Does the sight of an async or await keyword fill you with terror? Perhaps you're using async/await in your code but you’re not sure why? Maybe you find the idea of thread management just too Task-ing? (If you don’t get that joke, come to this talk and you will).

Asynchronous programming has been a first class citizen in .NET for over a decade now, it’s especially important for ASP.NET websites, like Umbraco, and is a concept that all web developers need to get to grips with. But, I still hear developers talk about async/await in C# with suspicion and express confusion over what it's doing, and why.

In this talk we’re going to look at what async/await is actually doing, with some fun practical demonstrations. We'll also experience the difference that async/await makes to performance by debugging and refactoring a live ASP.NET application (and, with your help, trying to DDoS my laptop live on stage).

Once the fun's over you'll come away with a clear understanding of what async/await is doing, why it makes such a huge difference to the performance and sustainability of your web application, and why you should "Async all the things"*.

*Apart from that one weird example, where you really shouldn't... we'll talk about that too.