Jon Galloway
Principal Program Manager, .NET Community Team
San Diego, California, United States
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Jon is a Program Manager on the Microsoft Developer Division community team. He’s been developing software professionally since the late 1990’s, and over the years has written several books, popular .NET tutorials and samples, a top speaker on Microsoft Virtual Academy, and worked behind the scenes on large Microsoft keynote demonstrations. He’s helped run the Herding Code podcast for 10 years, and tweets as @jongalloway.
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Agentic Development in the Real World: What Works, What Breaks, and What’s Next
Agentic development is transforming how we create software, making it possible to turn ideas into working solutions faster than ever. But does it actually work in real‑world engineering environments? Can we maintain the code, govern the process, and prevent an explosion of code debt as these systems scale?
This keynote balances cutting‑edge demos with practical reality. You'll see how AI‑powered tools and agents are reshaping the development lifecycle - from brainstorming and prototyping to building, testing, and debugging. You’ll learn how organizations, including Microsoft, are accelerating agentic development responsibly, and the patterns that help teams maintain quality, governance, and control.
Whether you’re a developer, IT professional, or technical leader, you’ll leave with a clearer vision of how human creativity and AI can work together to help you build more than ever before - without losing the engineering discipline that makes great software possible.
Building Cloud Native .NET Applications with .NET Aspire
.NET Aspire is a new cloud-native stack for building resilient, observable, and configurable applications with .NET. This presentation will provide an overview of the key features of .NET Aspire and how it can help developers build cloud-native applications with ease. Attendees will learn about the benefits of using .NET Aspire, including its curated set of components that are enhanced for cloud-native development, such as service discovery, telemetry, resilience, and health checks. We will also discuss how to get started with .NET Aspire, including how to use the new .NET Aspire Starter template, which provides a simple and sophisticated local developer experience. Whether you’re a seasoned .NET developer or just getting started with cloud-native development, this presentation will provide valuable insights into the latest trends and best practices in cloud-native development with .NET.
Building a real-world MCP Server with .NET and GitHub Copilot: Lessons Learned
Over the past 6 months, I've built a fully featured MCP Server that wraps the .NET 10 SDK, with a lot of help from GitHub Copilot. It lets you do give commands like "Create a server-side web app and minimal API, orchestrated by .NET Aspire, with unit tests for the API using xunit. Use slnx format for the solution." and get high-quality, repeatable results because it actually executes the correct dotnet CLI commands.
But this isn't just a vibe-coded #yolo experiment - I wanted to really practice building a quality MCP server. I've made over 800 commits and every PR runs over 1000 tests; I've worked to dial in things like MCP conformance tests and support for the latest features in the C# MCP SDK. Along the way I've helped find edge cases in the SDK and gotten a few upstream PRs merged.
I think the two main things you'll get out of this talk are:
- Some deeper technical info on how to build and publish an MCP server, including testing (unit, conformance, release-gate, performance) and full publishing with GitHub actions to NuGet and the MCP Registry.
- Lessons learned on leveraging GitHub Copilot on a one-person project while maintaining high quality through specifications, testing, and workflows.
Practical Uses for AI in Your .NET Apps for Skeptical .NET Developers Who Are Tired of Buzzwords
Tired of AI hype? This session is for you. We'll cut through the nonsense and get real about AI in .NET apps. No fluff, just practical, no-nonsense solutions.
Real-World Examples: See how AI can actually make a difference in .NET apps with features that genuinely improve user experience.
Top AI Tools and Frameworks: Learn how to be productive and flexible with tools like Microsoft Extensions for AI, OpenAI, and GitHub Models.
Live Demos: Watch coding demos that show you how to implement AI features quickly and easily with both cloud and local models.
Debunk AI Myths: Get the honest truth about what AI can and can't do in your projects.
Join us to ditch the buzzwords and discover practical AI solutions that work.
Workshop: Building AI Applications with .NET
Workshop Focus:
Comprehensive hands-on workshop covering generative AI application development in .NET using Microsoft Extensions for AI. Participants will learn to build production-ready AI applications with vector databases, RAG patterns, function calling, and deploy them using .NET Aspire. The workshop includes practical experience with MCP servers, AI orchestration, and enterprise deployment patterns.
Key Learning Objectives:
• Building generative AI applications with Microsoft Extensions for AI
• Implementing vector databases for semantic search and embeddings
• Creating Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) patterns
• Function calling and AI tool integration
• Deploying AI applications with .NET Aspire
• Building and integrating MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers
What's New In .NET 11
.NET 11 ships this November at .NET Conf, and this session gives you a focused, developer‑ready survey of the top features you need to know. In one hour, we’ll cover the improvements that genuinely change how you build, modernize, and ship .NET applications - including new tooling, new language features, runtime upgrades, ASP.NET Core enhancements, AI‑ready capabilities, and major updates in .NET MAUI.
You’ll see the new dotnetup installer in action, explore C# 15’s powerful new union types, learn what’s new in AI‑powered development with MEAI and the Microsoft Agent Framework, and walk through the most important updates in ASP.NET Core, the runtime, MAUI, and EF Core.
In one hour, we’ll cover the features that truly matter for .NET developers:
dotnetup - the new unified installer/updater that simplifies acquiring and managing .NET
C# 15 union types - expressive domain modeling, safer APIs, and better pattern matching
New AI features in MEAI + MAF - improved tool‑calling, richer pipelines, better agent orchestration, and tighter integration with .NET 11 hosting and diagnostics
ASP.NET Core 11 updates - SSR improvements, QuickGrid SSR, validation updates, OpenTelemetry defaults, Zstandard compression, and more
Runtime performance upgrades - GC tuning, JIT enhancements, faster startup, and container‑friendly improvements
.NET MAUI improvements - better performance, improved hot reload, more reliable rendering, updated controls, and smoother mobile development workflows
SDK & tooling updates - dotnet watch improvements including Aspire app‑host integration, automatic crash recovery, and device selection for MAUI/mobile projects
New features in EF Core - performance boosts, new LINQ capabilities, improved interceptors, and tooling updates shipping alongside .NET 11
This session gives you the clear, no‑nonsense survey of the top .NET 11 features you need to be fully ready to evaluate and adopt .NET 11.
Updating Legacy Apps (Yes, Even Web Forms!) to Modern .NET
Modernizing legacy .NET applications has never been faster—or more achievable. In this session, you’ll see how Visual Studio 2026, .NET, and GitHub Copilot work together to streamline the upgrade journey, from initial assessment to a clean, modern codebase.
We’ll explore how Copilot powered upgrade plans, natural language guidance, and AI driven code fixes accelerate migrations while keeping developers firmly in control. You’ll see practical approaches for updating projects, resolving compatibility issues, and adopting modern .NET features with confidence.
We’ll also dig into the tougher challenges that arise in real world modernization efforts: large multi project solutions, older frameworks and libraries, complex technology stacks, and deeply intertwined dependencies. Along the way we’ll highlight patterns and resources that help you navigate these scenarios effectively.
If you're tried these in the past and been a little unimpressed, you'll want to see how they've improved - we'll take the Web Forms Challenge and update a Web Forms to Blazor live!
If you’re looking to upgrade .NET applications with less friction and more clarity, this session provides a focused, practical roadmap for modernizing faster using the latest AI accelerated tooling.
Tokenomics: Writing Better Code with Fewer Tokens in GitHub Copilot
AI helps you ship more code - but every token has a cost. In this session, we’ll look at token‑efficient development with GitHub Copilot: how to use Copilot’s agentic features to write and maintain real-world applications while using fewer tokens.
We’ll explore how Skills, MCPs, and multi‑agent delegation in GitHub Copilot (across VS Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, the Copilot App, and Visual Studio 2026) can reduce the amount of context Copilot needs, cut down on repeated explanations, and make your day‑to‑day coding more efficient. You'll learn how to select the right model for the job to balance cost and performance. Along the way, you’ll see practical patterns for structuring requests, choosing the right Copilot features, and avoiding token‑heavy workflows - so you get more value from Copilot without silently burning through your budget. And you'll get late breaking tips on the newest features in GitHub Copilot built do help you continue to get the most value and performance for your money.
This session gives you a practical tokenomics playbook for using GitHub Copilot to maintain and extend complex applications with fewer tokens and more impact.
DevSum 2024 Sessionize Event
Techorama 2024 Belgium Sessionize Event
.NET Conf 2022 Sessionize Event
Techorama 2022 BE Sessionize Event
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NDC Oslo 2021 Sessionize Event
Techorama Belgium 2019 Sessionize Event
NDC London 2019 Sessionize Event
NDC Sydney 2018 Sessionize Event
Jon Galloway
Principal Program Manager, .NET Community Team
San Diego, California, United States
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