I don’t know which to tell you first: the fact that the Next Generation User Group are holding their own one day event or that Rafal Lukawiecki will be speaking at it. I’ve mentioned Rafal before on this blog and said that he is a fantastic speaker which is born out by him consistently being rated the top speaker at TechEd. I strongly advise you to take the opportunity to see him obviously mainly because his sessions are stacked with content but also to witness someone who should be giving lessons on how to do it properly.

Here’s what Richard Costall and Dave McMahon have to say about NxtGenUG Fest 07:-

The NxtGenUG boys are pleased to announce their very first One-Day Event. We’re not calling it a conference, as we want it to be more than that! We want it to be a day to remember, and another annual highlight for the UK Developer Community.

It’s called NxtGenUG Fest 07 and the initial details are at http://www.nxtgenug.net/fest07. The event will take place at Microsoft UK Headquarters at Thames Valley Park (TVP) on Wednesday 23rd May 2007 and starts at 0900. Food will be provided and we want everybody to go home with a decent amount of quality ’swag’.

The day has a theme: "Into the future...". We start the day looking at current technologies such as Vista, then we move into the ’Orcas’ timeframe, then to 12 months hence or so, probably taking a look at dynamic languages and then really moving out into ’who knows’ with a session from Microsoft Research. There will be a keynote, with an appearance from UK DPE manager Kevin McDaniel and words from the NxtGenUG crew and finally the day will finish with a new ’Game Show’ style session courtesy of NxtGenUG featuring a lot of ’swag’!

We’re absolutely chuffed to bits to announce that the ’headline’ speaker is top TechEd speaker Rafal Lukawiecki and we will also be joined by Daniel Moth and Mike Taulty (perhaps) of the UK DPE and also by Lorna Brown from Microsoft Research. We have one more speaker to announce too, which we hope to do next week.

At lunchtime there will be ’Grok’ talks presented by NxtGenUG members, on a variety of subjects to be announced.

This event is FREE to all NxtGenUG members and a mere £54.99 for non-members until 1 March 2007, check out the URL for more details. Numbers are strictly limited ( I know everybody says that … but we really mean it this time - 230 tops!) so register early is our advice!