Visual Studio Live! @ Microsoft HQ Call for Papers 2026

The Call for Presentations for Visual Studio Live! @ Microsoft HQ 2026 is now OPEN.
Proposals are due:  Monday, December 1st, 2025 11:59 PM PST
Submit your proposal here: https://sessionize.com/vslive_Microsoft26/

Visual Studio Live! @ Microsoft HQ
July 27 - 31, 2026
Microsoft Conference Center, Redmond WA

Visual Studio Live! @ Microsoft HQ will offer a combination of in-depth and interactive sessions including lecture-based workshops, hands-on labs, 75-minute breakouts, and 20-minute fast focuses. We invite you to submit sessions in any of these categories. You may also submit across multiple topic areas at a single show, for example, you may choose to submit 3 separate talks under the Human Factors, Modern Software Engineering, and AI, Data, and Machine Learning categories for a single VSLive! Event. We encourage you to speak in all areas where you have valuable experiences and passion to share your knowledge.

To help you in creating successful submissions, we want to share some of the considerations that go into our process of selecting our speakers and sessions for a Visual Studio Live! event. First, each speaker will typically be selected to deliver two 75-minute presentations. That means that it is in your best interest to submit at least three (3) different 75-minute sessions in addition to any other sessions (Deep Dives, Fast Focus, etc.) that you might be interested in delivering, especially if you are submitting overview or introductory topics that many other speakers are likely to also submit. Next, please make sure that your title is clear and appropriate to the track you are submitting it to, and that your description includes enough detail to understand what audience members will walk away from your sessions having learned. Again, many speakers often provide submissions on the same topics, meaning it comes down to a meaningful title, a quality abstract, and compelling takeaways for our participants. Following these guidelines ensures that the conference chairs do not have to eliminate fantastic speakers from the selection process because they only have 1 talk that is selectable for a given show.

If you enjoy digging in deeper and offering hands-on experience and learning, we are looking for speakers willing to deliver two-day workshops and two-day hands-on labs that will be offered as part of the 2026 VSLive! Training Course series.

Session, workshop, and hands-on lab proposals are welcome in the following topic areas:

Modern Software Engineering

  • Key Pillars of DevOps (automation, collaboration, customer centricity, etc.)
  • Agentic DevOps
  • DevSecOps and other XXXOps enhancements
  • Operations for developers (on premises and cloud)
  • Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
  • Platform Engineering
  • Azure DevOps Services
  • Azure DevOps Server (latest release)
  • Azure DevOps and GitHub integration
  • GitHub Enterprise Cloud
  • GitHub Enterprise Server
  • GitHub Advanced Security
  • GitHub Codespaces
  • GitHub Copilot
  • Other AI assistant tools like Claude Code, Google Gemini, Cursor, Cody, Meta Llama, etc.
  • Microsoft DevOps Tooling (version control, agile planning, build, release, monitoring)
  • DevOps Features in Visual Studio Enterprise (CodeLens, Profilers, IntelliTrace)
  • Online services outside of Microsoft (e.g. GitLab, AWS, etc.)
  • Release Tooling (Azure Pipelines, GitHub Actions, Chef, Puppet, Octopus Deploy)
  • Secure pipeline tooling and management
  • Component management and attestation
  • Visual Studio tooling that facilitates Agile Software Development Practices (Scrum / XP / Lean)
  • Leading practices in test development, execution strategy, environment management, and automation
  • Developer "inner loop" optimization (workstation configuration, using containers, shells, etc.)
  • Customizing your team development environment
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux (aka "Bash on Windows")
  • Observability and Monitoring benefits, strategies, and tooling
  • Application Analytics (OpenTelemetry, App Insights, New Relic, etc.)
  • Migrating from a non-Microsoft platform to an Azure DevOps Server/Services environment
  • Development, Quality, and Security leading practices
  • Asynchronous development techniques
  • General security in practice for engineering teams
  • Application Security (AppSec) fundamentals - OWASP Top 10, secure coding practices
  • Identity and Access Management - Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML
  • Secrets management - Azure Key Vault, GitHub Secrets, HashiCorp Vault
  • Supply chain security - SBOM (Software Bill of Materials), dependency scanning, signing
  • Compliance automation - SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR considerations in development
  • Performance testing and load testing - Azure Load Testing, JMeter, k6, Playwright
  • Chaos engineering - Azure Chaos Studio, resilience testing
  • Contract testing - Pact, API contract validation
  • Accessibility testing - automated a11y testing, WCAG compliance
  • Visual regression testing
  • Modernization patterns - strangler fig, feature flags, incremental migration
  • Technical debt management - identifying, prioritizing, and addressing tech debt
  • Feature flag management - LaunchDarkly, Azure App Configuration, split.io
  • API management and gateways - Azure API Management, Kong, Apigee
  • Developer portals and documentation - Backstage, API documentation strategies

Cloud Computing

  • Includes cloud, server, and messaging technologies
  • .NET Aspire
  • CNCF tools, libraries, and frameworks such as dapr
  • Container technology like containerd, Docker, podman, Kubernetes, Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), Azure Container Apps (ACA), and Azure Container Registry (ACR)
  • Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud
  • Microsoft Azure new features and Marketplace offerings
  • Microservices architecture, design, and implementation
  • Serverless computing (Azure Functions, Amazon Lambda)
  • Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate, PowerApps
  • Low code/no code, including Power Platform and SharePoint
  • Web API design
  • WebAssembly outside the browser (e.g. WASI, component model, wasmCloud)
  • Services in general (REST, queuing, gRPC, etc.)
  • Hosting non-Microsoft platforms in Azure (Java, NodeJS, Python, etc.)
  • Hybrid cloud architectures - Azure Arc, on-premises integration
  • Multi-cloud strategies - managing across Azure, AWS, GCP
  • CDN and edge computing - Azure Front Door, Cloudflare
  • Cloud cost optimization - FinOps practices, Azure Cost Management, cost allocation
  • Cloud governance - Azure Policy, landing zones, tagging strategies
  • Resource organization - management groups, subscriptions, resource groups
  • Service mesh - Istio, Linkerd,
  • Event-driven architectures - Azure Event Grid, event sourcing patterns
  • CQRS and event sourcing implementations
  • API versioning and lifecycle management
  • Distributed tracing and correlation

Data and Analytics

  • Entity Framework
  • Integrating "legacy" data to modern applications
  • SQL Server 2025, including SQL Server on Linux and containers
  • Azure SQL Database, including Serverless and Hyperscale, Azure SQL Managed Instance (SQL MI), and Azure SQL Edge
  • Azure Database for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB
  • Microsoft BI, including Power BI, Power BI Premium, Microsoft Fabric, and SQL Server Analysis Services
  • Big Data/Data Lake/Lakehouse, including Microsoft Fabric Data Lakehouse, Data Warehouse, Eventhouse and Data Engineering, Azure Synapse Analytics, HDInsight, Azure Databricks, Azure Data Explorer and Azure Data Lake Storage
  • Data Management, including Microsoft Purview, Azure Data Factory, Microsoft Fabric Data Factory (pipelines and Dataflows Gen2), SQL Server Integration Services
  • NoSQL, including Cosmos DB, Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra
  • IoT and streaming analytics (including Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence, Azure IoT Hub; Azure Event Hubs; Azure Stream Analytics; Spark Streaming on Azure Databricks and Azure Synapse Analytics)
  • Data tooling, including SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT), and Visual Studio Code (with add-ins)
  • Data quality frameworks and tools
  • Master data management (MDM)
  • Data lineage and cataloging - beyond basic Purview
  • Data privacy and anonymization - differential privacy, data masking
  • Database performance tuning - query optimization, indexing strategies
  • Database migration tools and strategies - Azure Database Migration Service
  • Polyglot persistence - choosing the right database for the job
  • Graph databases - Azure Cosmos DB Gremlin API, Neo4j
  • Time-series databases - Azure Data Explorer, InfluxDB
  • Durable Functions for data orchestration

Cutting-Edge AI

  • Agentic AI development, with Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Foundry SDK, Azure AI Foundry Agent Service, Microsoft Copilot Studio, AI Toolkit for VS Code, Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit, and Microsoft 365 Agents SDK
  • RAG application development tools and techniques, vector embeddings and search, and vector database capabilities in Azure AI Search, Cosmos DB and SQL Server
  • Azure AI, including Azure OpenAI, Azure Machine Learning and Azure AI Services
  • Microsoft Copilot technologies and development, including Copilot Studio, building Copilot plug-ins, or using copilots in dev tools
  • Self-hosting models for development using tools like Ollama and LMStudio
  • OpenAI services and APIs
  • Anthropic services and APIs
  • Google services and APIs
  • Generative AI tooling, including prompt flow, Semantic Kernel, Azure OpenAI Studio, Azure AI Foundry and Responsible AI Dashboard
  • AI in Power Apps and in-application AI on Windows
  • Developing for Copilot+ PCs, Phi-2, Small Language Models, and model fine-tuning
  • Machine Learning (ML), including Azure Machine Learning; Azure AutoML; Microsoft Fabric Data Science and FLAML; ML/AI on Azure Databricks; ML.NET
  • Data Science, including R and Python (standalone, in Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse Analytics, in SQL Server, in Azure SQL Managed Instance, in Power BI, on HDInsight and/or on Azure Databricks)
  • MLOps and model monitoring, including MLflow on Databricks and in Microsoft Fabric
  • AI ethics and bias detection - fairness in ML models
  • Explainable AI (XAI) - model interpretability techniques
  • AI red teaming and adversarial testing
  • Privacy-preserving AI - federated learning, differential privacy
  • Prompt engineering best practices - systematic approaches to prompt design
  • AI testing strategies - evaluating LLM outputs, regression testing for AI
  • Model evaluation frameworks - choosing metrics, A/B testing AI features
  • AI observability - monitoring LLM applications in production
  • Computer vision - Azure AI Vision, custom vision models
  • Speech and audio AI - Azure AI Speech, transcription, TTS
  • Document intelligence - Azure AI Document Intelligence (Form Recognizer)
  • Multi-modal AI applications - combining text, image, audio
  • AI for accessibility - using AI to improve application accessibility

New Experiences - Mobile, Desktop, and Native Clients

  • Blazor native and hybrid app development
  • Flutter, Uno Platform, Avalonia, and similar products
  • .NET MAUI for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac
  • Upgrading / Migrating Xamarin.Forms to .NET MAUI
  • iOS, and Android native development (Swift, Java, Kotlin)
  • Voice, text, and other bot experiences
  • Mobile web and responsive web design
  • WinUI, WPF and Windows Forms applications with .NET 10
  • Design Principles (UI, UX, Interaction)
  • Accessibility (a11y) in modern applications - WCAG 2.2/3.0, ARIA (Inclusive design principles, accessibility testing tools and automation, screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation patterns)
  • Windows Terminal and command-line tools
  • Cross-platform UI testing - Appium, Selenium, Playwright
  • Design systems and component libraries
  • Design tokens and theming
  • Animation and micro-interactions
  • Localization and internationalization (i18n)

Human Factors in Engineering

  • Recognizing burnout in yourself or your team and taking appropriate action
  • Recognizing confidence killers like Imposter Syndrome and building back your confidence to ensure success
  • Psychological safety and trust, why it matters, and how to build a psychologically safe environment with your team
  • Effective communication for negotiating and collaborating with team members, stakeholders, and clients, including interpersonal communication, active listening, and public speaking
  • Techniques for working well within a team like self-awareness, effective sharing of ideas, and providing constructive feedback essential for successful software projects
  • Adaptability for being flexible and open to change, whether it's new technologies, project requirements, or team dynamics
  • Prioritization and time management to meet deadlines and deliver quality work
  • Team communication/collaboration tools (Microsoft Teams, Slack, Azure DevOps boards, etc.)
  • Tools and techniques for facilitating events/meetings/ceremonies
  • Tech leadership skills for inspiring and guiding team members, even if you're not in a formal leadership role
  • Creative problem solving to delight end users, satisfy client needs in helpful ways, and stay relevant in today's dynamically changing tech environment
  • Value Stream Mapping - what, why, and how
  • Customer experience strategies, tools, and leading practices
  • Metrics, OKRs, and goal setting for individuals and teams
  • Teaming effectively in an increasingly remote and asynchronous world
  • High-quality code review outcomes and experiences
  • Mentorship programs, including benefits, and strategies for impact and scale
  • Leveraging AI tools and solutions to boost the non-technical aspects of your career
  • Technologist career paths and career development strategies
  • Product delivery processes and frameworks (agile, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, etc.)
  • Lean and agile testing practices
  • Delivering effectively at scale
  • Neurodiversity in tech teams - ADHD, autism, creating inclusive environments
  • Conflict resolution - handling disagreements constructively
  • Remote work ergonomics - physical and mental health for remote developers
  • Technical writing and documentation - writing for developers
  • Blameless postmortems - learning from incidents
  • Engineering culture building - fostering innovation and collaboration

Visual Studio / .NET

  • Visual Studio productivity
  • Visual Studio Code and extensions
  • .NET 10
  • .NET Aspire
  • Cross platform .NET for Linux, Windows, Mac, and others
  • New C# language features
  • Advanced .NET, such as building analyzers and .NET code generation
  • Deep dive topics such as Dependency Injection, threading, performance optimization, and memory usage
  • Instrumentation, logging, tracing, and OpenTelemetry
  • Maker / Hobby / Games
  • .NET Upgrade Assistant - automated migration tooling
  • Hot Reload and Edit and Continue - advanced scenarios
  • Visual Studio profiling tools deep dive - CPU, memory, database profiling
  • Debugging techniques - advanced breakpoints, tracepoints, debugging production
  • NuGet package management - private feeds, package creation, versioning
  • Minimal APIs in depth - beyond basics
  • gRPC in .NET - building high-performance services
  • SignalR - real-time communication patterns
  • Background services and hosted services - IHostedService, BackgroundService
  • Native AOT compilation - benefits, constraints, use cases
  • Source generators - creating and using them
  • Span<T> and Memory<T> - high-performance memory patterns
  • System.Text.Json - advanced serialization scenarios
  • LINQ optimization - performance considerations
  • Nullable reference types - migration and best practices
  • Record types and pattern matching - modern C# features

Web Client

  • Blazor (server-side, client-side, and .NET 10 capabilities)
  • Angular, React, Vue, and other JavaScript UI frameworks
  • WebAssembly, including .NET, Go, Rust, and others
  • Progressive Web Apps
  • ECMAScript/JavaScript
  • TypeScript
  • node.js and other server-side frameworks
  • CSS and related tooling and frameworks
  • Micro-frontends - architecture and implementation
  • Build tools and bundlers - Vite, esbuild, Webpack 5+
  • State management - Redux, Zustand, Context API patterns
  • GraphQL - Apollo Client, Relay, GraphQL in .NET
  • Server-side rendering (SSR) - Next.js, Remix, Nuxt
  • Web Components - custom elements, shadow DOM
  • Progressive enhancement - building resilient web apps
  • Web Vitals and performance - Core Web Vitals optimization
  • Service Workers - advanced caching strategies, background sync
  • Web APIs - IndexedDB, Web Storage, Notification API

Web Server

  • ASP.NET Core Features
  • ASP.NET Razor Pages
  • ASP.NET MVC
  • ASP.NET Web API
  • Visual Studio Web developer tooling (built-in, add-ons, testing)
  • GraphQL server implementation - Hot Chocolate, GraphQL .NET
  • SignalR for real-time applications
  • Minimal APIs patterns - validation, middleware, OpenAPI
  • Rate limiting and throttling - ASP.NET Core rate limiting middleware
  • API security - CORS, authentication, authorization policies
  • ASP.NET Core performance optimization - response caching, output caching
  • Load balancing strategies - sticky sessions, health checks
  • HTTP/3 and QUIC - next-generation protocols

Submission Guidelines

Please include the following information with your submission (failure to supply all requested information may limit opportunities for selection):

  • Speaker's Name
  • Speaker's Title
  • Speaker's Company
  • Title of Presentation
  • 100-word Description of Presentation
  • 3-5 Bullets, explaining what the attendee will learn from the presentation (learning objectives)
  • Speaker's Color Photo (hi-resolution)
  • Speaker's Bio, including previous conference speaking/presentation experience

Speakers that are chosen to present at Visual Studio Live! events will receive a full-conference pass and a stipend for each session they present. Speakers are responsible for their own travel costs and incidentals. The speaker stipend for two talks typically covers domestic flight costs and travel to/from the airport. Visual Studio Live! will also cover hotel accommodation (room and tax only) for a pre-determined number of nights at a host hotel as outlined in the speaker agreement.

 Proposals are due: Monday, December 1st, 2025 11:59 PM PST
Submit your proposal here: https://sessionize.com/vslive_Microsoft26/

We look forward to your submissions!
~ The Visual Studio Live! Event Team

For questions or to be added to our call for presentations notification list, please contact:

Danielle Potts
Sr. Event Manager
[email protected]
925.207.0468

For questions regarding exhibit or sponsorship sales, please contact:
Brent Sutton
VP, Events
[email protected]
415.518.1962