by TechBash Organizers

Welcome to 2024! We're so excited to get this rolling for TechBash 2024. We have a few announcements and reminders for attendees, speakers, and sponsor today.

First a reminder to save the dates for TechBash 2024. We'll be back at the Kalahari Resort and Convention Center in the Poconos this fall. It's a little earlier in the fall this year... September 24th through 27th. Here's the projected high-level schedule:

  • Tuesday 9/24: Full day & half-day workshops
  • Wednesday 9/25: Sessions and Welcome Reception
  • Thursday 9/26: Sessions and Game Night (families welcome for games of all kinds)
  • Friday 9/27: Sessions and Family Day (bring your kids)

Early bird ticket sales will be opening before you know it. Subscribe to our email newsletter to be the first to get notified.

Next, we're announcing the dates for our TechBash 2024 Call for Speakers. It will be back on Sessionize and will be open January 29th through March 8th. More info and links coming soon!

Finally, if you're interested in sponsoring TechBash this year, our 2024 Sponsor Prospectus is now available on our site. Download it and reach out to sponsor@techbash.com with any questions or ideas of your own.

That's all for today. We hope that everyone attending CodeMash this week has an amazing time!

by TechBash Team

Due to speaker travel and scheduling conflicts, there have been several changes to the TechBash schedule. We had some speakers with conflicts over the last few weeks, and others have graciously stepped in to fill those spots on the schedule. You can always view the latest schedule on our website or in the TechBash mobile app (see below).

We are excited to have an amazing new workshop on cross-platform .NET apps to replace the OpenTelemetry half-day workshop which was removed due to speaker travel issues. You can still register for 1-day, 3-days, or 4-days and save 10% with EventBrite discount code DOTNET10. This year we have 1-day registration for the Tuesday workshops available for the first time!

Updated Workshop Duo: Azure MLOps & Building beautiful, performant, single-codebase Web, Mobile & Desktop apps with .NET

Steve Bilogan will now be presenting the afternoon workshop in this Workshop Duo track. This is a hands-on, semi-guided workshop in which attendees will be asked to complete a series of exercises to build a complete cross-platform YouTube-like application using the open-source Uno Platform.

Carey Payette and Steve Bilogan

Get the TechBash app to stay up-to-date and build your schedule

The TechBash app is available again this year. Use the app to build your schedule, get session and room info, and submit your speaker evaluations. We have great prizes for random eval submitters from Packt Publishing and CodeSmith Tools.

New Sponsor too

We're excited to welcome Uno Platform back as a TechBash 2023 Gold Sponsor! Come meet them in the Poconos next week.

Uno Platform

by TechBash Team

The kids are back at school, the pro football season is about to start, and fall is just around the corner. That means time is running out to secure your tickets to TechBash and lock in our guaranteed low rates!

The TechBash room block ends on October 6th!

Right now, room rates are just $179 per night for a standard Desert room on Monday through Friday nights during TechBash. You can reserve your room through the Kalahari booking site or by phone at 1-877-525-2427 (mention TechBash 2023). After October 6th, rates and availability are no longer guaranteed!

Not only that, but our Standard 3-day and 4-day event pricing also ends on October 6th. For the final 30 days before TechBash, Late Bird pricing will be in effect. So, don't wait... Register today!

Your favorite keynote speakers from Microsoft are coming to TechBash!

You love Visual Studio?

  • We have Mads Kristensen! He'll be presenting his keynote, Visual Studio Secrets Uncovered.

You love Azure?

  • We have Paul Yuknewicz & Scott Hunter! They'll join us to present Building and Scaling Cloud-Native Intelligent Applications on Azure.

You love .NET?

  • We have Kathleen Dollard! She'll be kicking off day one with Charting Your Course.

TechBash 2023 Keynotes

.NET Conf 2023 is happening in mid-November, but you can get the inside scoop early at TechBash.

Check out our website for all the latest info! Want to be first to get TechBash news and updates? Subscribe to our email newsletter.

by TechBash Team

TechBash is coming up fast! In fact, we've already revealed our five workshop tracks and 70+ sessions. Now we're unveiling our 2023 schedule for all four days.

Here are a few highlights:

  • Tuesday, November 7th features five tracks with full-day and half-day workshops. All 4-day attendees can select a workshop to attend.
  • This year we have keynotes to kick off each day of sessions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday featuring Scott Hunter, Paul Yuknewicz, Kathleen Dollard, and Mads Kristensen from Microsoft.
  • Game Night is back on Thursday, November 9th. Bring your favorite tabletop games for a night of gaming, drinks, and snacks.
  • Friday is Family Day. Bring your kids to our family-friendly sessions on Friday, November 10th. These sessions are still under consideration and will be revealed soon!

Don't forget to book your room at the Kalahari Resort after you register for TechBash. Each standard room includes waterpark admission for up to four people.

Our Kalahari room block and Standard Registration for the event both end on October 6th. After that, room discounts are no longer guaranteed and Late Bird ticket pricing goes into effect. Talk to your boss and register soon! Bring a group? Email groups@techbash.com to ask about our discounts for groups of 5 or more.

Single registrations can take advantage of our $75 Labor Day discount by using EventBrite code SUMMER75 thru September 4th. Visit our website for all the room and registration details.

by TechBash Organizers

In case you missed it, we've announced the lineup of sessions, speakers, and workshops for TechBash 2023. The full schedule will be coming soon, as well as some big keynote announcements. Early bird registration will be our lowest prices of the year, and the time to register at those rates ends on July 4th. Email us at groups@techbash.com for information about discounts for teams of five or more.

All 4-day registrants will select a full-day or pair of half-day workshops to attend on Tuesday, November 7th. We have some great options to choose from this year.

About the workshops:

  
   

TechBash 2023 workshops on Tuesday, November 7

This year we have five workshop tracks with half-day and full-day workshops. Register for 4 days and choose your workshop track:

  • Establishing Good TDD Habits AND Mastering TDD in Legacy Code [Workshop Duo w/ Brendan Enrick & Sarah Dutkiewicz]
  • Design and Develop a Serverless Event-Driven Microservice-Based Solution [Chad Green]
  • Securely Developing Infrastructure as Code AND CI/CD with GitHub Actions [Workshop Duo w/ Chris Ayers]
  • Azure MLOps (Carey Payette) AND Troubleshooting and Monitoring Production Applications Using OpenTelemetry (Yosef Arbiv) [Workshop Duo]
  • Progressive Web App Workshop [Chris Lorenzo & John Riviello]

TechBash 2023 Speakers Announced!

 -This year we have 50+ world-class speakers joining us at TechBash

Check them out and see which of our 75 sessions they'll be presenting in November at the Kalahari Resort & Convention Center.

by TechBash Crew

It's time to register for TechBash 2023. 3-day and 4-day early bird tickets are now available on EventBrite. We're back at the Kalahari Resort and Convention Center in Pocono Manor, PA this fall. Join us November 7-10 for great keynotes, workshops, sessions, food, swag, and the best water slides in the Northeast U.S. Register soon because early bird rates are valid only through July 4th.

Get more information about our workshops, sponsorship opportunities, hotel rooms, and more on techbash.com. Want to send your dev team? Email us to ask about discounts for groups of five or more.

Workshop options for 4-day registrations

 - Design and Develop a Serverless Event-Driven Microservice-Based Solution (Chad Green)

During this full-day workshop, you will start by designing a solution using serverless and event-driven cloud services using microservice patterns. Then you will build that solution using .NET, Azure services, and other best-practice tools. Finally, you will deploy that solution to the cloud so your customers can reap the rewards of a well-architected, reliable, and scalable solution that meets their needs today and provides for growth in the future.

   

- Test-Driven Development (TDD) Workshop Duo (Brendan Enrick & Sarah Dutkiewicz)

Establishing Good TDD Habits

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn fundamental techniques to improving your code through TDD and Pair Programming. You’ll sharpen your skills working with your peers on programming exercises designed to instill good techniques that you’ll be ready to apply on your current and future code.

-and-

Mastering TDD in Legacy Code

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn to effectively use the principles and practices of increasing the reliability and maintainability of your code through testing and pair programming. You’ll sharpen your skills working with your peers on programming exercises designed to instill good practices that you’ll be ready to apply to non-trivial codebases.

   

- Securely Developing Infrastructure as Code & CI/CD with GitHub Actions (Chris Ayers)

During the first session we will examine how to leverage open source tools to:

  • Scan for security and configuration issues using tools like tfsec, terrascan, and checkov
  • Securely configure Terraform backends like AzureRM
  • Securely pass variables and input into Terraform
  • Securely deploy Terraform to clouds like Azure

-and-

In the second session, we will learn about building and deploying applications using Github Actions. We will learn diverse ways to trigger our builds and build different types of applications. We will work up from basics and fully understand how workflows run, how to select and call different actions, and how to handle configuration and secrets. After this session you'll be able to build and deploy your software from GitHub.

   

- Azure MLOps Workshop (Carey Payette) & Troubleshooting and Monitoring Production Apps w/ OpenTelemetry (Yosef Arbiv)

Many organizations are looking to train and deploy custom-trained machine learning models. MLOps provides environments, compute, data organization, versioning, and end-to-end pipelines that bring your models to fruition. The first workshop provides an overview of MLOps in Azure and then proposes a series of challenges for you to solve alone or in a group.
-and-
The second workshop will introduce the fundamentals of OpenTelemetry and how to use it to get traces from your app. We will build an application, instrument it with OpenTelemetry, and analyze it on a UI backend. After this workshop, you will be able to understand how to add auto instrumentation to get distributed traces from your code. How to collect and present them on a backend UI and analyze them to debug your application.
   

- Workshop 5 - To Be Confirmed Soon (TBD)

Announcing our first TechBash 2023 sponsors!

InfernoRed Technology - Gold Sponsor
Tx Text Control - Gold Sponsor

by TechBash Crew

Can't get away from work for 3 or 4 days? We've got you covered. TechBash now has a limited number of single day tickets* available for purchase for only $299. Check out the full schedule**, decide which day(s) have the best content for you, and register today!


The meals and activities provided to attendees on any given day are also available to single-day ticket holders on the day they attend (breakfast and lunch are provided daily).

  • Buy a 1-day ticket for Thursday and come out for game night after dinner!
  • Buy a 1-day ticket for Friday and take advantage of our Family Day sessions for kids (schedule and details coming soon)!
  • Our sponsors will be available to attendees all day Wednesday and Thursday!
  • We have great keynotes lined up for Wed/Thu mornings too!

You can still stay overnight at the Kalahari and get full access to the water park. Reservation details here.

*Single day tickets are available for Wednesday (11/9), Thursday (11/10), and Friday (11/11) only.
**Schedule subject to change at the discretion of conference organizers.

by TechBash Planning Team

The TechBash 2022 schedule has been announced and is posted at techbash.com/schedule. While there still may be some minor changes to the schedule, this will provide some insight into which talks will be when during the event.

We currently have 3-day main conference tickets available as well as the 4-day pass which includes a pre-conference workshop. Tickets for both the 3-day and 4-day conference passes can be purchased on our EventBrite page. If you are interested in group rates, please reach out by sending an email to groups@techbash.com. There are still some individual discounts too. Reach out to your favorite speaker and ask if they can share a discount code with you.

In addition, there are still discounted rooms available at the Kalahari, but this rate will only be around until early October (30 days before the event) or until the rooms are completely sold out. To book a room, follow the process outlined in our Stay and Play section of the website.

by Alvin Ashcraft

We're excited to announce our second keynote. Crux Conception will be joining us from Indiana to present Is there #Stress in the world of #Tech? Here is some more about Crux:

Crux resides in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and has over 20 years of Law Enforcement (Now-Retired), Criminal Profiling and teaching experience (Adjunct Professor). Crux has now taken his years of experience, education research and training; to incorporate novel methods of teaching/learning. Crux has utilized his background in Psychology, Team Building and Behavioral Profiling to implement said methods to take out the law-enforcement aspect and make these skills people/civilian practical.

Crus ConceptionHis keynote will cover how to manage your work life and cope with the demands of being an employee in today's world. No matter what profession you're employed by, there is always some form of stress that comes alongside it, and this training will expose new coping skills for success!

This keynote offers solutions to support individuals afflicted by stress within the IT community:

  • Employee input
  • Better task content
  • Amplified job control
  • Equal production values
  • Career expansion
  • Enhanced peer socialization
  • More workplace ergonomics

Key takeaways include:

  • Overall alertness- regarding the onset of stress
  • Stress at one's place of employment
  • Mentally supporting yourself
  • Recognize the best method in a tense setting

There are only four more days remaining in the TechBash 2022 early bird registration period. Talk to your boss and register today! If your company will be sending more than five people to the event, email groups@techbash.com to get more information about our group discounts.

Sponsor Spotlight

We would like to thank Speaker Sponsor, The New York Times, for sponsoring the travel of one of our speakers. Want to sponsor TechBash? Email sponsor@techbash.com for more information or download our sponsor prospectus.

by Alvin Ashcraft

This week we are highlighting our two keynote presentations. First up is Jeff Blankenburg. For those of you who don't know Jeff, he is a Chief Technical Evangelist at Amazon Alexa. Here is a little more about him:

Jeff Blankenburg spent the early part of his career in digital advertising, building websites for Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Ford Motor Company, among others. He also spent 8 years at Microsoft, primarily as an evangelist for any recent technology he could get his hands on. Today, he works on the Amazon Alexa team helping developers make Alexa even smarter. Jeff has also spoken at conferences all over the world, including London, Munich, Sydney, Tokyo, and New York, covering topics ranging from software development technologies to soft skill techniques. He also serves as an organizer for the Stir Trek conference.

Jeff Blankenburg, TechBash 2022 keynote speaker

Jeff's keynote at TechBash is titled 'The Future of People'. We are so excited to hear from him this November:

As we continue to embrace artificial intelligence, we will see a new future for how people live their lives. We will take a quick look at how AI can impact humanity for the better, and some of the advancements we can look forward to.

Join us November 8-11 at the Kalahari Resort and enjoy the amazing keynotes, workshops, and sessions at TechBash 2022. The Early Bird registration period is nearly over. Buy your tickets by July 6th to get our lowest prices. If you're bringing a group of five or more, email groups@techbash.com for information about group discounts.