Speaking at TechEd 2009

I found out a few days ago that I’ll be presenting at TechEd again this year.  This year the Microsoft TechEd North America 2009 conference takes place in Los Angeles, CA.  The event runs from May 11-15 and, as always, should be a great time to network, see friends from around the world, and learn some great things.

This year I have two sessions on the schedule, the first of which I will be co-presenting with Andrew Connell (MOSS MVP).  This session should be a whole lot of fun as Andrew and I walk you through the creation of an extensible Web Part capable of querying content in multiple site collections with an extended version of the Content Query Web Part and the SharePoint Search Service.  Then we’ll take it one step further and demonstrate how to perform federated searches against external data sources with Azure!

Here are the session details.

• OFC405 – Extending the Content Query Web Part to Aggregate Data Across Site Collections and External Sources – Level 400 Session
  • This session will demonstrate how you can aggregate data from multiple site collections and external data sources by creating an extensible data provider.  In this session you will learn how to create a provider which aggregates data from multiple site collections with the Content Query Web Part and the SharePoint Search Service, as well as creating custom providers that aggregate data from external sources like Windows Azure.  Co-presented with Andrew Connell (MOSS MVP)

In the second session I’ll show you how to solve business needs by developing functionality with the Business Data Catalog (BDC) that goes beyond the out of the box capabilities.  If you haven’t seen the BDC before, or if you are wondering what it is truly capable of, then this session is for you.

• OFC318 – Go Beyond with the  Business Data Catalog – Level 300 Session
  • This session will demonstrate how to go above and beyond the out of the box functionality the Business Data Catalog provides.  During this session attendees will learn how to use the BDC administrative API to change the connection string inside an application definition to make moving from a staging to a production environment simple and easy.  Attendees will also learn how to use the BDC runtime APIs to query and display BDC data in a custom Web Part and Windows Forms Application and how to query the BDC with a custom WCF service.  Custom Silverlight applications will demonstrate how to use the WCF service to query and display data from the BDC.

I hope to see you there!