From Chaos to Clarity: Transforming a Troubled Application into a Model of Excellence

Applications riddled with errors, inefficiencies, and poor support can frustrate users and drain resources. But what if that struggling application could be transformed into an example of reliability, scalability, and performance? This talk will walk you through the journey of revitalizing a flawed application—tackling performance bottlenecks, eliminating critical errors, and implementing best practices for sustainable development and support.

Beyond technical improvements, the success of any application transformation hinges on people—leaders who inspire, teams who collaborate, and a culture that embraces growth and accountability. We'll talk about strategies for fostering an engineering culture built on trust, knowledge-sharing, and continuous improvement. How do you rally a team around a shared vision for excellence? What leadership principles encourage ownership and innovation? From communication tactics to empowerment strategies, we’ll explore how to lead teams through change and build a support ecosystem that doesn’t just fix problems but prevents them.

Attendees will gain insights into identifying root causes of instability, adopting robust architectural principles, and fostering a proactive support culture. We'll discuss real-world strategies for refactoring code, optimizing infrastructure, and building a resilient operational framework that ensures ongoing success. Whether you're facing technical debt, unpredictable outages, or a lack of documentation, this session will provide practical guidance to shift your application from liability to legacy.

By the end of this talk, developers, architects, and IT professionals will walk away with actionable approaches to rescue troubled applications and elevate them to the standard of excellence every system should strive for—driven by strong leadership and an empowered, engaged team.

Resources for the Modern Learner

The modern learner faces a plethora of learning resources, from online courses and podcasts to blogs and books. How can they navigate this abundance of information and choose the best resources for their needs? How can they assess the quality, credibility, and relevance of the resources they encounter? And how can they use them effectively to achieve their learning goals? In this session, we will explore these questions and provide practical tips and tools for finding, evaluating, and using learning resources in the digital age. We will also discuss some of the challenges and opportunities that the modern learner faces, such as information overload, fake news, personalized learning, and lifelong learning. Whether you are a student, a professional or a lifelong learner, this session will help you make the most of the learning resources available to you.

Using Azure Key Vault to Protect Your Application Secrets

In an era where data breaches and cyber threats are increasingly prevalent, securing sensitive information in your applications is paramount. Azure Key Vault provides a solution for managing and safeguarding cryptographic keys, secrets, and certificates, making it an essential tool for enhancing the security of your .NET applications.

This technical session will offer a deep dive into how to use Azure Key Vault to secure your .NET applications. Key topics covered will include:

* Introduction to Azure Key Vault: Overview of Azure Key Vault's capabilities and its role in securing application secrets.
* Integrating Azure Key Vault with .NET: Step-by-step guide on integrating Azure Key Vault with .NET applications, including setting up the Key Vault, configuring access policies, and using the Azure Key Vault SDK.
* Managing Secrets: Techniques for securely storing and retrieving application secrets, such as connection strings, API keys, and other sensitive information, using Azure Key Vault.
* Key Management: Best practices for generating, storing, and using cryptographic keys for encryption, decryption, and digital signatures in your .NET applications.
* Certificate Management: Utilizing Azure Key Vault for managing SSL/TLS certificates, including automated certificate renewal and rotation.
* Access Control and Monitoring: Implementing fine-grained access control using Azure Active Directory (AAD) and auditing access and usage logs for security monitoring and compliance.

Attendees will leave with a comprehensive understanding of how to leverage Azure Key Vault to enhance the security of their .NET applications. Code examples and best practices will be shared to help you implement secure and robust application secrets management.

Join us to learn how Azure Key Vault can be a game-changer in securing your .NET applications and protecting sensitive data.

Write Uno Time, Run Everywhere with the Uno Platform

C# brings you the power to write apps on any platform, like Windows, Linux, and macOS. However, when it comes to building an application with a user interface, you usually must resort to the lowest common denominator, JavaScript, or multiple tools like Xamarin, Blazor, etc. Now you have a new option to build pixel-perfect user interfaces using C# and Windows Xaml. That option is the Uno Platform. The Uno Platform allows you to write your application in .NET C# and XAML using a single-codebase and execute it everywhere .NET runs – iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, and Web (via WebAssembly). Oh, I forgot to mention, the Uno Platform is free and open source. You can use the existing controls ecosystem with it.

In this talk, I'll walk you through getting started with development on the Uno Platform. We'll start with setting up the development machine and start coding. Once the environment is set up, I'll use the platform to build an application that interacts with an existing Contact API to list, add, delete, and update contacts.

At the end of this talk, you will know to develop an application that calls an API and provides a consistent, platform-specific user interface.

Scale It!

Azure provides scalable, durable cloud storage, backup, and recovery solutions for any data, large and small. We will take a look at some components/services of Azure to help us make our application more scalable. We’ll cover Blob Storage, Table, Storage, Queues, Application Insights, Web Jobs, and Azure Functions.

Migrate it!

Technology is constantly changing. Lately, it's been changing fast. Microsoft has shown the road map for .NET, which has major version releases every year. If you are like me, you have a few applications around running on .NET Framework but not sure how to "upgrade", "port", or "migrate" to .NET. That's where this session comes in.

In this talk, we'll work on "upgrading", "porting", "migrating" an ASP.NET 4.5 framework application that uses Web Forms to a modern ASP.NET Core MVC application. While migrating the application, we'll explore some of the gotchas, some of the things you should watch out for, some of the new features of .NET, and more.

After this talk, you will be better equipped to tackle that application migration, assuming you get budget and priority approval :)

Open-Source for All

Contributing to and using open-source software is a valuable practice for students, hobbyists, and professionals in various technology fields. Open-source software offers many benefits, such as transparency, reproducibility, collaboration, and innovation. However, contributing to and using open-source software also poses some challenges, such as quality assurance, documentation, licensing, and sustainability. In this session, we present an overview of the current state of open-source software and discuss some best practices and recommendations for both contributors and users. I will also highlight some of the opportunities and future directions for open-source software development and adoption.

Protecting a .NET API with Microsoft Identity Platform (Microsoft Entra)

Microsoft Identity Web is a library that contains a set of reusable classes used in conjunction with ASP.NET Core for integrating with the Microsoft identity platform (formerly Azure AD v2.0 endpoint) and Microsoft Entra (formally Azure Active Directory B2C).

In this session, we'll configure Azure, our API, and clients to protect your APIs. We'll walk through the following:

Setting up Microsoft Entra (formally Azure Active Directory) tenant with the necessary 'application' registrations to use the power of Azure and Microsoft Account logins to secure your API and applications.
Add authentication and authorization to your API
Add authentication and clients.

At the end of the session, you'll want to go and add authentication and authorization to your APIs.

Building a Talk for an Event

Building a talk or session or presentation for an event, whether it's your team at work, a user group, a small or sizeable in-person conference, or a virtual event, which is engaging and effective takes work and preparation.

* How are you going to create the content for the talk?
* What do you need to do to prepare?
* What do you do during the event?
* What happens if someone asks me a question, I do not know the answer to it?
* What should I do after the talk?

There is a lot the goes into preparing for a conference talk, session, or presentation. I'll walk you through the steps I take to prepare for a talk, from the initial idea to the final delivery.

We'll cover:

* Idea generation
* Research and content creation
* Crafting the Narrative
* Slide design
* Practice and Rehearsal
* Delivery Techniques and Engagement

Attendees will leave with a deep understanding of the entire process of building a successful conference presentation, from the initial idea to the final delivery. Real-world examples and case studies will be shared, highlighting common challenges and offering practical solutions.

Details, slide deck, and previous times this was presented are available at https://www.josephguadagno.net/presentations/presentation-preparedness.

A Lap Around Microsoft Azure

Azure has a lot to offer us as developers. Companies often look to move to the cloud for enhanced security, flexibility, and scalability. Looking at the product list in Azure can be daunting at times. In this session, we will look at how we can take an on-premises ASP.NET Core application that uses SQL Server and host it in Microsoft Azure.

In this session, we'll cover:

* Preparing the on-premises ASP.NET Core application for migration
* Selecting the appropriate Azure services and resources
* Configuring and optimizing Azure environments to meet application requirements
* Implementing best practices for a seamless migration process
* Addressing common challenges and troubleshooting issues encountered during migration
* Monitoring and maintaining the Azure-hosted application

At the end of the talk, we will have taken the on-premises application and moved it to the cloud with only a few clicks and some knowledge.

Debugging Tips and Tricks with JetBrains Rider

Debugging issues within applications are challenging! In this session, I'll how debugging works and demonstrate the many ways that JetBrains Rider enables you to find those annoying issues. I'll explain the run/debug configurations. What application breakpoints are and to make them conditional, or how you can skip breakpoints altogether. While we are in a breakpoint, we'll explore the many ways to navigate through the code but skipping lines, running to line, jumping in, and using methods. Once we find an issue, we'll look at how we can inspect the values in memory and even change them.

At the end of the session, you'll walk away with a lot of knowledge to help you find those annoying issues in your applications. As a bonus, you'll walk away with a little debugging secret.

Build Native Applications with JavaScript and React Native

React Native lets you build mobile apps using only JavaScript. It uses the same design as React, letting you compose a rich mobile UI from declarative components.

With React Native, you don’t build a “mobile web app,” an “HTML5 app”, or a “hybrid app.” You create a real mobile app that’s indistinguishable from an app built using Objective-C or Java. React Native uses the same fundamental UI building blocks as regular iOS and Android apps. You just put those building blocks together using JavaScript and React.

Typescript for the Microsoft Developer

Whether you like it or not, if you are building applications for the Web, you will need to know JavaScript. Sorry, Flash and Silverlight! Unfortunately, JavaScript is not the most straightforward language to learn or understand, and the tooling for it is not good. This is where TypeScript comes in. TypeScript is a superset to JavaScript that tries to solve many of these problems and make the code more structured and less error-prone. And it also offers tooling support in a way that JavaScript just can’t.

Debugging Tips and Tricks with Visual Studio

Debugging issues within applications are challenging! In this session, I'll how debugging works and demonstrate the many ways that JetBrains Rider enables you to find those annoying issues. I'll explain the run/debug configurations. What application breakpoints are and to make them conditional, or how you can skip breakpoints altogether. While we are in a breakpoint, we'll explore the many ways to navigate through the code but skipping lines, running to line, jumping in, and using methods. Once we find an issue, we'll look at how we can inspect the values in memory and even change them.

At the end of the session, you'll walk away with a lot of knowledge to help you find those annoying issues in your applications. As a bonus, you'll walk away with a little debugging secret.

What's Happening in My App?

Azure Application Insights, part of the Azure Monitor services, helps you collect, analyze, and act on telemetry data from your Azure and on-premises environment.

Let's see how you can get alerts on performance and availability issues, monitor our applications' usage and performance, get telemetry for our application without redeploying the applications, search traces, and exception logs to figure out what is wrong. Did I mention we can monitor Android, iOS, Windows Mobile applications, and ASP.NET applications?

We'll also look at how we can analyze request load, server performance counters, and response times across dependencies. Get multi-dimensional analyzes over standard metrics or define your own. Diagnose exceptions, mobile application crashes, and failed requests, correlating with events and traces.

Write Once, Run Everywhere

The open source Ionic Framework features a rich library of front-end building blocks and UI components that make it easy to design beautiful, high-performance mobile and Progressive Web Apps (or PWAs) using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Their universal web components pair with any JavaScript framework, including Angular, React, Vue, or no framework at all (just add a script tag!). Ionic apps are backend agnostic, with connections to AWS, Azure, and Firebase.

With this session, we are going to look at how with using the Ionic Framework you can build an application that you write once and run on any device, iOS, Android, UWA, Browser, and desktop.

Build and Ship It!

If you are like me, you have many libraries, helpers, utilities that you have built over time that you use for multiple projects. You've thought about publishing them to NuGet so you can share them with other projects or your team but didn't because they contain secrets, intellectual property, or aren't well documented. With Azure DevOps, you can set up an Azure DevOps Artifact repository, private to you or your team, to securely store your packages and make them available to other projects and teams.

In this talk, we'll take a small .NET library, and it doesn't just work with .NET, and build an Azure DevOps Pipeline to publish it in our Artifact directory. With this pipeline, we will build the library, execute unit tests, sign the code using a Code Signing certificate, and deploy it to our Artifact repository.

And at the end of the talk, you'll have a pipeline that you can add to the library, utility, and helper packages with some minor tweaks, when you are ready, to NuGet.

Application Architecture Patterns

Architecting an application can be challenging. What do you do to keep your application flexible to ever-constant requirement changes? How do you handle landscape changes (cloud, on-premises, databases)? How do you avoid over-engineering the application? How do I make sure my application plays well with other applications?

In this session, we'll take a look at some well-understood and practiced Software Architecture patterns. We'll cover these patterns at a high level to understand how to use these patterns in different scenarios.

You'll walk away with some knowledge, tips, and tricks that you'll be able to use for new and existing applications.

Powerpoints, video, and source code, if any, are available at https://www.josephguadagno.net/presentations/application-architecture-patterns

Communication is Hard. Make it better with Azure Communication Services.

We live in a connected world, and we are constantly communicating with people via text, phone, video, chat, and more. Azure Communication Services offers a robust suite of APIs for integrating voice, video, chat, SMS, and email into applications, enabling developers to build powerful, cloud-based communication solutions.

In this talk, we will look at how Azure Communication Services can enable you and your applications to connect people across web and mobile apps. You can add communications workflows to applications with flexible SDKs and APIs for common platforms and languages, including iOS, Android, Web, .NET, and JavaScript.

I'll show you how to build a chat application, and an SMS application using Azure Communication Services. We'll also look at how to build a UI library to make it easier to integrate Azure Communication Services into your applications.

Attendees will leave with an understanding of how Azure Communication Services can be used to enhance their applications and improve user engagement.

Scaling Your .NET Application Using Azure

Azure provides a lot of services! Azure provides scalable, durable cloud storage, backup, and recovery solutions for any data, large and small. Azure also provides compute services like App Service to create applications in the code, and Azure Functions to build event-driven "server-less" code with ease. Azure can easily work with the infrastructure and application you already have to enhance your existing applications and business continuity strategy cost-effectively.

In this talk, let's take a look at how we can take an existing .NET application and leverage some of Azure's services to improve the reliability, scalability, and performance of our application. We'll introduce some key and common Azure services like Azure Functions, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Table Storage, Azure Queues, and more. We'll even add some application monitoring and telemetry to that application using Azure Monitor Application Insights so you can see how the application is performing and being used.

By the end of this talk, you'll be exposed to some of the most common... and simplest ways... to make your application reliable, scalable, and performant.

Building and Deploying a New Cloud App from Scratch

In this workshop, we are going to build and deploy a modern cloud application from scratch! Using Visual Studio and Azure you will learn how to build a modern application from the ground up and deploy it to the cloud using the latest techniques. We will look at best practices in designing and building the application, testing your code, and deploying the application so you are set up for success later. After this workshop, you will have an established pattern to follow for future applications and in case you need to change the infrastructure of your application

What We will Cover
• Introduction to the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) – Visual Studio
• C# Programming Language
• CSS? HTML?
• Nuget Packages
• Application Development
o Designing Models
o Building the Business (Manager) Layer
o Building the Data Layer
 SQL Server
 Entity Framework
o User Secrets
• Unit Testing the Application
o XUnit
• Web Development
o Creating a REST API
o Documenting the REST API (Swagger)
o Creating a Web Client (ASP.NET Core MVC)
 Bootstrap (mention other clients like Angular, Vue, React, Blazor)
• Deploying the Application
o Pushing the source code to Git
o Create the Azure Infrastructure
 Application Service
 SQL Server
o Create the GitHub Action to Deploy
• Monitoring the Application
o Azure Monitor Application Insights
o Logging (SeriLog)

Target Audience
This workshop is geared toward individuals just getting started with Microsoft .NET and/or looking to design applications that can easily be changed and/or deployed to Azure. Attendees should have experience in at least one programming language and an understanding of basic web programming paradigms.
Requirements:
• Visual Studio or JetBrains Rider
• SQL Server (Developer Edition or LocalDB)
• Azure Account

Dev Containers. What are they and why do you need them?

You're onboarding a new team member, or your team recently inherited a project that uses a different SDK/framework version than your current project uses. What do you do? Install the old SDK/framework versions? Can they even be installed at the same time on the same machine? What if I told you there was a way to accomplish this with little to no effort on your part? Well, with Visual Studio Code, Docker, and the Dev Containers extension, you can. Dev containers can help you easily on-board new people to your projects, allow for cleaner machines with greater support for multiple SDKs/Framework, and be able to develop/debug/run your solution from anywhere without Visual Studio Code. Oh, and put an end to "It works on my machine"

In this talk, I’ll walk through how you can set up a dev container to support your application development, without installing the SDK/framework on your machine. I’ll show you how to get started and how you can solve the age-old problem of “It works on my machine!”. As a bonus, if your code is hosted on GitHub, I’ll show you how you can run/edit/debug your project right from GitHub.com without Visual Studio Code on your machine.

Monitoring and Troubleshooting Azure Applications with Azure Application Insights

Azure Application Insights is a service that enables you to collect, analyze, and act on telemetry data from your Azure and on-premises applications. In this session, you will learn how to use Azure Application Insights to:

- Set up alerts on performance and availability issues
- Track application usage and performance metrics
- Instrument your application code without redeployment
- Search traces and exception logs to diagnose errors
- Monitor mobile applications across different platforms
- Analyze request load, server performance counters, and response times across dependencies
- Define custom metrics and perform multi-dimensional analysis
- Correlate exceptions, mobile application crashes, and failed requests with events and traces

You will also see how Azure Application Insights integrates with other Azure Monitor services to provide a comprehensive monitoring solution for your applications. This session will help you improve your application quality, reliability, and user satisfaction with Azure Application Insights.

.NET Workshop with Hands-On API Building

Join us for an all-day workshop where you will learn about the latest features and enhancements in .NET, ASP.NET Core, and Visual Studio. You will discover:

- What’s New in .NET
- ASP.NET Core Fundamentals
- Building Web Apps with ASP.NET Core
- Building Web APIs with ASP.NET Core
- Hands on Lab - Creating a RESTful API with ASP.NET Core with a database
- Debug your code efficiently with Visual Studio, using breakpoints, watch windows, and diagnostic tools

This workshop will help you master the skills and tools you need to create high-quality web applications. You will also have the opportunity to ask questions and get feedback from the instructor.

Target Audience
This workshop is geared toward individuals getting started with ASP.NET Core or not familiar with how modern ASP.NET Core works. Attendees should have experience with .NET and an understanding of basic web programming paradigms.

Requirements
- Visual Studio or JetBrains Rider
- .NET 6 or later, 8 is preferred
- .NET Workload of ASP.NET and web development
- git client
- A working internet connection
- Ability to install software on your machine

AI for Business Leaders and Product Managers

for business leaders and product managers, understanding AI’s potential and practical applications can be daunting. This session aims to demystify AI, providing a comprehensive introduction tailored to those at the helm of business strategy and product development.

We will explore the fundamental concepts of AI, including machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, and discuss how these technologies can be leveraged to drive innovation and efficiency. Through real-world case studies, we will illustrate successful AI implementations across various sectors, highlighting the tangible benefits and challenges encountered.

Attendees will gain insights into:

* The core principles and types of AI technologies.
* How to identify and prioritize AI opportunities within your organizations.
* Best practices for integrating AI into existing business processes and product roadmaps.
* Key considerations for managing AI projects, including ethical implications and data governance.

Join us to unlock the potential of AI and learn how to harness its power to propel your business forward.

Build, Package, Sign, and Publish a .NET Library to NuGet

In the modern development landscape, the use of NuGet packages has become a staple for code sharing and reuse in the .NET ecosystem. This session will provide a detailed exploration of the end-to-end process of building, packaging, and signing NuGet packages.

The session will cover the following key topics:

- **Building NuGet Packages**: Let's see how you can structure your project for NuGet packaging, including best practices for project organization, creating reusable libraries, and incorporating necessary metadata.
- **Packaging with NuGet**: Step-by-step instructions on creating NuGet packages using tools like the .NET CLI and Visual Studio. We will discuss the intricacies of defining package dependencies, versioning strategies, and including relevant documentation and assets.
- **Signing NuGet Packages**: Techniques for digitally signing NuGet packages to ensure authenticity and integrity. We will explore certificate management, obtaining and using code-signing certificates, and automating the signing process in CI/CD pipelines.
- **Publishing NuGet Packages**: Methods for publishing packages to public and private NuGet repositories, managing package visibility, and maintaining version history. We will also cover the setup and use of Azure Artifacts for managing package feeds.

Attendees will see how we can do all this with hands-on demonstrations, showcasing effective strategies for building, packaging, and signing NuGet packages.

This talk is tailored for .NET developers, DevOps engineers, and software architects who are looking to optimize their use of NuGet packages and improve the security and reliability of their code distribution. Participants will leave with actionable knowledge and best practices to elevate their development workflows.

Learn New Programming Languages with Developer Containers in VS Code

Learning new programming languages can be a daunting task, especially when setting up and managing different development environments. DevContainers, a feature of Visual Studio Code, offers a solution to streamline this process. By providing isolated, reproducible, and consistent development environments, DevContainers enable developers to focus on learning and coding rather than configuration.

This technical session will explore how to leverage DevContainers to enhance your language learning journey. Key topics covered will include:

* **Introduction to DevContainers**: Understanding the concept and benefits of DevContainers, and how they simplify the development setup.
* **Setting Up DevContainers**: Step-by-step guide to creating and configuring DevContainers for various programming languages using Visual Studio Code.
* **Isolated Environments**: Utilizing isolated environments to avoid conflicts between different language setups and dependencies.
* **Language-Specific Tooling**: Configuring DevContainers with language-specific tools, libraries, and frameworks to create optimized learning environments.
* **Real-World Examples**: Demonstrating the setup and use of DevContainers for popular programming languages such as .NET, Ruby, and SQL Server.

Attendees will gain insights into how DevContainers can simplify the process of learning new programming languages, providing a hassle-free, productive, and enjoyable experience. Real-world examples and hands-on demonstrations will be provided to illustrate the power and flexibility of DevContainers.

This session is designed for developers, educators, and learners who want to expand their programming skills. Join us to discover how DevContainers can transform your approach to learning new programming languages.

Our Cloud Adventure: Moving from Data Centers to Azure

Join me as I share our journey of transitioning to Azure from on-premises data centers. This transition presented not only technical challenges as well as a paradigm shift in our way of working.

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace. To keep up, many organizations are moving from traditional data centers to the cloud. Our organization embarked on a significant journey to migrate our systems and data to Microsoft Azure.

In this session, we'll discuss the importance of training programs in preparing our team for the shift. We'll explore the process of evaluating existing resources, managing applications in the cloud, and fostering a culture of continuous learning. We'll share how effective team communication became paramount, as did working with external consultants to bring in extra hands. We faced the dual challenge of setting reasonable versus unreasonable expectations while ensuring the protection of data access, security, and integrity throughout the migration process.

Licensing issues had to be navigated carefully, and we restructured our architecture to become larger, thus enhancing resiliency. The shift to a cloud-based infrastructure meant we had much more to monitor and alert on, highlighting the importance of identifying the weakest links in our system.

Part of our process involved finding areas susceptible to hacking, whether through people, accounts, or network vulnerabilities. In this talk, we will share our experiences, the lessons learned, and the new way of working that has emerged from our migration to Azure.

Overall, we'll explore the challenges we faced, the lessons we learned, and the benefits we gained from this transformation. If you're considering a move to the cloud, this session will provide valuable insights and practical tips to help you successfully navigate the transition.