Dan Rigsby – Coding Up Style

As we get closer and closer to Microsoft PDC 2008, we keep hearing or finding all kinds of new news!  Just comparing new and old versions of the PDC site reveal so many new things from day to day.  It’s almost like an Easter egg hunt.  What will they reveal next?

Surprising registration still appears to be open!. I know a lot of people have to wait for many levels of approval before getting to sign up. If you are still mulling it over, just go ahead and register here: http://microsoftpdc.com/Registration/.  If you are not sure what PDC is or why you should attend, then check out this post: http://www.danrigsby.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/18/microsoft-pdc-2008/

Four New Sessions

Since yesterday, the total number of sessions has jumped from 182 to 186.  I can’t pinpoint the exact changes in sessions as there are too many to track right now.  However, just looking at the difference in tags, the changes are:

+1 .Net Framework
+1 Cloud Services

Two tag additions doesn’t add up for 4 new sessions.  However, they adjust the tags so much that some sessions must have had tags removed to make up the difference.  Many sessions have multiple tags.

One of the newer sessions appears to be a Coding4Fun session staring Dan Fernandez, Scott Hanselman, Brian Peek, and Client Rutkas:

Coding4Fun: Windows Presentation Foundation Animation, YouTube, iTunes, Twitter, and Nintendo’s Wiimote
Spend time with Coding4Fun authors as they walk through some DIY Development projects: TwitterVote, Wiimote, InnerTube, and BabySmash.

Two More Keynote Speakers

I haven’t seen a formal announcement about this yet, but if you look at the PDC speaker page, there are 2 new faces in the list: David Thompson and Amitabh Srivastava. David is Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Online. While, Amitabh is a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft who is “responsible for the next-generation services platform”.  Is this services platform related to all of the S+S stuff?

That brings us up to 10 keynote speakers to fill in 5.5 hours of keynote time.  The PDC agenda page lays out who is speaking when.

Geneva Sessions

All of the “Zermatt” sessions have been renamed to “Geneva”.  Zermatt is the programming model for the STS and ADFS security metasystem known as Geneva.  And Geneva is one of the potential building blocks of something called “Zurich” which is a .Net-based S+S infrastructure.

Here were the Zermatt sessions:

“Zermatt”: Deep Dive
In this session we examine the architecture of “Zermatt” next generation identity technology, and how it can be customized and extended for advanced security scenarios. At the center of the discussion is the Security Token Service (STS), a core component providing authentication and identity services. Many applications will benefit from an embedded STS, and many scenarios will call for an STS that is built on a specialized user store.

“Zermatt”: Enabling Next Generation Identity
The security demands of applications continue to evolve in the face of compliance requirements, new online threats, and SOA and cloud re-engineering. See how to use the “Zermatt” next-generation authentication framework and services and the claims-based identity model to enable single sign on, strong authentication, federation, and the ability to flow user authentication between applications. Find out how to use “Zermatt” with ASP.NET, WCF, Active Directory, and Windows CardSpace.

Here are the new Geneva sessions that replaced them:

Identity: "Geneva" Deep Dive
Examine the architecture of the "Geneva" next generation identity server and framework and how it can be customized and extended for advanced security scenarios. At the center of the discussion is the Security Token Service (STS), a core component that provides authentication and identity services. Many applications will benefit from an embedded STS, and many scenarios will call for an STS that is built on a specialized user store.

Identity: "Geneva" Server and Framework Overview
See how to use "Geneva" and the claims-based identity model to enable single sign-on, strong authentication, federation, and the ability to flow user authentication between applications. Find out how to use "Geneva" with ASP.NET, WCF, Active Directory, Windows Live ID, and Windows CardSpace.

There is also a 3rd Geneva session:

Identity: Windows CardSpace "Geneva" Under the Hood
Windows CardSpace provides a consistent, hardened sign-in experience that uses standard protocols and works with both thin and smart client applications. Learn about the features and architecture of the next version of Windows CardSpace.

All 3 of these sessions have the “Identity” tag and either the “Advanced” or “Expert” tag.