.NET Campsight v2

Last week we held our second .NET Campsight - Server Editionin Redmond. The students were great - advanced - plugged into distributed development and interesting projects. It made for a full week of engaging discussions focused on the pragmatics of "what really works". We made several changes to the course this time given the feedback from v1. First, we added much more BizTalk Server 2004 content - about a day`s worth total. Most of the students had never played with BTS in much detail but wonder about its value-add in large distributed systems. So our goal with the BTS coverage is to give them enough hands-on to gain that thorough understanding in a constrained timeframe. So during the course they experience using most of the BTS development tools byauthoring several orchestrations, deploying and debugging, and integrating the orchestrations with an SO environment - it seemed to hit the mark. At the end of the BizTalk day, Michael Woods from the BTS team gave them a sneak peak at how BizTalk will integrate with Indigo (with running demos) along with guidance on how to prepare today.Another major change was improved content on ASP.NET 2.0, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Smart Clients, Smart Documents, and VSTO. Our goal was to provide complete coverage of the various user interface options throughout the .NET landscape, comparing and contrasting the pros and cons, along with guidance on what makes the most sense in different scenarios. We hit on all the new Whidbey features showcasing the productivity improvements. One of the more advanced topics we added was a lecture on Asynchrony within distributed systems. It hones in on when to use asynchrony within your ASP.NET and ASMX infrastructure, and showcases Whidbey enhancements. Made for very interesting discussions.Again these were the biggest changes from v1. You can check out the complete course description here.We were pleased to have several guest speakers from Microsoft again. We typically hold these as "after hours" sessions focusing primarily on future technologies and migration. This week we heard from Mark Fussell (WSE 3.0), Michael Woods (BizTalk Server 2004), Alex Torone (Visual Studio Team Systems, DSL/SDM, Whitehorse), Shai Kariv (IIS7), Don Box (Indigo). They added tremendous value to the students and we thank them for helping out.The most significant non-technical change was location. This time we held the course at the Redmond Town Center, which everyone loved. Everything is within walking distance. Everything. You don`t need a rental car, yet there`s no lack of excellent food, movies, shopping, Starbucks/Tully`s, etc. And the hotel rocks. Nice beds, good food, service. Overall it was a great week - check out student comments here - we`re looking forward to the next one. Hope some of you can join us.