TechDays Online Agenda

How does TechDays Online work and what’s the content?

TechDays Online is a 3 days event that you can drop in and out of from the comfort of your own sofa. Allowing you listen and learn from industry experts as well as chat to them throughout the live event.

All sessions are approx. 35-minutes. There is a 15-minute changeover between sessions and a 45-minute lunch break.

Each day has a different theme, check them out and pencil them in the diary TechDays Online 2015 isn't far away now!

TechDays Online 2015 Day 1 – Tuesday 3rd of February

TechDays Online 2015 Day 1

Day_1_keynote 

Keynote speaker bio

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for more than 30 years for a variety of publications and web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, tv and podcasts, speaking about all things microsoft-related. on zdnet, she blogs at allaboutmicrosoft.com. she is the author of microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). Foley also is the co-host of the Windows Weekly podcast on the TWiT network.

Theme: Client, Devices & Mobility 

Day One: Devices and Managing a Mobile-First World

Time

Session

Speaker

09:30-09:40

Overview of TechDays Online 2015 Day 1

Ed Baker, Microsoft Technical Evangelist
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

An overview of the sessions for Day 1 of Tech.Days Online 2015 and how to make the most of your participation using the online chat tool to interact with our experts and where to find more information on the topics of particular interest to you.

Bio

Ed is a Technical Evangelist at Microsoft UK, specialising in Infrastructure. His role is to engage with the technical community on anything Microsoft.

09:40-10:15

Delighting your business with EMS - The ABCs of what you need to know

Stuart Leddy, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

So what is EMS? The Enterprise Mobility Suite is the comprehensive cloud solution to address your consumerization of IT, BYOD, and SaaS challenges. The suite is the most cost effective way to acquire all of the included cloud services: Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium; Windows Intune; Microsoft Azure Rights Management. We will help you to understand what EMS is! and help you keep your end users productive, Help with data protection and compliance, Unify user and device management and enable you to understand why EMS is a perfect solution for you and your business.

Bio

Stuart is the Enterprise Mobility Business Lead / Product Marketing Manager in the UK – responsible for our Enterprise Mobility solutions – including hybrid identity (Azure Active Directory, Identity Manager), access & information protection (Azure Rights Management), device management (Intune, System Center Configuration Manager) and desktop & application virtualization (Azure RemoteApp, RDS, VDI). He has been at Microsoft for over 6 years – working in a range of product management roles across our Cloud & Enterprise products & solutions – covering System Center, Windows Server and Hyper-V. Prior to Microsoft, Stuart studied a BA/BSc (Hons) Business Joint Honours Sandwich Programme consisting of Marketing (Major) and Management Science (Minor) at University of Hertfordshire achieving a 1st Class Honours Degree.

10:30-11:05

Devices, Devices Everywhere

Andrew Bettany, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Coming soon!

Bio

Andrew Bettany is recognised for his Windows expertise since 2012, and a member of the Microsoft Springboard Technical Expert Panel. As leader of the IT Academy at the University of York, UK and Microsoft Certified Trainer, Andrew delivers learning and consultancy to businesses on a number of technical areas including Windows deployment and troubleshooting.

11:20-11:55

Windows 10 Client Innovations

Chris Rhodes, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Windows 10 is putting a huge focus on productivity and desktop. In this session the Windows User Group will show you the new tools and features that will help make you more productive, demonstrating key features and discussing what we know about the most significant change to come to the Windows desktop for many years.

Bio

Chris is a Microsoft Certified Trainer for over 17 years, Chris has represented the community as a member of the MCT Advisory Council, and more recently as a Regional Lead for the past couple of years. Chris has been an MCT Ambassador for the last 5 years at TechEd, and is also a user group speaker through the Springboard STEP program and the Windows User Group for which he is a co-founder.

12:10-12:45

KEYNOTE: What IT Pros and Devs Need to Know About the New Microsoft

Mary Jo Foley
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

It’s not your mother’s – or Bill Gates’ Microsoft any more. Join ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley -- who has covered Microsoft for more than 30 years as an independent technology journalist -- to hear her perspective on what’s changed and what’s to come. Foley will touch on the latest hot buttons, ranging from universal apps and “One Windows,” to what to expect on the productivity and cloud services front. Foley will be just back from the latest Windows 10 reveal event in Redmond, so will have lots to say about where Microsoft is going on the operating systems and apps/services front in 2015 and beyond.

Bio

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for more than 30 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. On ZDNet, she blogs at allaboutmicrosoft.com. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). Foley also is the co-host of the Windows Weekly podcast on the TWiT network.

13:30-14:05

Building IoT solutions today

Paul Foster, Microsoft UK & Robert Hogg, Black Marble
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

This session will walk through a real world IoT solution that is measuring home heating systems. The house wide wireless sensor web is aggregated to a IOT device gateway and transferred to Azure Event hub, before being processed by Azure Stream Analytics and presented in Power BI. Key emphasis will be placed on understanding Azure Event Hub and Azure Stream Analytics, both PaaS offerings that make IoT solutions, capable of scaling to millions of devices, simple.

Bio

Paul is a pragmatic programmer and maker of digital things, I am loosely assigned to support UK organisations of all sizes in the building of successful software products using Microsoft's latest technologies. He is currently assigned to Microsoft Ventures UK start-up incubator as CTO in residence.
Robert Hogg is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS) , a chartered IT professional (CITP), a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and was awarded Honorary Fellow in Computing by the University of Hull in 2009. is involved with a series of community projects from running events aimed at raising general IT/development expertise in the UK, and supports Academic and wider adoption of .NET. is a co-founder of Black Marble, a Microsoft Gold partner in the north of England.

14:20-14:55

Microsoft Azure Remote App

Richard Astbury, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

In this session, Richard explains what the RemoteApp service is, and demonstrates how a desktop application can be hosted in the cloud, and accessed from a range of devices

Bio

Richard has a background in delivering public facing web applications in a variety of market sectors, including banking and healthcare. He is passionate about making software development productive, efficient and fun. He strives to automate processes and utilise frameworks to shortcut development timescales. His expertise is in C#, ASP.NET, MVC and Node.js.

15:10-15:45

Microsoft Azure RMS

Rick Hepworth, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

This session explores the capabilities of Microsoft Azure Rights Management (RMS), Active Directory RMS and RMS for individuals.

Bio

Rik is the IT Director at Black Marble. His role includes delivering robust IT solutions to both his own organisation and its customers, which can take in a broad spectrum of technologies. An enthusiastic technology evangelist, Rik is a regular presenter at events in the UK and Ireland. Along with friends and colleagues he has been involved in the DDDNorth community event since its inception. He is a member of the BCS, a Chartered IT Professional and a certified Scrum Master.

16:00-16:35

Azure Active Directory: Much more than a user store

Rick Hepworth, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Azure Active Directory has matured and expanded rapidly from its humble beginnings within Office 365. Find out how the current range of services can simplify, accelerate and expand the way you control access to applications and services inside and outside your organisation.

Bio

Rik is the IT Director at Black Marble. His role includes delivering robust IT solutions to both his own organisation and its customers, which can take in a broad spectrum of technologies. An enthusiastic technology evangelist, Rik is a regular presenter at events in the UK and Ireland. Along with friends and colleagues he has been involved in the DDDNorth community event since its inception. He is a member of the BCS, a Chartered IT Professional and a certified Scrum Master.

16:50-17:25

Microsoft Intune/SCCM

Steve Beaumont, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

With mobile devices becoming ever more ubiquitous within our working lives and Microsoft Intune garnering more features by the bucket load it's time to take stock and see where we are now, what's coming soon and why integrating Intune with System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager adds extra value for enterprises. It’s time to tame those mobiles and make them behave how you want.

Bio

Steve Beaumont is an IT Pro clocking up over 15 years of experience ranging from low end system building to managing a crack team of enterprise class support specialists to now providing consultancy and designs for System Center as Technical Director for PowerONPlatforms. Steve is also a co-author of the Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager and Orchestrator Cookbooks, blogger and active within the Microsoft community.

17:25-17:30

Wrap-up of TechDays Online Day 1, Part 1

Ed Baker, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

A summary of what has been covered so far in Tech.Days Online 2015, confirmation of any competition winners and a preview of the evening sessions on Office 365

Bio

Ed is a Technical Evangelist at Microsoft UK, specialising in Infrastructure. His role is to engage with the technical community on anything Microsoft.

Day one evening: An evening with Office 365

Time

Session

Speaker

18:30-19:05

Migration of your mailboxes to Office 365

Victor Merians, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

This session covers various e-mail migration types for Office 365, paying detailed attention to migration pre-requisites and stages: the preparation, migration and post-migration processes and best practices for each stage. There also will be a short demo on e-mail migration from Google Apps to Office 365.

Bio

Victor is a certified IT professional with more than 15 years experience in Windows and UNIX system administration, security, IT process management, software and hardware sales. His areas of expertise include Specialties: Microsoft Office 365; IT business process management; Windows and UNIX system implementation, administration and support; Computer and Network hardware and software; System and network security; Vulnerability assessment; System monitoring; User education and support; Volume licensing for large organisations.

19:15-19:50

Keeping in touch with the online world

Anuj Airan & Fadi Al-barghouthy
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Welcome to the session on Lync and its mobility scenarios. During these 45 minutes we will cover Lync Online and Hybrid scenarios and look to demonstrate how mobility with Lync provides flexibility and collaboration choices to users and businesses. Additionally we will be covering the top Lync issues with associated solutions that every IT Pro must know.

Bio

Anuj has been in Microsoft for 8 years and is a Senior Support Escalation Engineer for the Lync On-premise and Online business based in the UK. His role entails working at a deep forensic level with large Lync customers. Prior to this role, Anuj was a Premier Field Engineer and worked on several large UK Lync and Office 365 deployments.

Fadi has been in Microsoft for 10 years where he started by working on Live Communications server and he has continued to work on all of Microsoft’s UC products. He also works as a SR Support Escalation engineer based in the UK supporting complex Enterprise customer environments. Currently he is a member of the Lync/Skype Beta team focusing on the next wave of On-Premise and Online Products.

20:00-20:35

Building online collaboration inside Office 365

Kamil Jurik, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

How many SharePoint migrations have you had so far? Even if it were just once, you will certainly agree that it was not an easy process. At the same time, all of us want new versions of SharePoint. And probably all of us feel that the best times of On-Prem have been had. The future is clear - SharePoint Online. So I have some good news for you – your last migration. The migration from On-Prem to Online. How does one face such a process? How is it planned? What should be taken into account? How do we prepare for the migration? How does it go and what methods are there, actually? This session based on a number of successfully completed projects gives you concise and clear answers to these questions, delivered by Kamil Jurik, SharePoint Server MVP.

Bio

Kamil is Microsoft SharePoint specialist, architect and trainer. SharePoint Server MVP since 2006. Took part in dozens of projects targeted at Microsoft SharePoint platform implementation. In recent years his main role was the design and implementation of SharePoint enterprise farms at large customers requiring solutions with high availability and performance. He’s also conducting technical audits, evangelizing SharePoint platform, focusing on cloud services and leading training courses.

20:35-20:45

Wrap-up of Office 365 evening sessions

Ed Baker, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

A summary of what has been covered in the Office 365 evening sessions and where to get more information about the Office 3654 products covered

Bio

Ed is a Technical Evangelist at Microsoft UK, specialising in Infrastructure. His role is to engage with the technical community on anything Microsoft.

NOTE: All sessions are approx. 35-minutes. There is a 15-minute changeover between sessions and a 45-minute lunch break.

Register here

TechDays Online 2015 Day 2 – Wednesday 4th of February

TechDays Online 2015 Day 2

Jeffrey Snover

Jeffrey Snover

Distinguished Engineer

Jeffrey Snover is a Distinguished Engineer and the Lead Architect for the Windows Server Division. Snover is the inventor of Windows PowerShell, an object-based distributed automation engine, scripting language, and command line shell. Snover joined Microsoft in 1999 as divisional architect for the Management and Services Division, providing technical direction across Microsoft’s management technologies and products. Snover has over 32 years of industry experience with a focus on management technologies and solutions. He was an architect in the office of the CTO at Tivoli and a development manager at NetView. He has worked also as a consulting engineer and development manager at DEC, where he led various network and systems management projects. Snover held 8 patents prior to joining Microsoft, and has registered 30 patents since. He is a frequent speaker at industry and research conferences on a variety of management and language topics.

Theme: Server & Cloud 

Day two: The Journey to the Cloud-first World

Time

Session

Speaker

09:30-09:40

Overview of TechDays Online 2015 Day 2

Andrew Fryer, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

An overview of the sessions for Day 1 of TechDays Online 2015 and how to make the most of your participation using the online chat tool to interact with our experts and where to find more information on the topics of particular interest to you.

Bio

Andrew is a technical evangelist at Microsoft UK, specialising in data management, manageability and security.

09:40-10:15

What's new Windows Server /Hyper –V - a technical preview

Gordon McKenna, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Coming Soon!

Bio

Gordon is a Microsoft System Center Cloud and Datacenter MVP with over 15 years of experience in the Windows Management space. Currently, he helps run Microsoft Gold Systems Management and Virtualisation, Desktop and Devices and Azure Circle partner Inframon who specialise in Microsoft System Center and Azure. He is a renowned speaker on the System Center circuit with regular sessions at TechEd in the UK and the US as well as MMS, WPC and many other partner, customer and community events.

10:30-11:05

How to find out what’s happening in your datacentre with Azure Insights

Sam Erskine, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

How do you view and execute IT Service Management (ITSM) for your datacentre and cloud services. What if you are not yet in the cloud and just have a traditional data centre? This session provides some of the many answers to these questions by introducing you to Microsoft Azure Operational Insights (OpInsights). You will learn how you can start benefiting from this flagship Microsoft Service with virtually no change to your datacentre. You will get a practical scenario based Introduction to OpInsights, learn about the three setup/connection options available. You explore the ITSM facets known as Intelligent Packs on multiple device interfaces. Finally you get an introduction to the multi-tenancy features. This session is for IT Pros , Managers and anyone with a vested interest in continual Organisational IT Service improvement.

Bio

Samuel Erskine, (IT Driving Fellow), is an independent IT consultant specializing in Service Manager and Configuration Manager. He is the lead author of the Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook (Packt, 2012), and Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Cookbook (Packt, 2013), and a contributing author to System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Unleashed and co-author of the System Center 2012 Service Manager Unleashed. With over 18 years of IT experience, he focuses on providing training and consultancy services in the United Kingdom and other locations and blogs at www.itprocessed.com.

11:20-11:55

Host your own cloud with the Windows Azure Pack

Damien Flynn, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Not using System Center? Unsure about Azure? Curious about Cloud? In this session we will demonstrate the Windows Azure Pack and how to go from zero to cloud in little time, initially delivering self-service databases, websites, and finally infrastructure in a consistent manner, service orientated manner.

Bio

Damian Flynn, MVP, has been working in IT since 1993. He has worked as an engineer and administrator for multinational’s in manufacturing and services sectors where he dealt with large and complex IT infrastructures. Damian is also involved in the ISP sector in Ireland where he remains a director for a Wireless ISP in the North West. Experience spans from digital data collection networks, Telco and VoIP based technologies, Networking and Server Virtualisation working with VMware ESX, Hyper-V, and many others. Currently, Damian is working as an IT infrastructure architect with Lionbridge Technologies based in Ballina, Ireland, specialising in Microsoft technology. Damian is a member of the MS Windows Futures Council, and is engaged in many other MS Programs including Group Policy, IPC, Lync and App-V.

12:10-12:45

Taking scripting to the next level with Service Management / Azure Automation

Jonathan Noble, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

By now you should be sold on the advantages of systems automation, and hopefully you're using PowerShell to help you with that. Now you can use your PowerShell experience to create workflow-based runbooks to add service automation to your private or public clouds using SMA or Azure Automation. DevOps-simplify your infrastructure to save money, improve reliability and get some of your life back!

Bio

Jonathan works in the IT department at Newcastle University in North East England where he dived straight into a large-scale migration from NT4 and Netware to Windows 2000 and Active Directory. With tens of thousands of user accounts, thousands of desktops and hundreds of servers in the remit of his department (in Newcastle and branch campuses is Malaysia and Singapore), Jonathan has been automating Windows for many years, initially via batch and vbscript, and then PowerShell came along and changed his world.

13:30-14:05

A new home for your old applications

Susan Smith, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

This session will focus on Containerisation using Docker on Azure. The concept of Containerisation will be introduced and compared with other Virtualisation Technologies, followed by an overview of Docker. The Technical Demos will introduce elementary Azure tasks, such as creating a Docker Host on Azure. Then a step-by-step Technical Demo will illustrate how you can re-invent your Legacy applications through migration to Docker on Azure, by Deconstructing and then Containerising your Legacy App.

Bio

Susan is an IT Pro Technical Evangelist, focusing on Cloud Technologies & DevOps. Previously, she was a Windows Intune Technical Solutions Professional, specialising in working closely with Customers and Partners to provide the in-depth technical knowledge to strategise their Enterprise Mobility Management endeavours.

14:20-14:55

20% + of Azure runs on Linux - why is this important and how to do it well?

Boris Devouge, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

With Microsoft Azure providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and strong of recent announcements showing that 20% of workloads in Azure run on Linux, this session will explore the best practices and different options to run and/or migrate Linux based workloads in the Cloud. We will also review the large subset of Open Source Software (OSS) and technologies available on Azure in area such as Test/Dev, CICD, Big Data (Hadoop) and containerisation (Docker).

Bio

Boris has deep grounded field knowledge the Cloud, OpenSource and virtualisation. Working as a Director of Global services for Nebula, Inc, he was part of the team that co-founded the OpenStack project with NASA employees. Boris also worked as a Sales Engineering manager for EMEA at Red Hat, dealing with early adoption of Linux in large organisations and the rise of virtualisation stacks. He then served as a Global Sales Engineering manager dealing with new Cloud technologies (Eucalyptus) at Canonical – the company behind Ubuntu Linux - leading a team to bundle the first version of OpenStack within the public software repository. Today Boris is spearheading the Openness efforts of Microsoft in the United Kingdom.

15:10-15:45

DevOps in Microsoft Azure with Chef and Puppet for heterogeneous cloud environments

Tarun Arora, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Bio

Tarun Arora is a passionate technologist with 7 years of industry experience delivering enterprise solutions on the Microsoft Platform. His specialisms are application lifecycle management, onshore/offshore delivery, systems integration and custom application development. Tarun is a subject matter expert in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) with Microsoft development tools (Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server) with a strong expertise in implementing & leading Waterfall / Agile based development processes supporting distributed teams on medium to large-scale .NET based enterprise projects.

16:00-16:35

Make Azure your DMZ

Simon Skinner, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

The advantages of using Azure today are more than beneficial to any organization, however true not all understand the baby sips we can take to start this journey. We are in the mature era of the web, a rapidly growing struggle to get representation or even full blown commerce site in full operation. Many companies what to have their site/s integrated into their internal system but without impacting on their networks or bandwidth, both have a cost. The solution could be simpler than you think, Azure! Make Azure ‘your’ DMZ. There is more resilience and bandwidth than most DMZs and your company stays in control. You choose the IP Range and can even control the traffic through the firewall, join my session and learn just how easy this can be.

Bio

Simon plays an active role in the MVP community and has five years experience as an MVP & Microsoft P-TSP in System Center Datacenter and Private Cloud. He presents at Ask the Expert sessions and regularly at MMS and TechEd events in US, Europe and Asia. Simon is also the owner and Founder of Cloud OS Community (http://www.cloudoscommunity.com).

16:50-17:25

Microsoft Corporate Keynote and Interview - Jeffrey Snover

Jeffrey Snover, Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

This session will focus on the open source interoperability that Powershell provides for other platforms and also provide an update on the Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) initiative that Microsoft has introduced with the Open Group.

Bio

Jeffrey leads the creation, evangelisation and execution of the overall Windows Server and System Center technical strategy. He drove specific technical initiatives around the datacenter abstraction layer (DAL), modern cloud fabric, standards-based management and automation. He is also a technical advisor and approver of the Common Engineering Criteria program to deliver a common customer experience.

17:25-17:35

Wrap-up of TechDays Online Day 2

Andrew Fryer, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

A summary of what has been covered so far in TechDays Online 2015, confirmation of any competition winners and where to get more information on any of the topics covered during the day.

Bio

Andrew is a technical evangelist at Microsoft UK, specialising in data management, manageability and security.

NOTE: All sessions are approx. 35-minutes. There is a 15-minute changeover between sessions and a 45-minute lunch break.

Register here

TechDays Online 2015 Day 3 – Thursday February 5

TechDays Online 2015 Day 3

Scott Hanselman

 Scott Hanselman

Scott is a web developer who has been blogging at http://hanselman.com for over a decade. He works in Open Source on ASP.NET and the Azure Cloud for Microsoft out of his home office in Portland, Oregon. Scott has three podcasts, http://hanselminutes.com for tech talk, http://thisdeveloperslife.com on developers' lives and loves, and http://ratchetandthegeek.com for pop culture and tech media. He's written a number of books and spoken in person to almost a half million developers worldwide.

Xamarin 

'Lunchtime with Xamarin'
12:30 - 12:50
Mike James, Xamarin

Theme: Developer 

Day three: Multi-device, Cross-platform Development

Time

Session

Speaker

09:30-09:40

Overview of TechDays Online 2015 Day 3

Martin Beeby, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

An overview of the sessions for Day 3 of TechDays Online 2015 and how to make the most of your participation using the online chat tool to interact with our experts and where to find more information on the topics of particular interest to you.

Bio

Martin Beeby works for Microsoft where he talks to developers about HTML5, Windows 8 and the web. Martin has been developing since he was 16 and over the past 16 years has worked on projects with many major brands. Martin has written articles for, and been featured in, .NET Magazine, ZDNet, the Microsoft Developer Network, Ubelly.com and Windows Magazine.
@thebeebs, https://blogs.msdn.com/b/thebeebs/

09:40-10:25

Creating cross-platform apps with Visual Studio

Mike Taulty & Martin Beeby, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

In this session Martin and Mike will discuss the cross-platform client app development options inside of Visual Studio. The plan is to run Visual Studio, write some code and try and make sense of the huge array of cross-platform options that are available to developers. It will be a whistle stop tour of project types such as Cordova, Xamarin and C++ explaining along the way the pro’s and con’s of each approach.

Bio

Mike Taulty been in software development for over 20 years and currently work for Microsoft as a developer evangelist. He has a keen interest in developer languages, tools, frameworks, platforms and as part of my role I've been talking to large (100-1500) developer audiences across the UK, Europe and the US for a number of years.

10:40-11:25

How are you going to deploy that? A look at configuration as code

Richard Fennell, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

It does not matter what platform you are developing for, you are going to have to deploy your product in the end. Too often in the past the question of deployment has been an afterthought. But it need not be this way, there are tools available that can help with deployment of your code and importantly the provisioning the underlying systems they need too.

In this session we will look at Visual Studio Release Management's vNext release pipeline seeing how it can leverage Desired State Configuration to provision environments and deploy applications.

Bio

Richard is Engineering Director at Black Marble where he is responsible for the delivery of systems and tools to allow the company, and its clients, to deliver solutions efficiently. All Black Mable's development activity is underpinned by Team System using Scrum as a process model. Richard is a Fellow of the British Computing Society and a Certified Scrum master. Richard is a Fellow of the British Computing Society and a Certified Scrum master.

11:40-12:25

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning without a PhD

Andrew Fryer, Microsoft UK & Jen Stirrup, Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

"Every American should have above average income, and my Administration is going to see they get it." (Bill Clinton on campaign trail). Machine learning is the science of making computers act without being unambiguously programmed. We use machine learning every day, e.g. search engines like Google and Bing, Facebook and Apple’s photo tagging application use it, Gmail’s spam filtering algorithms, and speech and facial recognition programs are examples of machine learning at work. It isn't your grandaddy's Machine Learning though; it is accessible to business analysts for the first time. Microsoft AzureML is fully-managed cloud service that enables data scientists & developers to embed predictive analytics into their applications, helping organizations use massive data sets and bring all the benefits of the cloud to machine learning. This session provides an overview of Machine Learning by taking the process of taking some structured and unstructured data, developing a predictive analytics model in ML Studio and then publish and visualising the model so that it can be used by others. Join us for a practical insight into the fascinating world of Machine Learning, where you can be significantly different but never certain, deviation is normal, and you are amongst friends if you found the above quote funny.

Bio

Andrew is a technical evangelist at Microsoft UK, specialising in data management, manageability and security.
Jen Stirrup is an analyst, an author, a data strategist and practitioner in Business Intelligence, Big Data technologies and Data Visualisation. Jen is joint owner of a boutique consultancy firm that offers strategic advice and implementation in data technologies. With nearly 20 years’ experience in delivering artificial intelligence, business intelligence and data visualisation projects, Jen has focused on delivering business value for organisations of various sizes around the world. Jen is an elected member of the Board of Directors for the Professional Association of SQL Server, holding the EMEA seat. Jen has presented in various conferences worldwide, including Live 360!, TechEd and PASS Summit.

11:40-12:25

Xamarin.Forms: Native iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps from ONE C# Codebase

Michael James, Xamarin
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Xamarin enables C# developers to become native iOS, Android, and Windows mobile app developers overnight. In this session, you will learn how to leverage your existing .NET and C# skills to create iOS and Android mobile apps in Visual Studio with Xamarin. In addition to allowing you write your iOS and Android apps in C#, Xamarin lets you reuse existing .NET libraries and share your business logic across iOS, Android, and Windows apps. During this session we will cover the Xamarin platform and how to create native iOS, Android, and Windows apps in C#. Moreover, we will really focus on the code with several example solutions with the aim to give you the knowledge to create your first iOS & Android in C# with Xamarin in Visual Studio.

Bio

The most recent addition to the Developer Evangelism team at Xamarin, Mike previously worked within the support department. Before joining Xamarin he worked within the entertainment control industry developing control systems for installations such as the London Eye. His passion grew for mobile when he was tasked with developing mobile apps for site engineers tocontrol the lighting on these installations. Currently Mike is responsible for engaging with the community in Europe and takes great pleasure in having the opportunity to meet customers face to face and present new technologies to them. Mike lives in the UK and enjoys music production, running and his Xbox One. You can find him on twitter at @micjames6

14:00-14:45

What is Roslyn and why should you care?

Tomáš Herceg, Microsoft Most Valued Professional
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

In this session Tomáš will be talking about the Microsoft .Net Compiler Platform (aka Roslyn) - You’ll see how to parse C# code and work with syntax trees. He will show you how to write your own diagnostics and refactoring features for Visual Studio, and at the end of the session will make changes to the Roslyn source code to extend the C# language with some custom features.

Bio

Tomas is an independent software developer for 5 years. Now I have my own firm RIGANTI and I lead a team of .NET software developers. Tomas has been a Microsoft MVP since 2009. He teaches courses (mostly .NET Framework and ASP.NET), speak at events (e.g. MS Fest, the biggest .NET konference in Czech Republic) and I am one of the authors of the Czech website about .NET development (www.dotnetportal.cz) that contains many articles about VB.NET, C#, ASP.NET, XNA and many other technologies.

15:00-15:45

Building cross-platform apps with .NET and ASP.NET

Pedro Dias, Microsoft Norway
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

In this session Pedro will explore the next version of .net and asp.net.

Bio

Pedro joins us from Norway to share has passion for well crafted software and agile development. He loves to share his findings with colleagues and friends, and is always expanding his horizon. Pedro is a passionate technologist with a strong and never ending sense of curiosity. In Microsoft, Pedro has specialized on the Microsoft Azure platform as well as the tooling support in the Visual Studio / Visual Studio Online suites.

16:00-16:45

Creating cross-platform cloud apps for mobile devices

Steve Plank, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Linux is a first-class citizen in Azure and in this session we show you to create a web-based back end on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Linux/Apache Servers which are load-balanced and exposed to the Internet. You’ll understand how Azure can scale these services out and back simply to match the traffic and discuss the options for service management of the platform, including the node.js based cross-platform cli. Next we advance to the eradication of almost all service management activities and create a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Mobile Services back-end where the only thing you care about is writing the code and the operation of the underlying platform is done for you. We’ll cover how multiple client platforms such as Windows 8/8.1, iOS, JS/HTML, PhoneGap and Xamarin can be used to connect and we’ll demonstrate how to create an app that exploits the cloud platform running on Android.

Bio

Steve, or “Planky” as he is more widely known is a technology evangelist for Microsoft UK who specialises in the cloud. He speaks, writes, blogs, runs online conferences and special one-off projects, runs seminars and camps, teaches and helps individuals/companies/startups to get over that initial learning hump and get them launched on their journey to the cloud.

17:00-17:45

KEYNOTE: What does an Open Source Microsoft Web Platform look like?

Scott Hanselman
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

Scott is a programmer, teacher, and speaker. He works out of his home office in Portland, Oregon for the Web Platform Team at Microsoft.

Bio

Scott is an architect working on The Web Stack for Microsoft's AAPT (Azure Application Platform and Tools) group. He also manages community for ASP.NET/IIS/Azure and the Visual Studio Web SKUs.

17:45-17:55

Wrap-up of TechDays Online Day 3

Martin Beeby, Microsoft UK
see agenda with session abstracts and speaker bios ↓

Abstract

A summary of what has been covered in Tech.Days Online 2015 Day 3 , confirmation of any competition winners and where to get more information on any of the topics covered during the day.

Bio

Martin is a developer evangelist working with developers to help Microsoft deliver better tools, languages and products. He is a regular conference speaker and have spoken at FOWD (Future of Web Design), FOWA (Future of Web Applications), MIX Las Vegas, PHP London and Web Directions.

NOTE: All sessions are approx. 45-minutes. There is a 10-minute changeover between sessions and a 45-minute lunch break.

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