I'd like to thank everyone who came to the Next Web Roadshow event we held in St. Louis last week. The turnout was phenomenal and, based on your feedback, it looks like the material was very useful and on topic.

As promised, our presenter, Mike Henderson, has posted a set of links to resources from his presentation.

For the sake of simplicity, I'm re-posting Mike's links here:

WPF Information:
MSDN WPF samples
Code Project's WPF Pages
Vista x64 Forums on WPF
XCeed's WPF Wiki
Kazaml

Good WPF-related Blogs:
Josh Smith
Mike Hillberg
Beatriz Costa
Tim Sneath 

Silverlight Information:
Silverlight splash screen + dynamic content sample
Silverlight.net 
Silverlight Cream 
MSDN Silverlight Dev Center
Silverlight 2 Controls Source Code

Good Silverlight Blogs:
Brad Abrams
Expression Design + Blend
Joe Stegman
Mike Harsh
Mike Taulty
Scott Guthrie

ASP.NET Information:
ASP.NET 
MSDN ASP.NET Code Gallery
123ASPX Index 
4 Guys From Rolla

Good ASP.NET Blogs:
DotNet Slackers
Scott Mitchell

Books:
Programming WPF 
Essential WPF 
Apps = Code + Markup 
Professional ASP.NET 3.5
ASP 2.0 Website Programming 
Essential ASP.NET

"The Next Web." "The Next Generation Web."

What the hell is that, anyway? Just another buzzword? More "marketing techno-babble?"

I like to think of it as "Web 2.5." It ameliorates the technical innovations that drove the Web 2.0 movement and really takes them to the next level. If you consider the impact that AJAX has had on the way web applications are built, essentially making them behave more like desktop applications, next generation Web applications look and feel like desktop applications as well. In the Microsoft world, the technologies that are driving this evolution are Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight and the incredible advances in ASP.NET.

If you live in or near St. Louis, I encourage you to register for a great seminar we're going to be holding on Wednesday, June 11th at the Microsoft offices to talk about the next generation of the Web and how these technologies will play into it. You will take part in a technical exploration of the latest technologies Microsoft has to offer, and how you can take advantage of those technologies to provide a truly next-generation user experience in you Windows and web client applications. During the seminar, Mike Henderson from Pluralsight will guide you on a technical walkthrough of each technology, demonstrate the technologies' capabilities, and show the tools and techniques used to provide those capabilities.

Seating will be limited for this event, so I highly encourage you to register today if you would like to attend.

I try to avoid doing posts that simply announce upcoming events without providing some kind of value to the message. This is a blogging tip I got from my buddy Josh Holmes and it's really proven to work well.

But this time, I'm going to make an exception...

If you haven't heard already, Microsoft launched the Professional Developers Conference 2008 (PDC) web site. The conference will take place in Los Angeles from October 27th through October 30th. The registration site is now open and, if you possibly can, you should make every effort to attend this conference.

For those who aren't familiar with the PDC, this is not a conference that happens every year, like Microsoft TechEd that is taking place over the next couple of weeks in Orlando. The PDC only happens when Microsoft has something big coming that they want the development community to learn about.

What might you learn about at the PDC this year? Well, Ray Ozzie spent a lot of time at MIX last March talking about Software + Services and, not long after that, the Live Mesh CTP as released. S+S is surely going to be a big topic at PDC this year, but I'm also betting that we're going to see a lot great information about the future of the Windows Mobile platform, Silverlight and .NET as well.

If you're a senior developer, architect or technical decision maker responsible for helping determine the technical roadmap for your organization, you will want to be in Los Angeles this October for the conference. I'm definitely going to be there, and hope to see you there too.

Industry thought-leader David Chappell will be visiting four cities in the central part of the country throughout the month of May to present Undestanding Software + Services: A Perspective. David's talk will provide a clear explanation of what an S+S approach to architecture really looks like, an overview of building software with hosted "services in the cloud," as well as the tools and guidance Microsoft is providing to help development teams be successful in developing S+S oriented solutions.

David will be speaking from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM in the following cities on the following dates:

David is Principal of Chappell & Associates in San Francisco, California. David has been the keynote speaker for dozens of conferences and events in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. His popular seminars have been attended by tens of thousands of developers, architects, and decision makers in forty countries. David’s books have been translated into ten languages and used regularly in courses at MIT, ETH Zurich, and many other universities. In his consulting practice, he has helped clients such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Stanford University, and Target Corporation adopt new technologies, market new products, train their sales staffs, and create business plans.

I am coordinating David's tour through this part of the country. If you have any questions about the event or have any problems registering, please drop me an email or leave me a comment below.

If you've never seen David Chappell speak, you won't want to miss this opportunity to see one of great luminaries in the industry talk about one of the most exciting topics in software architecture today.