Live! 360 Call for Papers

The Call for Presentations for Live! 360 Orlando 2023 Is Now Open!

Proposals are due:
Monday, March 20, 2023 11:59 PM EST

Submit your proposal here: https://sessionize.com/live360_2023  

Live! 360 returns to Orlando, November 12-17, 2023 at the Loews Royal Pacific Resort, Orlando, FL.

Live! 360 offers six co-located technical conferences for the Developer, Data, and IT community at one time for one low price. Incorporating knowledge transfer, networking and leading-edge training, these conferences keep attendees up-to-date on current technologies with a look to the future.
Live! 360 invites you to submit proposals for our upcoming event, which includes the following co-located conferences:

  • Visual Studio Live!
  • SQL Server Live!
  • TechMentor
  • Artificial Intelligence Live!
  • Cloud & Containers Live!
  • NEW! Cybersecurity & Ransomware Live! Orlando

Live! 360SM Orlando (November 12-17, 2023) will offer a combination of hands-on labs, workshops, 75-minute sessions, 20-minute fast focus sessions, and panels. We encourage you to submit multiple presentations (three or more) so that the conference chairs have more than two options per speaker.

When submitting your sessions, workshops or hands-on labs, please select the event you are submitting for, and select a track your talk will fit into within the event. Tracks are identified per event as follows:

  • VSL = Visual Studio Live!
  • SQL = SQL Server Live!
  • TM = TechMentor
  • AIL = Artificial Intelligence Live!
  • CCL = Cloud & Containers Live!
  • CRL = Cybersecurity & Ransomware Live!

2-Day HOLs and Workshops:
We are also looking for two-day workshops and two-day hands-on labs that will be offered as part of our 2023 / 2024 Training Seminar series (Dev and IT Pro topics are welcome).

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 presentation (learning objectives)
  • Speaker's Bio, including previous conference speaking/presentation experience
  • Speaker's Hi-res Photo

Speaker Compensation:
Speakers chosen to present at Live! 360 Orlando 2023 will receive a full-conference pass and a stipend for each session or workshop they present. Live! 360 will also cover hotel accommodations (room and tax only) for a pre-determined number of nights at a hotel as outlined in the speaker agreement. Speakers are responsible for their own travel costs and incidentals. For more specifics on speaker compensation and compensated hotel nights, please reach out to Danielle Potts at dpotts@Converge360.com. 

The Call for Presentations is posted at: https://sessionize.com/live360_2023   

Remember, proposals are due: Monday, March 20, 2023 11:59 PM EST

CFP Topics by Event:

Visual Studio Live!
Modern Software Engineering

  • Key Pillars of DevOps (automation, collaboration, customer centricity, etc.)
  • DevSecOps and other XXXOps enhancements
  • Operations for developers (on premises and cloud)
  • Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
  • Platform Engineering
  • Observability benefits, strategies, and tooling
  • Monitoring benefits, strategies, and tooling
  • 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
  • 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)
  • 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")
  • Application Analytics (App Insights, New Relic, etc.)
  • Migrating from a non-Microsoft platform to an Azure DevOps Server/Services environment
  • Development, Quality, and Security leading practices

Cloud Computing

  • Includes cloud, server, and messaging technologies
  • Container technology like containerd, Docker, Kubernetes, Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), Azure Container Apps, Azure Container Instances (ACI) 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, rustlet)
  • Services in general (REST, queuing, etc.)
  • Hosting non-Microsoft platforms in Azure (Java, NodeJS, Python, etc.)

Database and Analytics

  • Entity Framework
  • Integrating "legacy" data with modern applications
  • IoT and streaming analytics (including Azure IoT Hub; Azure Event Hubs; Azure Stream Analytics; Spark Streaming on Azure Databricks, Azure Synapse Analytics; and Apache Storm or Kafka on HDInsight)

New Experiences - Mobile, Desktop, and Native Clients

  • .NET MAUI for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac
  • Upgrading / Migrating Xamarin.Forms to .NET MAUI
  • iOS, Android native development (Swift, Java, Kotlin)
  • Uno Platform
  • Blazor native and hybrid app development
  • Flutter
  • Voice, text, and other bot experiences
  • Metaverse: AR/VR/MR experiences
  • Mobile web and responsive web design
  • WinUI, WPF and Windows Forms applications with .NET 6
  • Design Principles (UI, UX, Interaction)

Human Factors in Engineering

  • Asynchronous development techniques
  • High quality code review outcomes and experiences
  • Building and supporting high performing teams 
  • Mentorship programs, benefits, and strategies for technologists
  • Effective inter-team feedback and communication
  • Team Communication/Collaboration tools (Microsoft Teams, Slack, Gitter, etc.) 
  • Product delivery processes and frameworks (agile, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, etc.)
  • Metrics at any level, what to collect and how to use them effectively
  • Lean and agile Testing Practices
  • Delivering at scale, the what, why, and how
  • Value Stream Mapping - what, why, and how
  • Psychologically safety and trust, why it matters
  • Teaming effectively in an increasingly remote and asynchronous world
  • Tools and techniques for facilitating events/meetings/ceremonies for distributed teams
  • Technologist career paths and career development strategies

Visual Studio / .NET

  • Visual Studio productivity
  • Visual Studio Code and extensions
  • Visual Studio for Mac
  • .NET 7, .NET 6, .NET Standard 2.0
  • Cross platform .NET for Linux, Windows, Mac, and others
  • New C# language features
  • Advanced .NET, such as building analyzers and .NET 6 or 7 code generation
  • Deep dive topics such as threading, performance optimization, and memory usage
  • Dependency Injection
  • Maker / Hobby / Games

Web Client

  • Blazor (server-side and client-side)
  • 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

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)

SQL Server Live!

Proposals are welcome in the following topic areas:

  • Working with SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT)
  • Performance tuning and optimization in OLTP and OLAP applications
  • SQL Server security—from an operational and development perspective
  • Analysis Services, including MOLAP and Tabular modes, MDX and DAX, as well as Reporting Services and SQL Server Machine Learning Services
  • Automation techniques and PowerShell
  • Big Data and unstructured data in SQL Server with data virtualization/PolyBase and native JSON support
  • Information Management and Data Governance with Integration Services, Azure Data Factory and Azure Purview
  • Power BI (including Premium and Premium Per User) – includes self-service, front-end, developer and enterprise topics (e.g. Composite Models)
  • Azure SQL Database, and all its variants (Managed Instance, Hyperscale, Edge)
  • Azure Database for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB
  • Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL
  • Lift and shift - moving on-prem databases to the cloud including Azure VMs, SQL Database, and Managed Instance
  • The Microsoft Azure data stack beyond Azure SQL: Azure Synapse Analytics, Databricks, Data Lake, Azure Data Explorer ("Kusto"), Cosmos DB, Event Hubs, Stream Analytics and IoT Hub
  • NoSQL data patterns with Cosmos DB
  • Operational analytics with in-memory OLTP and Columnstore indexes
  • High availability, disaster recovery, and continuity planning
  • Operational monitoring and maintenance
  • Development techniques and best practices
  • Cloud and hybrid datacenter services and approaches, including Azure SQL Database and SQL Server running on Azure VMs, Amazon Relational Database Services (RDS) or Google Cloud SQL

TechMentor

Client and Endpoint Management

  • Windows 10
  • Windows 11
  • Servicing and patching, for OS's and 3rd party applications
  • Microsoft 365
  • MDM
  • Intune
  • Intune Suite (Advanced Management Pack)
  • Configuration Manager
  • Autopilot
  • Endpoint Analytics
  • UEFI
  • Windows Virtual Desktop
  • Azure Virtual Desktop
  • Windows 365
  • Advanced Desktop Troubleshooting
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

PowerShell and DevOps

  • PowerShell State of the Union
  • PowerShell
  • PowerShell Core / Cross-Platform
  • PowerShell Tooling
  • PowerShell DSC / Azure State Configuration
  • JIT/JEA
  • Graph API
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Classic Infrastructure

  • Active Directory
  • Group Policy
  • Windows Server 2019/2022
  • Windows Admin Center
  • Migration and Upgrading to Server 2019/2022
    • File
    • Print
    • Active Directory
    • DNS/DHCP
  • Migrating IIS on-prem workloads to the Cloud
  • Windows Defender for Servers
  • Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) in Server 2019/2022
  • Networking in Server 2019/2022
  • Storage Spaces Direct (S2D)
    • Azure Stack HCI
  • MFA in Server Management
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Soft Skills for ITPros

  • Presentation skills
  • How to sell an idea to your boss
  • Documenting
  • Working Remote
  • Dealing with Conflict
  • Professionalism in a Work from Home Era
  • IT Burnout – Coping with issues like COVID-19
  • Blogging and Social Media for IT Pro's
  • Book Writing for IT Pro's
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Azure (Public/Hybrid)

  • Azure IaaS
  • Azure Stack
  • Azure DevOps
  • Azure Zero to Hero
  • Introduction to Azure Concepts
  • Azure Labs
  • Azure Backup (Server)
  • Azure Site Recovery
  • Azure Networking
  • Azure Scripting and Automation
  • Azure Resource Manager
  • Azure ARC
  • Azure AD Premium
  • Azure Licensing
  • Azure Virtual WAN
  • Azure VPN
  • Azure Firewall
  • Azure AD Conditional Access
  • Azure PIM (Privileged Identity Management)
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Office / Microsoft 365 for the IT Pro

  • Migrating to Microsoft 365
  • Managing Microsoft 365
  • Troubleshooting Microsoft 365
  • Optimizing Microsoft 365
  • Teams
  • Metaverse
  • Exchange Online
  • SharePoint Online
  • Onedrive for Business
  • Backup and Recovery for Microsoft 365
  • Reporting for Microsoft 365
  • Microsoft 365 Zero to Hero
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Artificial Intelligence Live!

Intelligent Applications

  • Ethics and AI
  • Amazon Alexa, Google Home
  • Azure Bot Service
  • Power Virtual Agents
  • Microsoft Bot Framework
  • Amazon Lex (and supporting technologies)
  • Google Chat Bots (Dialogflow, Hangouts, etc.)
  • Other Chatbot Services
  • Microsoft Cognitive Services
  • Machine Learning Web Services on Amazon, Google, IBM clouds
  • Quantum Computing

Machine Learning Algorithms and Libraries

  • Picking the right algorithm
  • What is deep learning?
  • Scikit-learn, NumPy and Pandas
  • TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras
  • H20.ai

Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) Platforms

Production ML and MLOps

  • On Azure Machine Learning
  • On Amazon SageMaker, Google Vertex AI
  • With MLflow and on Databricks
  • Other platforms: Dataiku, DataRobot, Domino, Iguazio
  • Feature stores

Bias, Interpretability and Explainability

  • On Azure Machine Learning, SageMaker Clarify
  • With LIME and SHAP

Data Visualization

  • R plots and packages (ggplot2, etc.)
  • Python data visualization libraries (Matplotlib, Seaborn, etc.)
  • Plot.ly
  • D3.js

Cloud ML Platforms

  • Open AI
  • Large Language Models (LLMs)
  • GPT, ChatGPT
  • Azure Machine Learning
  • Amazon SageMaker
  • Google Vertex AI

Tools and Platforms

  • Jupyter & Zeppelin notebooks
  • VS Code for data science and machine learning
  • SAS
  • DataRobot, Dataiku, RapidMiner
  • H20, Knime, Weka
  • SQL Server Machine Leaning Services
  • Azure Data Science Virtual Machines
  • PyCharm, R Studio, R and Python in Visual Studio
  • GitHub Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer, and other AI coding tools
  • Applying AI/ML to CI/CD and other DevOps practices

Programming

  • Python, R, Matlab, Q#, F#

ML and Spark

  • Spark MLlib on Azure Databricks, HDInsight, Synapse Analytics and other environments
  • PySpark, SparkR and Koalas

GPU Technology

  • NVIDIA CUDA Programming
  • Intel MKL, DNN
  • Azure NC virtual machines, Google Cloud Platform GPU, Amazon EC2 Elastic GPUs
  • CPU coding in the cloud with tools like GitHub Codespaces and other products

Analytics and Big Data

  • Hadoop (including HDInsight) and Hadoop ecosystem components (Hive, HBase, etc.)
  • Spark (including HDInsight, Azure Databricks, Synapse Analytics and SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters) and Spark SQL
  • Synapse Analytics
  • Cosmos DB
  • Other NoSQL (including MongoDB, Cassandra, Couchbase, DynamoDB, Bigtable, etc.)

IoT and Streaming Data Analytics

  • Internet of Things concepts and technologies
  • Azure IoT Hub
  • Spark Streaming
  • Azure Event Hubs
  • Azure Stream Analytics
  • Azure Data Explorer (formerly project "Kusto") and Azure Synapse Data Explorer

Cloud & Containers Live!

Infrastructure

  • Setting up and managing hybrid clouds
  • Install Kubernetes on servers and clouds
  • Manage Kubernetes in dev, test, and production, including tools like Rancher, Prometheus, Lens, and more
  • Manage public cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, and GCP
  • Manage private/hybrid clouds with Azure Stack, VMware, Red Hat, and other tools/vendors
  • Securing cloud-based infrastructure
  • Cloud storage, including Kubernetes storage and tools like Longhorn
  • Continuous integration and delivery
  • Managing virtual disks, networks, and other hardware analogs in the cloud
  • Configuring network bridges to implement hybrid public-private clouds
  • Implementing common infrastructure models in public and private clouds
  • How to work with software developers to define base containers and other aspects of the runtime environment (for dev, test, stage, production)
  • Monitoring and troubleshooting container-based environments
  • Understanding the internals of cloud platforms such as K8s, OpenShift, Azure, AWS, GCP

Cloud-Native Software Development

  • Install Kubernetes, Rancher, Docker, and similar tools/platforms on developer workstations
  • Building software to run in container technologies like Kubernetes, and container-based offerings from AWS, Azure, GCP, and other cloud platforms
  • Building software to run in PaaS offerings from Azure, AWS, and other cloud platforms
  • Microservices architecture, design, and implementation
  • Async message-based communication models
  • Working with the 12 Factor patterns and 8 Distributed Computing Fallacy anti-patterns
  • Leveraging PaaS services such as messaging, storage, and event grids
  • Kafka, RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, and other messaging services
  • Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Platform
  • Serverless computing (Azure Functions, Amazon Lambda)
  • Implementing instrumentation in software to provide for robust runtime monitoring
  • Web API design

Cloud DevOps

  • Infrastructure as code
  • Using infrastructure automation tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Azure ARM, Pulumi, etc.
  • CI/CD: Automated builds, unit testing, QA testing, packaging
  • Automated deployment (e.g. GitHub Actions or Octopus Deploy)
  • Release management for the cloud
  • Rolling updates: strategy and implementation
  • Culture building, team building, healthy communication that enables effective DevOps
  • Automated use of code scanning tools (e.g. SonarQube)

*NEW* Cybersecurity & Ransomware Live! Orlando

Ransomware Industry

  • How Ransomware works
  • How Ransomware groups operate
  • Cyber-insurance
  • How Ransomware gets into a network
  • Teaching End-Users how to identify threats (like Phishing)
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Threat Intelligence

  • Keeping up-to-date in securing environments
  • Identifying Vulnerabilities to Patch
  • Identifying Threats (Internal / External)
  • Ransomware Groups
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Human Intelligence

  • Recruiting in Cybersecurity
  • Human mind
  • Human factor in Security
  • Soft skills in cybersecurity
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Security Operations Center

  • What is a Security Operations Center, and how do we get one?
  • Establish or Outsource a SOC?
  • What makes an effective SOC
  • SIEM solutions
  • Building a SOC
  • Running a SOC
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Incident Response

  • Incident Response in general
  • Preparing for Incident Response and Recovery
  • Building a Cyber Security War Room with Microsoft Teams
  • Recovering from Cyberattacks
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Building a secure fabric
  • Backup and Restore
  • Microsoft 365 recovery
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Blue Team

  • Encryption
  • Patching
  • Effective Hardware and Software Inventory
  • Protecting On-Prem Infrastructure
  • Protecting Azure Infrastructure
  • Microsoft Defender for ***
  • Microsoft Entra
  • Securing Microsoft Teams
  • So, you don't know where to start – A beginners guide to hardening hybrid Windows infrastructure
  • Protecting Microsoft 365 Infrastructure
  • Multi-Factor Authentication deployment made easy
  • Microsoft Baselines and CIS
  • Properly configuring Microsoft Attack Surface Reduction Rules
  • Securing Linux Systems
  • Zero Trust
  • Anti-Malware
  • EDR and XDR
  • How to build secure code
  • How to prevent supply chain attacks
  • Secure CI/CD pipeline
  • Firewalls
  • Effective Patching
  • Password Managers
  • Privileged Access Management
  • Privileged Identity Management
  • Privileged Access Workstations
  • Principle of Least Privilege
  • Allow-Listing (Binary Control)
  • VPN or not to VPN
  • What makes a great Blue Teamer
  • Tabletop exercises
  • IAM – Identity and Access Management
  • Protecting your home network
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Red Team

  • Penetration Testing
  • Hacking Windows Servers - can it be that easy?
  • Hacking Linux
  • Hacking Mac OSX
  • Hacking Mobile OS's
  • Hacking Tools
  • Hacking Techniques
  • What makes a great Red Teamer
  • Hacking Physical Hardware
  • Physical Security – Getting through the door
  • Hacking a bank
  • Hacking Networks
  • Reconnaissance
  • How to find vulnerabilities in code
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

Purple Team

  • Are you Blue, Red or Purple?
  • What makes a great Purple Teamer
  • Security Audits
  • Threat Impact Analysis
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)

OT & IoT Security

  • The S in IoT, stands for Security
  • Protecting Smart Homes
  • Protecting Air gapped Networks
  • Microsoft Defender for IoT
  • Network Detection and Response (NDR)
  • Travelling over the airgap
  • Other (If you have other topics to suggest not in the list above, we welcome your ideas)