Today Microsoft listed 24 new PDC 2008 sessions, but there have been no formal announcement of these that I have seen yet.  This brings the total from 155 to 179.  They are promising over 200 total sessions.  We can expect a few more sessions to be announced at PDC (after they make the big announcements) and perhaps some other updates before then.

You can see the full session list here: https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/sessions.aspx

If you haven’t yet registered for PDC 2008, the registration is still open.  If you have questions, read this post to see why you should attend.

I did a bit of analysis and here is a break down of how many new sessions were added to each of their tags:

+4 .Net Framework (4 total)

0 Ad Platform (2 total)
0 ADO.Net (3 total)
0 ASP.Net (10 total)

+1 CCR (1 total)
+6 Cloud Services (32 total)
+1 Dynamics CRM (4 total)
0 Entity Framework (3 total)
+3 Expression (5 total)
0 HPC (1 total)
0 Hyper-V (2 total)
0 Identity (8 total)
0 IIS (2 total)
+1 Internet Explorer (3 total)
+2 Languages (10 total)
0 LINQ (4 total)
0 Live Mesh (5 total)
0 Live Platform (11 total)
0 Office (4 total)
0 Oslo (5 total)
+2 Parallelism (9 total)
+1 SharePoint (4 total)
+2 Silverlight (13 total)
+2 SQL Server (16 total)
+1 SQL Server Data Services (7 total)
0 Sync Framework (2 total)
+1 TFS (4 total)
0 Unified Communications (3 total)
+1 Velocity (2 total)
0 Virtual Earth (1 total)
+3 Visual Studio (16 total)
2 VSTS (6 total)
0 WCF (6 total)
0 WF (8 total)
1 Windows 7 (5 total)
0 Windows Home Server (2 total)
0 Windows Mobile (2 total)
0 Windows Server (1 total)
0 WMI (1 total)
+4 WPF (9 total)
0 XNA (1 total)

Not surprises around these tags at all, but its nice to see where new focus is going.  Personally, I am disappointed that there wasn’t more added to “Wcf” or “Oslo”, but at least i have the “Cloud Services” to keep me busy. There was an addition of one new tag: “CRR”.  This is Microsoft’s Concurrency and Coordination Runtime. The session with this tag is:

The Concurrency and Coordination Runtime and Decentralized Software Services Toolkit
Get an overview of Microsoft’s CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 and the technologies it contains for building loosely-coupled, highly concurrent, and distributed applications. Learn how the technologies are already being used and get a run-down of how to evaluate whether the technologies may be right for you.

Some of the new interesting topics to me appear to be:

Microsoft Sync Framework: Enterprise Data in the Cloud and on Devices
See how synchronization plays a pivotal role in transitioning to a managed cloud environment by creating a central hub of information in the cloud. Using synchronization, organizations

Logging, Diagnosing, and Troubleshooting Distributed Applications in the Cloud
Learn about the different ways of tracking down and fixing problems in services and asynchronous distributed systems with black belt techniques and patterns that make debugging a lot easier. Also, hear how some of the Microsoft services are run and monitored.

Modeling Data for Efficient Access at Scale
Learn how to model data for cloud services. Topics include: mapping common data idioms to tables, tuning data models for common access patterns, and creating efficient queries.

The Microsoft PDC team has been making news left and right. Four major announcements have surfaced today:

1. Mike Swanson announced that each attendee is getting a “pre-beta” copy of Windows 7.  We figured this would happen, but it’s always nice to see it announced.
2. Four new keynote speakers have been added to the lineup, to bring the total to 8 speakers, most of the additions are Microsoft VPs: Scott Guthrie (VP of .Net Developer), Bob Muglia (Senior VP of STB), Steven Sinofsky (Senior VP of Windows and Windows Live Engineering), and David Treadwell (VP of Live Platform Services) have joined the lined up.  Ray Ozzie (Chief Software Architect), Rick Rashid (Senior VP of Research), Don Box (Software Architect), and Chris Anderson (Simple Geek) round of the rest of the keynote speakers.
3. Two Symposia have been added to the last day of DPC.  Each symposium is made up of three related sessions.  They are:
   • Parallel Computing – A Detailed Look at How Multi-Core Architectures will Unleash Computing Power and Enable Innovation
   • Head in the Cloud, Feet on the Ground – A Practical Look at Architectural Challenges and Opportunities with Identity, Management, Data and Interoperability in the Cloud
4. 17 new sessions have been added to the session line up bringing the total from 138 to 155.

As usual, here is my break down of new sessions and how they affected the topic tags:

+1 Surface (1 total)
+1 Sync Framework (3 total)
+17 Windows 7 (22 total)

The “Surface” tag is new this round.  I wonder if we will see more in this tag.  We can certainly expect to see a couple of Surface machines around the floor at PDC though.  It is interesting to see how much hype they will bring to Windows 7.  At the last session announcement on September 8th, there were only 5 Windows 7 sessions.  With these new sessions, plus the addition of the new Keynote speakers leads us to believe that there will be major feature unveiling.

However, this wasn’t one of the usual session announcements.  I think they added these new sessions in response to Mike’s announcements yesterday.  We should expect another announcement of sessions in early October to bring the total up to close to 200.  There will be even more sessions announced at PDC after the big announcements have been made in the keynotes.

I know I keep saying this, but this PDC is going to be Legendary!  Registration is still open.   Do what you can to attend this event; you won’t be disappointed.  And if you can get out there the night before, meet up with me and others at Party with Palermo.

I am going to repost a couple of blogs here, because this is a great continuation of the posts I have had over Microsoft PDC:

• Mike Swanson: PDC2008 Hard Drives, Services, Windows 7, and More
• Tim Sneath: What You’ll Hear at PDC2008

All of these posts stem from the latest Countdown to PDC video on Channel9 which was posts last night September 22nd.  These videos are usually time-boxed to 10 minutes, but this video was only 4.5 minutes and chalked full of interesting information.  The PDC 2008 Content Owner, Mike Swanson, announced what many of us have long assumed.  This will be the “Software + Services” PDC. PDCs in the past have had tended to have a focus or theme such as the “Longhorn” PDC, “.Net” PDC, etc.  This year we can expect a lot of content on Software + Services.

Software + Services (S+S) is a term coined by Ray Ozzie which is basically just a clever way of saying “local software and Internet services interacting with one another”.  It is really more than that though.  S+S is the merger of 5 very popular topics right now:

1. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) – Wcf, Biztalk, parts of Oslo, etc.
2. Software as a Service (SaaS)
3. Web 2.0 -  Social and networking collaborations, not just Ajax
4. Rich Internet Applications (RIA) – Adobe Flex, Silverlight, etc
5. Cloud Computing – Live Mesh, parts of Oslo, etc

The latest ArcReady series is focusing on S+S as well, which is where this definition came from.  It seems everywhere you look at Microsoft, S+S is being marketed more and more.  This will be the next BIG thing.  It is already a hot topic and in many ways is already a “BIG thing”.  As an SOA/Wcf/Cloud kinda guy, I am getting quite pumped up about what is to come.

The Countdown to PDC video also stated a few other things:

1. No matter what we thing, we will be surprised at PDC.  They have read the blogs and the speculations, but there are surprises.
2. Most big announcements are around S+S
3. There will be an announcement of a comprehensive services platform.  This will probably tie in big with Oslo and Live Services such as Mesh.
4. Windows 7 will get a lot more attention.  Right now there are 5 sessions on the PDC session list, but there will be over 20 when all sessions are announced.  I expect a beta or CTP release date, and all of those Microsoft commercials as of late are probably leading up to this.

The last big announcement in the video is how the bits will be delivered to the attendees”.  In the past, they have delivered the bits on CD and DVD.  At PDC 2005, they had 35gig of content that spanned 6 DVDs.  This year, they will have a lot more data.  So attendees are getting a nice “branded” 160GB USB2 external hard drive with all of the bits loaded on.  In many ways 160GB is small, but its a good size for storing your music collection or a backup of your primary OS and files.  The best part though is getting the data, demos, presentations, binaries, etc.  this will give us a chance to play with the new technology and hopefully spawn many new blog posts.  Here are a couple of pictures of the drive:

I am looking forward to the next session announcement list which should come up in early October if not before.  It will be interesting to see what they add.  I will do another synopsis like I did for the last session list to compare what areas are getting the most new additions and changes.

Registration for PDC is still open.  I highly recommend attending this event, if you can.  If you do make it out, drop me a line and maybe we can meet up.  If you can’t attend, at least watch the live feeds of the keynotes and watch for the session videos.   You really should understand what the future and direction is as a .Net developer.

If you are attending PDC, you should check out the videos on Channel 9 tagged PDC08 to see what all of the pre-announcements are.

Today Microsoft announced 54 new PDC 2008 sessions.  This brings the total from 84 to 139.  They are promising over 200 total sessions.  There will be more sessions announced early in October, and a handful more announced at PDC (after they make the big announcements).

You can see the full session list here: https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/sessions.aspx

If you haven’t yet registered for PDC 2008, the registration is still open, but today is the last day to register to get $200 off.  Hurry, before registration ends.  If you have questions, read this post to see why you should attend.

I did a bit of analysis and here is a break down of how many new sessions were added to each of their tags:

2 Ad Platform (2 total)
0 ADO.Net (3 total)
6 ASP.Net (9 total)
10 Cloud Services (27 total)
2 Dynamics CRM (3 total)
0 Entity Framework (3 total)
2 Expression (2 total)
0 HPC (1 total)
0 Hyper-V (2 total)
4 Identity (8 total)
0 IIS (2 total)
0 Internet Explorer (2 total)
3 Languages (5 total)
2 LINQ (4 total)
2 Live Mesh (5 total)
3 Live Platform (11 total)
2 Office (4 total)
-2 Oslo (6 total)
3 Parallelism (7 total)
3 SharePoint (2 total)
5 Silverlight (11 total)
2 SQL Server (14 total)
2 SQL Server Data Services (6 total)
2 Sync Framework (2 total)
2 TFS (3 total)
2 Unified Communications (3 total)
0 Velocity (1 total)
0 Virtual Earth (1 total)
6 Visual Studio (13 total)
2 VSTS (6 total)
4 WCF (6 total)
3 WF (8 total)
1 Windows 7 (5 total)
0 Windows Home Server (2 total)
0 Windows Mobile (2 total)
0 Windows Server (1 total)
0 WMI (1 total)
3 WPF (5 total)
1 XNA (1 total)

Not many surprises around tags that got new sessions.  I am surprised though that the Oslo tag lost 2 sessions.  My guess is that they just cleaned up the tags a bit.  We still se a large number added to Cloud Services, WCF, and WF.  This still reaffirms all of the speculation that a lot of the big announcements will be around services in the cloud.

One of the more interesting finds in the session lists is the introduction of yet another identity technology codenamed “Zermatt”! Maybe we will get identity done right soon?

I am still waiting for someone at Microsoft to call me to ask if I will speak at PDC (operators are standing by), but since this will never happen, here is a summary of some of the more interesting additions to the Cloud Services and WCF tags:

“Oslo”: Building Textual DSLs
The “Oslo” modeling language can define schemas and transformations over arbitrary text formats. This session shows you how to build your own Domain Specific Language using the “Oslo” SDK and how to apply your DSL to create an interactive text editing experience.

“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.

A Lap around Building Block Services
Learn about the building block services that enable developers to easily create or extend their applications and services. From consumer-targeted applications and social networking web sites to enterprise class applications and services, the building block services make it easy for you to give your applications and services the most compelling experiences and features.

A Lap Around Cloud Services
Hear about key problems that cloud computing is solving and how these services fit into Microsoft’s cloud computing initiatives. Learn about the pillars of the platform, its service lifecycle, and see how they fit with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies. Also, hear about the services roadmap over the next few years.

Modeling Data for Efficient Access at Scale
Learn how to model data for cloud services. Topics include: mapping common data idioms to tables, tuning data models for common access patterns, and creating efficient queries.

Windows Communication Foundation: Tips and Tricks for Performance and Scale
Join us for lunch to discuss the different kinds of performance and scale requirements that are a crucial part of any distributed systems development life cycle. Learn great tips from Nicholas Allen on WCF throughput and responsiveness optimization throughout the lifecycle of a distributed system. Hear about WCF scalability improvements in the next version of the Microsoft .NET Framework. (Nicholas Allen is presenting this one.  I might get to meet him!)

Microsoft .NET Framework: Developing RESTful Services
Learn the latest features in Windows Communication Foundation for building Web 2.0-style services that use URIs, HTTP GET, and other data formats beyond XML. See how these features can be applied to AJAX web sites, “REST” applications, and data feeds.

Live Platform: The Future of the Device Mesh
Live Mesh provides the infrastructure for devices to share and listen: communicating status, accepting remote management, and synchronizing and sharing files and applications. See how the combination of software running on devices, services running in the cloud, and open protocols and APIs make it all happen.

Microsoft .NET Framework: Declarative Programming Using XAML
If you’re using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), or Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), then XAML is your new best friend! Learn how an entire application-from presentation to data to services to workflow–can be authored using simple, declarative XAML notations introduced in the next version of the .NET Framework. Learn about XAML additions like: support for generics, object references, non-default constructors, and more.

Architecting Services for the Cloud
From design to implementation, building a scalable, available web service is different from building other kinds of applications. This session discusses the impact that designing for the cloud has on all stages of the service lifecycle, and how the Microsoft cloud platform works for you to meet the scaling and availability goals of your service. Also learn how the cloud services platform is architected to isolate and protect your service.

Architecture of the Building Block Services
Dive into the architecture that links many of the building block services and lets ISVs and businesses deliver compelling solutions. Learn how to compose these services to create applications in the cloud and connect them with on-premises systems. In this session we cover the next generation of messaging, data, identity, and directory services, and how they help developers.

Architecting Services for the Cloud
From design to implementation, building a scalable, available web service is different from building other kinds of applications. This session discusses the impact that designing for the cloud has on all stages of the service lifecycle, and how the Microsoft cloud platform works for you to meet the scaling and availability goals of your service. Also learn how the cloud services platform is architected to isolate and protect your service.

Architecture of the Building Block Services
Dive into the architecture that links many of the building block services and lets ISVs and businesses deliver compelling solutions. Learn how to compose these services to create applications in the cloud and connect them with on-premises systems. In this session we cover the next generation of messaging, data, identity, and directory services, and how they help developers.

Developing and Deploying Your First Cloud Service
In this session we take a tour of the capabilities of the Microsoft cloud platform by building and running a simple service using the platform SDK. The sample service highlights some of the features of the platform including service management, storage, and an integrated developer experience. This is a demo-heavy session.

Services Symposium: Enterprise Grade Cloud Applications
Today, hosted applications do not offer many of the features that large enterprises expect related to identity, management, and data. See detailed examples of “enterprise grade” hosted application design. Learn how to implement a federated identity scenario, enable remote application management, and provide richer control of data storage.

Services Symposium: Expanding Applications to the Cloud
Take an enthusiastic–yet pragmatic–look at cloud opportunities. First, hear about a model for determining what should be pushed to the cloud and what should be kept in-house. Second, explore examples of cloud-based infrastructure as part of an existing application. Finally, discuss architectural tradeoffs and best practices.

If you haven’t heard about Microsoft PDC 2008, then check out this post: http://www.danrigsby.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/18/microsoft-pdc-2008/

The PDC team announced today (via the speakers page) that Chris Anderson and Don Box are going to join Ray Ozzie and Rick Rashid as keynote speakers.  Chris has been at Microsoft for 10 years and has been heavily involved in things such as WPF and XAML, but has been working on Oslo for the last couple of years.  And we all know who Don Box is. The addition of these 2 keynote speakers only helps solidify what we have already assumed: PDC 2008 is all about cloud programming.

The speakers page still states: “More keynote speakers will be announced soon!”.  So we may see more keynote names coming soon.  There are 3 keynote slots in the agenda right now, but most of these slot will have multiple speakers.

I didn’t think it was possible, but I am heading to Microsoft PDC 2008 this year.  I was lucky and fortunate enough to have someone hook me up with a miracle ticket to the event.   The ticket does come with a “price” though: I have to speak at a couple of events afterwards. That isn’t much of a price really, I appreciate any opportunity to share with others and to be able to speak at bigger events (expect more information on these events later as I learn more).  This will be my first major Microsoft conference and needless to say, I am quite excited.

For those you attending PDC, drop me a line and we can try to meet up.  I would love to get together with old friends and meet those of you that I have haven’t had the opportunity to run into  I expect to live blog and stay active on Twitter while I am out there.  However, if you can, register and come to this event.

What is PDC

Since 1991, Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is the definitive Microsoft event for software developers and architects focused on the future of the Microsoft platform. This is the first PDC event in 3 years. There are many well known and excellent speakers lined up over many sessions.  Expect a lot of product announcements and get a view for Microsoft has in store for the future of developers.

PDC is part of a family of three Microsoft technical conferences for developers:

1. PDC (Los Angeles, CA) is usually a bi-annual event focused on the future of the Platform and technical strategy.
2. Tech-Ed Developers Conference (Orlando, FL) is an annual event focused on in-depth technical training on Microsoft’s current products.
3. MIX Conference (Las Vegas, NV) is an annual event aimed at developers, designers and business decision makers who build next generation consumer web sites.  This conference is used to announce new technologies for web development as well as training for current products.

When and where is it

Pre-Conference: October 26, 2008
Conference: October 27–30, 2008

Location:
Los Angeles Convention Center
1201 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015

How to register and cost

You can register directly online at: http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Registration/.  When you register you can also sign up for your choice of 23 different hotels that you can stay at ranging in price from $139 to $279 a night.  You can always register now, then come back in and choose a hotel later.  You will want to stay at one of the hotels listed on the web site so that you can take advantage to shuttles to the various events as well as being able to hang out with other developers in the bar.

If you want to book a room in the same hotel as me or want to meet up for a drink. I will be staying at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel and plan on checking in Saturday afternoon (October 25, 2008) and heading back Friday morning (October 31, 2008).

Cost:

The cost of the conference itself is $2395.  However, they have extended the early bird registration price of $2195 until September 8th, 2008.  So you have some time still to get a “discounted” ticket.

The cost of the pre-conference is another $400, but is worth it if you are going to be making the trip out to LA anyway.

Registration assistance and questions:

Registration Team hours are Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Pacific Time.

Who should attend

The marketing definition:

“The PDC is designed for leading-edge developers and software architects. If you’re interested in the future of the Microsoft platform, you’re responsible for the technical strategy in your organization, or you’re a highly skilled developer who likes to delve deep into the heart of the platform, then the PDC is for you!”

My definition:

Anyone who uses or works Microsoft technologies, particularly with .Net, should really consider attending this conference.  I am not going to suggest that your entire team goes, but I do think it is a good idea for each company to try to send 1 or 2 people to this event.  Those people can always come back and present to the rest of the company about what they learned and experienced.  This will be worth your time and your company’s time/money. If you like to learn or ask questions, you should make your best effort to get to this event!

This year looks like it will focus on cloud programming with Oslo and Live Mesh.  If you do any kind of work with distributed systems in .Net such as Wcf, Remoting, Web Services, etc, then you should pay extra close attention to what is announced at this conference. I’m sure there will be quite a few surprises for everyone though.

Why you should attend

They haven’t hosted a PDC since 2005 when they announced Office 2007, Asp.Net AJAX (Atlas), Silverlight (WPF-e), and LINQ. You can bet there will be some other big announcements this year too.  Almost everything announced at the 2005 event has been released.  However in the past there have been a few announcements that never saw the light of day (Hailstorm, WinFS, etc).  In any case, I am sure the Microsoft marketing engine will make all of us very excited about the future.

Here are my Top 5 reasons for why you should attend:

1. Learn about the future of Microsoft technology.  This is what you will be working with, so get learning early.
2. Meet up with friends, Microsoft Employees, and industry bigwigs.
3. The Attendee Party will be a Universal Studios Hollywood again this year.  This means free food and booze.
4. All sorts of swag and freebies. Be sure to bring an empty suitcase or two just for this.
5. Sessions, Sessions, Sessions!

Sessions

The session list has been posted, but I bet there will be changes and additions before the event.  There are currently 84 sessions listed on the web site with speakers such as Don Box and Anders Hejlsberg.  I wish I were speaking at this event too.  Perhaps someday I will work my way up to something of this caliber.

I am planning on attending all the sessions I can on Wcf, Oslo, and Live Mesh.  Here are some of the sessions that I won’t be missing:

• A Lap around "Oslo"
• "Oslo": The Language
• "Oslo": Repository and Schemas
• The Future of C#
• Live Platform: Building Mesh Applications
• Live Platform: Mesh Services Architecture Deep Dive
• Windows Workflow Foundation: Futures
• Securing Your Service Using the Federated Identity Services

Conference Extras

What is a conference without all of the “extras” outside of the major event?

Keynotes
This year’s keynote speakers are Ray Ozzie (Chief Software Architect) and Rick Rashid (Senior Vice President, Microsoft Research).  According to the speaker site though, we should expect to hear about more major keynote speakers soon.

Pre-Conference
Unlike PDC which is focused on new technology, the pre-conference sessions will give deep training on current technologies.  If you are going to make the trip out there anyway, you should consider joining one of these sessions for extra training. Personally, I would love to attend the “Working with Wcf” session presented by Juval Lowy and Ron Jacobs!

Attendee Party
Tuesday night all attendees are invited to enjoy a night at Universal Studios Hollywood.  Attendees have the park to themselves with food and drinks (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) provided complimentary by Microsoft.   You can even bring purchase Guest Passes for others for $125 each.  So, if your spouse makes the trip out with you, they don’t have to stay in the hotel all week.

Show Off
Got some code, tools, tips, architecture, etc you want to “show off” to others?  PDC gives you an opportunity to show off your work to a large number of interesting and influential people.  Not only that, but winners of the best “show off” will win some non-announced prizes.

Even if you don’t show off your own code, you can still attend this event to see what others are doing and to enjoy the free theater-style food.

Partner Expo
Throughout the conference there will be a partner expo with over 100 sponsors and exhibitors ready to teach you about their products and technology.  This is a great chance to learn more about 3rd party products, enter giveaways, take home swag, etc.

Amazing Scenarios
Want to see how others are using Microsoft and 3rd party technologies?  Perhaps you want to learn how to make use of some technology, but never quite understood what all it could do.  Amazing Scenarios are demonstrated Monday – Wednesday to show off how real customers are making use of of the products in the PDC Expo area.

Ask the Experts
Wednesday night from 6-9pm is your chance to ask the experts the questions you have been dieing to ask.  Over 200 tables will be set with speakers and staff knowledgeable in all of the areas presented at PDC.  This is an excellent opportunity to really dig in deep on a technology.  I like that it is near the end of the conference.  This gives you plenty of time to formulate questions and comments.  Do not miss this event.

Hands On Labs
Hands on labs will be available to help you learn and drill down into the latest Microsoft technologies.  The list of labs hasn’t been posted yet, but expect it to cover current technologies and maybe some of the new futures.

Microsoft Product Pavilion
This is your chance to learn and demo Microsoft products and technologies. Have you ever seen a Surface PC? I bet they will have at least one here to demo. The best part of this is that the hosts are the product team members who worked on these products, so you can ask some detailed questions and learn all you can.

Open Spaces
You gotta love ad-hoc speeches and discussions.  I am hoping we will see some interesting open spaces from some big names in the industry.  Open spaces are interactive discussions about any topic the group deems worthy.

PDC Lounges
There is a lot to learn at PDC.  The lounges offer you a place to unwind or meet up with friends.  It’s the perfect place to share what you have learned, blog about the event, relax, etc.

Women in Technology Networking Event
There are women in technology and they are making a huge impact on the industry.  the Women in Technology (WIT) networking event gives the opportunity to share stories and learn about women in the industry.  Discussions will cover challenges that women face in the IT world and tools and organizations to help support women in the male-dominated field.

Social Networking

There will be a lot of blog buzz as the event gets closer, but here are some sites you can start looking at now:

• Become a fan of Microsoft PDC on Facebook
• Follow PDC2008 on Twitter for up to date information
• Check out what others are saying about PDC2008 with Twitter hashtags:
  • #PDC
  • #PDC08
  • #PDC2008
• Post and explore PDC2008 images on Flickr