Building Enterprise Blazor Apps Using CSLA .NET

Blazor is one of the most powerful UI technologies available today, allowing you to write apps that run on a web server, or directly on client devices in any modern browser by using WebAssembly.

An enterprise app probably calls back-end services and needs to interact with app servers. Some or all of your business logic may run on the client, the app server, or both. That's ideal for the balance between user interactivity, performance, scalability, and security. The widely-used open source CSLA .NET framework helps you create a reusable, scalable, and cross-platform portable business layer that lets your application run on multiple types of client devices while sharing business logic between the clients and your app server. This session is an end-to-end walkthrough of how this works and how you can benefit.

Learning points:
1. Learn how Blazor can be used to build end-user experiences for the enterprise
2. Learn how CSLA .NET helps you develop maintainable, reusable, cross-platform business logic
3. Learn how to leverage your business logic on the server with Linux containers

Deep Dive: Microsoft Blazor Zero to Success

Blazor is a UI framework that enables you to build powerful web apps using HTML, CSS, and C#. You can host an app on a web server, or run the app on the client device in any modern browser. The Blazor UI framework is very capable, and provides a powerful UI component model, data binding, routing, authorization, and many other features necessary to build a modern app.

Learning points:
1. Learn how Blazor, WebAssembly, and .NET combine to enable this app platform
2. Learn how to build server-side Blazor and Blazor WebAssembly apps
3. Learn how to use Blazor UI framework features such as UI components, data binding, routing, and authorization

Workshop: Microsoft Blazor Top to Bottom

Blazor (Browser + Razor) has redefined the current landscape for web developers, allowing C# and .NET back into the modern web development picture. Leveraging WebAssembly to allow running .NET code in the browser, we can use the same C# language on the client and the server to build our modern web applications. At the core of Blazor is the ability to compose our web application using reusable components just like the modern browser frameworks.

Join experts in Blazor, WebAssembly, and enterprise development as they discuss why and when to use Blazor. They will give you everything you need to know to build Blazor apps, use the Razor component model, data and event binding, styling the UI, and building maintainable code. You will learn about Blazor server, WebAssembly, and MAUI hybrid apps, and how to implement authentication and authorization. WebAssembly and Blazor are incredibly powerful technologies and may be the future of web development. Come to this workshop to form your own view on this exciting platform.

Co-present with Allen Conway and Jason Bock.

Blazor Authentication and Authorization

Most web and native apps require some form of authentication to allow users access to the app. And they use authorization to change the app's behavior based on the user's roles and claims.

Learn how to implement Blazor authentication on the server, in WebAssembly, and in a MAUI Hybrid app. Then learn how to use the current user's identity to authorize access to pages, components, and UI elements in your Blazor apps.

Workshop: Building Blazor Applications

Blazor is a modern .NET application framework, primarily used to build web applications. Since its release in 2020, it has evolved with new features and capabilities, enabling developers with the ability to produce high-quality applications for their uses. In this workshop, we’ll cover numerous features that Blazor brings to the table. We’ll discuss different hosting models and how you can use them to your advantage. At the end of the workshop, you’ll leave with a comprehensive understanding of the Blazor landscape.

ℹ️ This is a lecture-based workshop, not a hands-on lab

You will learn:

1. How to leverage Blazor on the server, in the browser, and on mobile devices
2. How to effectively use the Blazor UI component model to build maintainable apps
3. How Blazor fits into an overall app architecture, including authentication, authorization, data access, and more

Co-presented with Allen Conway and Jason Bock

Build an MCP Server in C#

Does your AI seem to miss important details about your business, technology stack, or other "obvious" information?

One solution is to have your AI use an MCP server that provides that information on-demand, so you get the results you are looking for via chat, coding in agent mode, or in other settings.

Join me as I walk through the process of building an MCP server in C# and .NET, including vector encoding your data, using a hybrid search approach, exposing and testing the MCP endpoint, and more.

Learning objectives:

1. Learn how to build and test an MCP endpoint
2. Learn how to implement hybrid search over a set of data
3. Learn how to package and deploy an MCP server

Building Collaborative Agents with Microsoft Agent Framework

The Microsoft Agent Framework replaces the Semantic Kernel and AutoGen projects, providing a unified way to build AI agents and agent workflows.

Combine the Agent Framework with a queued messaging model, and you can create systems of agents that collaborate with each other, allowing you to build highly focused agents that work together to solve more complex problems.

In this session you will learn:

1. How to use the Microsoft Agent Framework in .NET
2. How to build multiple agents that communicate via queued messaging
3. How to orchestrate a workflow using multiple agents to achieve a goal

MCP Magic

AI agents can't do much without tools. One of the best ways to give your agent a tool is through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

In this session you will learn how to implement MCP servers in C#, including servers that intelligently return information, take actions for an agent, and more.

The result is that your AI agent, plus MCP, can seem like it is performing magic on your behalf!

Learning objectives:
1. How to build an MCP server in C#
2. How to register MCP servers with agents
3. How to centralize management and metadata about your MCP servers

Agentic Architecture in Practice: Harness, LLM, Directives

An agent is not just an LLM with tools bolted on. In practice, it’s the combination of three things: a harness that controls execution, an LLM that reasons and generates, and directives that shape behavior. This talk uses RockBot as a concrete example of that architecture and shows how the pieces fit together in a real system. From there, we’ll look at what becomes possible once the core is solid: memory that preserves context, skills that package repeatable behavior, self-learning and skill evolution that improve the system over time, and integration layers like MCP and A2A that let agents reach tools and collaborate with other agents. The point is to move from abstract “agent” talk to a working model for how agentic systems are actually designed, governed, and extended.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) version 2

Building agentic systems relies heavily on MCP servers. Version 2 of MCP includes important and substantial changes that enhance how we build and use MCP servers. In this talk you will learn about the new version 2 capabilities and how to use them to build powerful MCP servers, and use them from your agents.

Use AI to Manage Your Cloud Dev Environment

AI isn't only for building code. It turns out that AI tools like Claude Code can be incredibly useful for troubleshooting, configuring, and setting up your cloud infrastructure: Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, etc.

Join Rocky for this 20 minute talk on why and how you might use AI for this purpose, including the pros and cons of letting AI loose in your infrastructure.

Learning objectives:

1. Using AI to manage Azure, AWS, k8s
2. Mitigating risks when using AI in your infrastructure
3. Practical limitations of using AI in cloud environments

Workshop: Building AI Apps With .NET, GitHub, Copilot, and Claude

In this full-day lecture-based workshop, you will learn how to integrate AI into your .NET apps. The focus is less on using AI _for development_, and more on using AI _within your app_ for your end users.

This includes the use of AI-focused NuGet packages to build your app, how to build and consume MCP servers, use the A2A (agent-to-agent) protocol, leveraging existing APIs

Learning objectives:

1. How to use AI to build your app
2. How to integrate AI into your app
3. How to create and use MCP servers, A2A, and other AI protocols and standards

Building Your Own Agent Harness

An AI "agent" isn't just the model (LLM), it is also the code that interacts with the user, the environment, and the LLM: the harness.

We use harnesses every day: GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, ChatGPT, etc.

When you build apps that _integrate_ AI, you will probably write your own harness code that calls the LLM when appropriate.

In this session you will learn how to create a robust harness that includes user interaction, cross-app interaction, long-term memory, skills, tool calling, and other behaviors a harness might implement.

Learning objectives:

1. What is a harness and what might it do?
2. How to manage user interaction and LLM "turns"
3. Leveraging the environment for memory, skills, calling external services

Using AI (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) for the Rest of Your Job

As developers we often focus on using AI to help build and test code, infrastructure, and other technical aspects of our jobs.

It turns out that AI can be incredibly useful for the rest of our jobs too! From managing meetings and notes, to creating documents and presentations, to helping to coordinate complex scheduling, to learning new skills and doing research, AI is a powerful tool for almost everything.

Learning objectives:

1. Using AI for the rest of your job
2. Teaching AI to work the way you work
3. Optimizing AI tooling for your environment