DevDays 2011 is just around the corner. Most of the agenda and speakers are known, and there is a lot of content to look forward to. I will be doing a session on implementing CQRS (command/query responsibility segregation) on Windows Azure. CQRS is an architectural pattern that completely separates commands (writes) from queries (reads), with the intent of improving scaleability and optimizing for both reads and writes.

During both days, when I am not in sessions or at the Avanade stand, I will be sure to visit the Ask the Experts stands and of course the WAZUG (Windows Azure User Group) stand. Come meet me there for interesting discussions on Azure, architecture or other random topics that might come up.

Since I get to go both the 28th and 29th, I look forward to visiting lots of interesting sessions. The first day:

• 9:15-1045: the keynote, obviously. Scott Hanselman, Rob Miles, what more could you ask for? Should at the very least be entertaining.
• 11:05-12:20: Entity Framework in practice by Pieter de Bruin. Entity Framework really grew up for framework 4 and even more so in the latest 4.1 release.
• 13:30-14:45: difficult one. Might go to the Windows Azure AppFabric session by Clemens Vasters, but the This costs what? Azure session by Scott Seely is also interesting (and possibly more applicable in my day-to-day job at the moment).
• 15:05-16:20: again a bit hard to choose, this time because there is not a lot of content that appeals to my personal interest. Having said that, seeing Scott Hanselman do his thing in the NuGet in Depth session is always entertaining & a guarantee to learn at least something new, so I will probably go there.
• 16:30-17:45: the moment of truth: my CQRS session. My guess is this is where I will be.

On Geek night I will probably go to whatever I feel like at the moment. Great sessions by Scott Hanselman, Rob Miles and many others will provide a lot of info (and fun!).

Friday 29th again brings a wealth of interesting sessions:

• 9:15-10:30 great sessions on Azure. Real World Azure by Christian Wyer, Monitoring and Managing your Azure solution by Edwin van Wijk and of course identity & access control in the cloud by Vittorio Bertocci. At the same time, 2 colleagues of mine will also be doing their sessions: Ewald Hofman will be presenting on Lab Management and Mirjan van Olst will be doing an interesting session on using SharePoint search to develop custom solutions.
•  10:50-12:05: an interesting session on real world Windows Azure development: tips & tricks by Wade Wegner might be a good one, but at the same time Clemens Vaster is giving a session on the AppFabric Service Bus. On the non-Azure side, the session on real world architecture with ASP.NET MVC by Hadi Hariri (Jetbrains, home of ReSharper. When is R#6 due, anyway?) could be interesting; I really liked his session at Oredev last year.
• 13:15-14:30: again, many Azure sessions, ranging from Azure AppFabric Access Control Service deep dive to migrating to Azure. On the ALM side, automating QA has always been a pet project of mine, so that might be interesting as well.
• 14:50-16:05: the 400++ session on LINQ by Bart de Smet will probably be very fast-paced and interesting, but my pick is the application performance on Windows Phone 7 session by another colleague, Caspar Ruhe. 
• 16:15-17:30: what better way to end an undoubtedly great conference with a final Azure session? This time, the session by Vittorio Bertocci on Developing SaaS solutions with the Windows Azure platform caught my eye, especially since I am currently involved in doing just that.

So, all in all, it looks like it is going to be another great event. I look forward to meeting you there! Drop me a comment of find me on twitter (@tijmenvdk) to let me know where you are going.