I had the honor of speaking at the launch event hosted yesterday by Idea Integration and SQL Server Central. We had around 250 registered attendees with about 160 or so showing up. My sessions were, "New Features In ASP.Net 2.0" and Windows Workflow Foundation(WF) which has quickly become my new passion. For the ASP.Net session, I discussed Master Pages which is a MUST for every web designer, and the new data controls and how they could be wired up with minimal code. The major points I made were that data controls could richly display data very quickly with no code. I also discussed the new Object Datasource which allows you to wrap custom code for your data component and then configured using the datasource setup wizard... Very cool stuff if you have not checked it out.
I was very concerned about my WF session. I really did not get to do a mock run-through with it and I really did not have any set demos. This actually worked out because I just walked though getting familiar with the different styles of workflows, demonstrating the new WF IDE/tools and going through some code from the top of my head that I thought I would like to see myself if for the first time I was seeing the framework.
I have put in a ton of work for preparing for this event, and at the end of the day I felt it was all well worth it by helping people understand something new. Well I am off this Friday for South Florida's Code Camp to speak some more about WF and SQL2005 and meet some new friends. If you have not had a chance to register for this free event there is still time!