Last year I had a marvelous time at Tech Ed Africa, and made the Top 5 list. I am thrilled to announce that I will be there again this year! It will take me about 41 hours to travel from my house to the conference center, and about 36 hours to get home a week later. This place is seriously far from home.

My talks:

Microsoft Visual C++ 2005: A Look at the New Features for Building Fast Native and Managed Code
Whether you build end-to-end applications or components for enhancing larger applications, the new Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 is the power tool for Windows programming. In this presentation we spend extensive time in the Visual C++ 2005 development environment -- highlighting new productivity features -- as we dive into its support for building high-performance, first-class native and managed applications. Learn about native code compiler optimizations, security enhancements, 64-bit development, and support for multiprocessor/grid computing systems. In addition, this presentation demonstrates how Visual C++ 2005 now provides CLR/.NET Framework support that allows it to stand toe-to-toe with any other tool in terms of elegance and productivity… with the additional benefit of high-performance access to native code and the ability to easily move native code to the managed environment.

Microsoft Visual Basic 2005: Application Frameworks and Advanced Language Features
This is a must-see session for Visual Basic developers who are new to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, and also reviews the major feature changes and additions for beta 2. Take a top-down look at the new application architecture and RAD development enhancements in Whidbey, including several key productivity features that are exclusive to Visual Basic. This session covers the new Visual Basic lightweight application model for client applications, the My namespace, Data, Settings and Resources, and many more features that speed development for connected applications.

Windows Forms: Deploying Applications with ClickOnce
This session covers examples of ClickOnce deployment technology at work in the real-world as well as advanced scenarios, including an in-depth look at leveraging ClickOnce APIs for server-side extensions and on-demand deployment of application components.

Only two things could have made my trip last year better: an extra day to explore and soak in the marvelous place where this conference is held, and a friend from "home" to travel and explore with, to while away the long trip there and back. Can you believe I get both my wishes! I must be living right.

Oh, did you want to register? Too bad, it's sold out.

Kate