forced to find other ways to live the dream. Come join me as I talk about my experiences modernizing and automating my workshop.
.NET MAUI: Unleashing Cross-Platform Development
Join us on an enlightening journey into the world of cross-platform app development with .NET MAUI. Discover the seamless integration of .NET MAUI with C# and XAML, allowing developers to leverage their existing skills and codebase to create native experiences across different device ecosystems. Unravel the magic behind .NET MAUI's adaptive UI, enabling applications to effortlessly adapt to various screen sizes and orientations. From streamlined code sharing to a unified project structure, explore how .NET MAUI simplifies the complexities of cross-platform development, fostering efficiency and accelerating the delivery of feature-rich applications.
Whether you're a seasoned developer seeking to expand your toolkit or just stepping into the world of cross-platform development, this talk will equip you with the knowledge and insights needed to embark on your .NET MAUI journey. Join us as we navigate the future of cross-platform development with .NET MAUI and revolutionize the way we approach building powerful, cross-device applications. Don't miss this opportunity to transform your development workflow and elevate your applications to new heights!
Beyond Words: Large Language Models for mere mortals
How many times has someone mentioned 'AI' to you in the last week? Odds are, it is more than once. AI is taking over the mindspace of business leaders everywhere and with good reason. AI presents countless opportunities to revolutionize how we work with data and interact with customers. One of the biggest areas that has seen massive strides recently is Large Language Models (LLMs). These LLMs open a lot of doors to what is possible, from chatbots that are indistinguishable from their human counterparts to virtual assistants that never call in sick. In this session, we will look at how these LLMs work and get a better understanding of what they are good at and where they struggle. Come with us as we examine the variety of offerings from massive hosted commercial solutions to self-hosted open-source models that can be run at home. Join us as we explore how Large Language Models (LLMs) are reshaping the world as we know it.
Advanced Blazor Components: Patterns for Real-World Apps
Blazor components form the core of modern .NET web applications, and mastering them empowers you to create dynamic, scalable, and maintainable UIs. In this in-depth session, we'll go beyond the basics and explore advanced patterns and techniques that unleash the true potential of Blazor components.
We'll dive into component communication, dependency injection, templated components, and JavaScript interoperability, then explore how to optimize rendering performance, apply CSS isolation, and structure component libraries for reusability across real-world applications.
Whether you're looking to sharpen your existing skills or level up your component architecture, this session will give you practical techniques and real-world patterns that you can start using today. Join us and take your Blazor component skills to the next level!
Rewriting the Dev Workflow: When AI Writes More Than Code
It started innocently enough, letting AI finish a line of code here, a class there, but soon I found myself delegating entire features and experimenting with technologies I had never touched before. What began as small productivity boosts quickly became a full experiment in how far AI could be pushed, from generating scaffolding and tests to building a production‑ready app from scratch.
This session is a personal exploration of how my role as a software creator has evolved alongside AI. Using real examples from my own projects, I will share how experience, discernment, and strong fundamentals remain essential even as AI takes on more responsibility. Attendees will gain insight into how AI can reshape workflows, accelerate learning, and expand the scope of what a developer can accomplish while retaining control and ownership of the software they create.
Blazor Fundamentals: Getting Started with Modern .NET Web Development
Blazor lets .NET developers build interactive, full-featured web applications using C#, bringing modern web development into your existing .NET ecosystem. This session is designed for developers new to Blazor who want a practical, hands-on introduction to the framework.
We’ll walk through setting up your development environment, exploring project structure, and creating your first Blazor app. You’ll learn about render modes, from static server-side rendering to the latest Interactive Auto mode. You’ll also see how to work with forms and manage data effectively. You’ll learn how to leverage the NavigationManager to make routing simple and pass data between pages. Finally, you’ll learn to design reusable components that provide the backbone for robust, maintainable applications.
Along the way, we’ll explore the Blazor component lifecycle, event handling, and performance best practices to help you create responsive and dynamic web applications.
By the end of this session, you’ll be ready to confidently build interactive Blazor applications, understand the key concepts and patterns behind components, and apply practical techniques that set you up for success in modern .NET web development.
Practical RAG: Building a Semantic Memory App
LLMs hallucinate. They forget context. They don't know your data. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) solves this by giving your app context-aware memory, storing information by meaning and retrieving it based on intent.
You'll see how user input is processed through an LLM to categorize, tag, and generate metadata, then converted into embeddings and stored for semantic retrieval. As users interact with the system, their questions are analyzed to determine intent, transformed into targeted semantic queries, and matched against relevant stored content. The retrieved results are then passed back to an LLM to synthesize accurate, context-aware responses.
This talk walks through the full end-to-end workflow: structuring content for effective retrieval, generating embeddings, orchestrating multiple LLM calls, and designing a system that moves beyond simple prompting into intelligent knowledge-driven applications. You'll leave knowing how to build AI applications that actually know your data.
Teaching LLMs New Tricks: Build Your Own MCP Skills
Large language models are powerful, but out of the box they only know what they’ve been trained on. What if you could give an LLM new skills, access to external systems, or specialized domain knowledge, all while retaining control over the logic? That’s where Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers come in. MCP servers let you expose functionality to an LLM, enabling it to perform tasks it couldn’t do natively.
In this session, we’ll explore how to design and build a custom MCP server and integrate it with an LLM. You’ll see how MCP servers can augment AI capabilities, provide structured access to data and tools, and enable developers to safely expand the scope of what LLMs can do. We’ll also discuss best practices for building reusable skills and integrating MCP servers in various scenarios.
Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of how MCP servers can enhance LLM applications, practical strategies for building their own skills, and inspiration for adding controlled, reusable capabilities to AI-driven software.
Brent Stewart
Co-Founder of Alien Arc Technologies
Blue Springs, Missouri, United States
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