Paul Litwin's Blog

I invite you to submit abstracts for the Spring 2008 Microsoft ASP.NET Connections conference, to be held in Orlando, April 20-24th. Abstracs are due by Oct 26th, 2008.

The conference will take place shortly after the VS 2008 release, and will focus on the tools and techniques for using ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 (which should be released by the end of this year).

The conference will focus on the new release, including:

- ASP.NET AJAX and the Toolkit

- Silverlight

- Linq and data access

- Web services

- etc.

While the majority of content should focus on the new release, we are reserving about 1/4 of the content for talks that cover ASP.NET 2.0/VS 2005.

For submitting session, please use this URL:

http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts

Abstracts will NOT be accepted by any other means. You must use the above url!

Note: if you have used the abstract submission site before and have forgotten your password, you can have your secret word mailed to you. It's better to do this then to create a new account.

Please keep the abstracts under 200 words each and in one paragraph. No bulleted items and line breaks, and please use a spell-checker.

If you have an issue with the site, please let me know right away.

Please submit a minimum of 3 abstracts, but it would help your chances of being selected if you submitted 5 or 6 abstracts. We need to have all your abstracts by October 26th. If you miss this deadline, you will virtually ensure that you will NOT be selected.

What you will get if selected:

$500 per conference talk. (Additional compensation for pre/post conference workshops.) Coach airfare and hotel stay paid by the conference.

Finally, please read the following from DevConnections President Shirley about competing conferences:

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I would like to thank each and every one of our Connections speakers for helping us make this event so successful. Last year in Vegas we had just over 4,700 attendees; we hope to do that or better this fall. By the end of September we had over 3,000 registrations for our Fall show.

A successful show happens when you have a combination of things come together: great speakers, good venue, great partners, fun events, and ongoing relationship building. I hope we can all continue to work together to make Connections the very best event outside of Tech Ed, for years to come. As a more successful show, our competitors are trying to compete by moving their shows closer to our dates and in some cases, to the same cities.

It’s very disheartening for me to see our speakers presenting similar topics at competing shows that are scheduled so close to our own shows. So I want to make a small change in how we handle speakers. Essentially, I don’t want to schedule a speaker at a Connections show who is also presenting at one of our competitor’s shows, in the same state, within 30 days of a Connections show. Many of you have known me for years and you know that I would never discourage a speaker from doing something that is good for his/her career and company. I have never asked a speaker not to speak for a competitor and I am NOT saying that now. I am saying that if another show sits within 30 days of ours in the same state, that the speaker should choose to speak at one or the other conference, but not both. If for whatever reason a speaker does not choose Connections during that time period, there will NOT be hard feelings and they can speak for one of our shows at another time.

I want Connections conferences to be different and unique in the minds of our attendees, our sponsors, and our speakers. I have given this a lot of thought and I think the best way to produce our Connections shows is not to have any of our speakers presenting at our show and at a competitor’s show a few weeks earlier or later in the same place.

Shirley.

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Thanks,

Paul Litwin

Microsoft ASP.NET Connections Chair