Speaking Engagements - oliversturm.com - Consulting, Training, DevExpress Expert

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Speaking

Basta! Spring 2010

Speaking at conferences is one of the things I love to do. In the past few years, I have averaged around 45 talks and workshops a year, at small and large conferences, community events and universities all over Europe. For the German Basta! conference, I am the track chair for the C# Days and a member of the advisory board. I am registered with the INETA Europe Speaker Bureau.

If you are interested in having me come and speak at your event, please don't hesitate to get back to me!

Unfortunately the list isn't complete at this time - too much work, too little time! I have been to several events since September 2010 that haven't made it to this page yet. Let me know if you have any specific queries, and I'll update this page as soon as I can.

Upcoming Events

NRW Conf 2010, September 10 2010, Wuppertal, Germany

Talk: Dynamic Consumption in C# 4.0

C# 4.0 supports the new "dynamic" keyword, which promises easy interaction with those parts of the programming world that are, well, dynamic in nature. In this session, Oliver walks you through several scenarios, interfacing with dynamic programming languages, Automation and Web Services, and explaining some of the basics of how dynamic calls work in C#.

BASTA! 2010, September 20-24 2010, Mainz, Germany

Keynote: Language independence and the consequences

Programming languages: central tool of programmers, loved, hated, very personal, ubiquitous, essential though often ignored. The growing diversity on the .NET platform creates possibilities, but also responsibilities.

Talk: Dynamic Consumption in C# 4.0

Talk: Dynamic C# 4.0 — The Provider Side

The integration of dynamic features in C# 4.0 is based on clever architecture that hooks into the DLR. Therefore, the APIs are complex (and well designed!) enough to allow for extensions, so that C# programmers can create their own dynamic classes, either to implement fully dynamic structures for use on the "static side" of .NET programming, or to provide APIs to dynamic languages. This session provides several practical examples!

Workshop: Day of .NET Languages

The world of .NET languages is getting more complex all the time, and the newest batch of additions around VS 2010 brings the paradigms of functional as well as dynamic programming to the table. For .NET programmers it is often hard to see how these "new" ideas fit in with the object oriented patterns they have been using so far, and the availability of hybrid languages, which cross over from one world into the other, make it obvious that these are not black and white decisions. In this workshop, Oliver takes you through a real-world application scenario, which combines paradigms to deliver the best possible solution.

Talk: Functional Magic

Everyone has heard of functional programming these days, and many people are curious about its wonderful promises. On the .NET platform, some of these promises are hard to demonstrate due to lacking infrastructure. This session aims to show ideas like automatic parallelization or bug fixing in running systems on the basis of the existing platforms Haskell and Erlang, and compare with .NET.

Past Events

2010

dotnet Cologne 2010, May 28 2010, Cologne, Germany

Talk: Functional Programming in C# 3.0

C# 3.0 introduced a number of language features that finally make it very easy to employ a functional style of programming. However, from the perspective of an imperative programmer, there are lots of questions surrounding functional programming. Why would I want to do it at all? Should I drop all state information in my apps? What useful functional patterns are applicable to C#? This session uses many practical examples and some theory to answer these questions, and it requires a good understanding of C# 3.0 language features.

Talk: Concurrency Using Functional Patterns in C#

The multi-core scalability issue is being widely discussed these days, and one solution that is regularly proposed involves the application of patterns from functional programming. One of the paradigms of FP is the immutability of data, which is what makes it appealing when it comes to concurrency. In this session, Oliver uses a practical example to show concurrency in action, based on immutable data and other functional approaches.

Microsoft NT KONFERENCA 2010, May 24-27 2010, Portoroz, Slovenia

(These guys win the prize for coolest conference banner ever, don't you think?)

Talk: Dynamic Consumption in C# 4.0

Talk: Dynamic C# 4.0 — The Provider Side

Microsoft WinDays 2010, April 19-22 2010, Rovinj, Croatia

I was scheduled to do two talks at this event, "Dynamic C# 4.0 - The Provider Side" and "Concurrency Using Functional Patterns in C#". Unfortunately I couldn't make it to this event, due to the ash cloud that resulted in flight cancellations all over Europe.

Edge UG/Microsoft Tech Days UK 2010, April 13 2010, London, UK

Talk: Functional Programming on .NET

F# is a new language in Visual Studio 2010, a hybrid that crosses over from the well-known object oriented .NET world into that of functional programming. It makes parallel programming easier, they say — and it does, in addition to all the other cool language structures it offers. But the idea of functional programming doesn't depend on the language alone, and good old C# can be used to implement many of the same ideas. In this presentation, Oliver gives an overview of functional aspects in both languages, explaining F# as he goes along and conjuring up much mind-bending syntax in C#. Don't miss it!

DevWeek 2010, March 15-29 2010, London, UK

Talk: Functional Programming in F#

F# is a multi-paradigm language, but its syntax heritage comes from a functional world. Functional Programming is one of the main benefits that F# brings to the .NET platform. It encompasses many distinctive approaches and techniques, and this session provides an introduction to some of them, including the use of higher order functions, recursions and continuations, functional precomputation and memoization. The session requires a good understanding of F# foundations and syntax.

Talk: The Advantage of Immutable Data

Mutability of data is the source of much trouble for programmers who look for bugs in computer programs, or who simply want to create a stable testing environment with dependable, reproducible results. But using data that never changes is certainly possible — even in C#. This session provides an overview of the advantages as well as a practical introduction.

Workshop: Functional Programming in C# Deep Dive

Ideas of functional programming promise greater stability, simpler testing and debugging and especially safe application of parallelization. C# as a traditionally imperative and object oriented programming language doesn't look like a prime candidate for functional programming, but C# programmers can still benefit from these ideas — and of course there are many benefits in being able to use a language that developers are already familiar with. In this workshop, Oliver Sturm presents an introduction to concepts of functional programming, and several practical solutions that fulfill the promises above.

Basta! Spring 2010, February 22-26 2010, Darmstadt, Germany

Talk: Dynamic Consumption in C# 4.0

Talk: Dynamic C# 4.0 — The Provider Side

Workshop: A day of F#

Microsoft Research describes F# as "a scripted/functional/imperative/object-oriented programming language". Combining all those aspects in one language is certainly not an easy task, but they've done a good job of it. F# is interesting both as a language to actually consider for your projects and as a source of features that might make it into the mainstream .NET languages tomorrow.

This full-day workshop starts with basic and advanced syntax constructs of the F# language, and goes on to show applications of both functional and imperative/object oriented programming and topics specifically relevant to .NET programming, like exception and IDisposable handling. The day concludes with a quick overview of libraries included with F#, for instance for compatibility with LINQ and asynchronous programming.

This workshop is the perfect package to introduce .NET programmers to the F# language and its new world of multi-paradigm programming!