Here are ten eleven sessions from PDC09 that I consider to be must-see sessions. There were tons of other great ones, so it was hard to pare it down to this group.
Each video is offered in a few different formats, so it you run into any problems with one format, just click the links under the player to try one of the other formats.
Top 10 11
| 1 | CL09 How Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Was Built with WPF 4 This is interesting both from a “how they did it” standpoint, as well as for the topic of putting a slick WPF user interface over C++ and dealing with things like Win32 interop |
| 2 | CL17 Building Sensor and Location-Aware Applications with Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 The sensor and location platform is one of the coolest things to come out with Windows 7. I’ve had a ton of fun with the sensors, and will be trying out some of the location API stuff soon. |
| 3 | CL01 Microsoft Silverlight 4 Overview Silverlight 4 was one of the big announcements at PDC. If you want an overview of all the new features in SL4, this is the session to watch. Plus, Karen is a great speaker and super smart. |
| 4 | CL21 Building Amazing Business Applications with Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft .NET RIA Services Brad Abrams and his team put together a great talk that covers all the new stuff in RIA Services. If you build Silverlight business apps, don’t miss this. |
| 5 | FT24 Building Extensible Rich Internet Applications with the Managed Extensibility Framework This is the only session I was able to attend in-person at PDC. Glenn goes through what’s new in MEF and how to use it in Silverlight 4 applications. MEF also applies to desktop apps, Visual Studio add-ins, server-side apps etc, so make sure you watch this. |
| 6 | CL24 XAML Futures in Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Silverlight and Tools Rob and friends talk about some of the coolness in the new and upcoming Xaml stacks. They’ve done some awesome work here. |
| 7 | CL12 Developing with the Windows API Code Pack for the Microsoft .NET Framework For folks using .NET 3.5SP1, the Windows API Code Pack provides access to the Windows 7 features offered in .NET 4, as well as a bunch of things (like sensors) that .NET 4 doesn’t include in the box. |
| 8 | CL10 Windows Presentation Foundation 4 Plumbing and Internals If you want to understand the guts of WPF, this is the session. |
| 9 | FT03 Manycore and the Microsoft .NET Framework 4: A Match Made in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Most of us have multi-core CPUs with 2 as the norm, 4 pretty common and 6 coming to the mainstream in 2010. If you want to incorporate parallel computing into your apps, Stephen will show you how, and tell you about the support built into VS2010 to help you work with it. |
| 10 | CL15 Modern Graphics Using Windows 7 and Direct 3D 11 Hardware DirectX 11 includes tons of cool new features. This talk focuses primarily on Direct 3D 11. If you code against Direct 3D for visualization, games or other apps, check this out. |
| 11 | SVC23 Using the Microsoft Sync Framework to Connect Apps to the Cloud How do you connect desktop apps to the cloud, and handle synchronization and reliability concerns? If you’re considering tapping into the cloud from your existing or new local applications, check this out. |
Some Extras
And while many of us won’t use this in our jobs today, this is worth looking at as it is just plain awesome
CL03 DirectX11 DirectCompute
Yes, that’s all about using the power of massively parallel processors on DX11 video cards in your own apps. Very very cool stuff.
Of course, if you didn’t catch the keynotes live, run through them first. PDC keynotes are a great way to get a quick look at the full spectrum of cool stuff being announced or covered at the PDC
Scott Guthrie’s Keynote for Silverlight and Other Coolness
Ray Ozzie’s Keynote, for Cloud Computing strategy