by Alvin Ashcraft

Last month we published another awesome session from TechBash 2019. Subscribe to our YouTube page so you'll be notified of all the great new content from TechBash every year.

Zero to Eighty: Getting Your Testing Initiative Off the Line

Nicole Tibaldi

Just over a year ago, my team’s frontend codebase lacked any meaningful test coverage. Our release process was painful, requiring us to complete nearly one hundred manual QA steps to give us even the smallest amount of confidence that new features didn’t break existing functionality. Now, our tests are automated, fast, stable, and nobody complains about having to write them! As I recount the tale of how I became the team’s “test captain” and led us to testing bliss, you’ll learn about mistakes we made, how we changed course when needed, the milestones we achieved, and some general dos and don’ts for creating better habits within your team.

Check back soon for more announcements about TechBash 2020!

- Your TechBash Organizers

by Alvin Ashcraft

Last week we published another session from last November's TechBash 2019 event in the Poconos. Subscribe to our channel today to get notified when we publish new videos.

Gene Gotimer - Get to Green: How to safely refactor legacy code

For many of us, legacy code is a fact of life. Code without tests -- no safe way to make changes, no safety net, no hope of untangling the web of accumulated ugliness, an incomplete understanding (or less) of how it really behaves. And your next set of changes is just going to add to the garbage pile and make it worse. You need tests so you can safely make changes, but you can't add tests without changing the code. It is a chicken-and-egg problem.

So how do you turn legacy code into code you can change confidently? Slowly, one step at a time. Join Gene as he shares his experiences working with a monolithic codebase that was so bad it made national news. He'll go over the steps he and his team used to refactor the code safely by using mocking frameworks, mutation testing, and patience to build an understanding of how the code worked so that they could change it confidently.

This talk is for anyone that has inherited legacy code that they aren't confident in and wants to make it something they can work on and improve. You'll leave with some tools and techniques that will help you change your legacy code into something maintainable.

by Alvin Ashcraft

Catch four new TechBash 2019 session recordings on the TechBash Dev Conference YouTube channel today. Here's what you've missed if you aren't subscribed to our channel:

7 Habits of Highly Effective Developers - Gaines Kergosien

Software and website developers are in extremely high demand and rates continue to climb, but many developers have not yet realized their potential. Being good at what you do is important, but it's equally important that you can communicate the value you bring to an organization and build a reputation that will provide opportunities for growth, both professionally and financially. We will work together to measure your accomplishments, establish a personal brand, and walk away with a resume that conveys your true value!

From Razor to Blazor with ASP.NET Core - Bill Wolff

ASP.NET keeps adding exciting new features. See the progression from web forms to MVC, WebAPI, SignalR, and Razor Pages. The newest trend is client-side C# web development with Blazor and Web Assembly.

.NET: Past, Present, and Future - Scott Kay

.NET is a proven platform for building every conceivable category of software with an exciting and transformative future still ahead.

Impostor Syndrome: Slaying the Beast - 'Tine Zekis

Impostor Syndrome is a nasty beast that preys on us at all levels of our careers. But there are times when we are particularly vulnerable to its lures. Learn how to recognize the beast when it starts to sneak up on you, and more importantly, what to do about it! You will leave this talk armed with tools for fighting off Impostor Syndrome, and the confidence to strut into your next meeting, standup, or job interview. Once you’ve learned to slay the beast, you’ll be ready to just slay, in general.

Happy viewing, and keep an eye out for our call for speakers in the coming days!

by Alvin Ashcraft

The TechBash 2019 Keynote is now available to watch on our YouTube channel.

Learning at Lightspeed - Jeffrey T. Fritz

Is the speak of Open Source frameworks stressing you out? Do you need to be watching all of the podcasts and reading every blog about your favorite technology or else your career will be left behind? Distractions are everywhere in our community. We’ll learn how to focus our projects on the technologies they’re built on to manage the pace of change for our organization while still maintaining support where available.

Let's learn from Microsoft's open source journey over the last 5 years and how to interact with developers and ensure they get the latest updates without overwhelming them.

Stay tuned for another recorded session later this week!

by Alvin Ashcraft

It's that time again. The next TechBash 2019 recorded session is now available on our YouTube channel!

Getting Started with Docker - Tim Corey

Docker is everywhere but maybe you aren't quite up to speed yet. You can talk about it or at least fake your way through a conversation but you haven't had time to get started actually using it yet. If that sounds like you, this is your session. We will walk through Docker from the beginning. Don't be fooled though. This isn't a PowerPoint session. We won't be doing fun pictures and abstract concepts. We will be taking code and putting it into containers. Then we will look at how to use those containers, how to communicate with them, how to manage them, and more. After we cover the basics, we will get into orchestration and other more complicated topics. While this is a language-agnostic talk, we will use the Visual Studio tools for some sites and situations.

Check it out and subscribe to our channel to get notified when new sessions are posted each week.

by Alvin Ashcraft

We have another great TechBash 2019 recorded session now available on our YouTube channel, plus a TechBash 2020 promo!

Our Journey to DevOps at Microsoft - Dan Redman

Learn how Microsoft has taken in its journey to DevOps over the past 8 years and completely changed their approach to building software and services. You’ll learn about Microsoft’s 90,000 engineers working in the public cloud delivering into production multiple times per day and how some products handle the different cadences of several feature teams while maintaining a single coherent and continuously integrated source of the truth. Paul explains how his team in Microsoft works and leads a live demo of Microsoft’s internal engineering systems; he’ll also spend significant time talking through the harder cultural change issues that were encountered and discuss how Microsoft has gone about building a new, much more sharing-focused culture inside the company. Join in to discover what Microsoft has learned so far and the next areas it will focus on.

Check it out today and don't forget to subscribe to our channel to get notified when new sessions are posted.

Happy learning!

by Alvin Ashcraft

Our second TechBash 2019 recorded session is now available on the TechBash YouTube channel!

Full Stack Development with ASP.NET Core 3.1 - Jeff Fritz

ASP.NET Core 3.1 shipped in November 2019, and has updated features for building modern web applications and services. In this session, we'll show you how to use ASP.NET Core 3.1 to build beautiful and interactive client-side web UI with Blazor backed by high-performance gRPC microservices and long-running worker service processes. We’ll show you how to use SignalR for client-to-server streaming and take advantage of the latest performance improvements.

Check it out today and don't forget to subscribe to our channel to get notified when new sessions are posted.

Happy learning!

by Alvin Ashcraft

The first of our TechBash 2019 recorded sessions is now available on our YouTube channel!

The Impact of Diversity - Rachel Beard, Danica Pascavage, Anna Bateman, & ‘Tine Zekis

The news is rife with articles on diversity in technology, but what does this mean to our everyday lives? Why should diversity matter to me? What can I do to help foster a more diverse environment? What are some of the experiences of minorities in the workplace?

Check it out and subscribe to our channel to get notified when new sessions are posted. (Hint: You'll get one tomorrow.)

by Alvin Ashcraft

All of us at TechBash are extremely excited to welcome Jeff Fritz back to TechBash 2019. Jeff has delivered popular sessions at TechBash in previous years, including a fantastic welcome session at TechBash 2018.

You don't want to miss this year's keynote or any of the world-class speakers we have lined up for this year's developer conference at the Kalahari Resort and Convention Center. Mark your calendar, tell your friends, and register today!


Keynote - Learning at Lightspeed - Keeping Your Skills Current in an Open Source World

Is the speed of Open Source frameworks stressing you out? Do you need to be watching all of the podcasts and reading every blog about your favorite technology or else your career will be left behind? Distractions are everywhere in our community. We’ll learn how to focus our projects on the technologies they’re built on to manage the pace of change for our organization while still maintaining support where available.

Let's learn from Microsoft's open source journey over the last 5 years and how to interact with developers and ensure they get the latest updates without overwhelming them.

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Jeffrey T. Fritz - .NET Community Guy and Live Streamer

Jeff Fritz is a senior program manager in Microsoft’s Developer Division working on some of the latest web technologies by leading the ASP.NET Web Forms Team. As a long-time web developer and application architect with experience in large and small applications across a variety of verticals, he knows how to build for performance and practicality. You can find his first book, ‘Learn ASP.NET Core in 24 Hours’ on Amazon and other places where dead trees are sold. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays you can catch Jeff hosting a live video stream called 'Fritz and Friends'. You can also learn from Jeff on WintellectNow, follow him on Twitter, and read his blogs.

by Andy Schwam

We've just made the list of sessions for TechBash 2019 available on our website! 

This year for TechBash we got tons of submissions of great talks. And the list of talented speakers from around the world that want to present at TechBash is impressive. As organizers, we are humbled and honored that so many great people are interested in being a part of TechBash. Of course, there is a downside to all of this as well - it was REALLY HARD to pick the talks this year. In addition to the number of submissions, another complicating factor in choosing sessions is that we are a polyglot conference. We try to include many different topics including different languages, frameworks, and tools. We include soft skills. We have server side and client side technology. We have cloud and mobile and the list goes on. And it is not easy fitting all of that into a 3 days of breakout sessions. So unfortunately, due to the number of submissions, we have to turn down more people than we accept. That's tough for us organizers, but we are confident that we are planning a great event for you.

So click here to see list you have been waiting for: sessions for 2019. It is "fairly" complete. We do have a few slots open as we are still working on a few details. If you are still trying to decide about TechBash 2019, this should certainly make it easier for you.

See you in November, 

Andy