Avalon
Avalon is the next-generation Windows UI, which looks to be a huge improvement over the current Windows UI. Baked-in to the platform are new features such as transparent windows, animation, and streaming video. Also saw a demo of a rotated text box, new common-dialog-like controls for dealing with contacts in a unified way, and a new XML-like language (XAML) for building Windows applications …

WinFS
WinFS will allow us to extend the file system beyond simple files and folders through the use of user-defined schemas. Documents can easily be categorized, searched, and “stacked” by any number of properties. Thus, the ability to organize documents by any number of properties (taxonomy) will now be baked into the platform …

Indigo
Indigo can be summed up as the next version of web services. Built into the platform will be the ability to communicate securely with web services across the Internet, as well as collaborating with your contacts via instant messaging, voice, document exchanging, and desktop sharing …

Breakout Session - Integrating Real-Time Collaboration in Your Applications
Got an overview of how you can integrate Instant Messaging with current applications, and what you will be able to do with Longhorn. Currently you can use a COM component to provide IM, provided you know the intricacies with the various protocols. In Longhorn, managed controls will provide more a more streamlined and simpler approach, as well as a slicker UI …

Breakout Session - Programming SQL Server “Yukon” Using Managed Code: Building Stored Procedures, Functions, and User-Defined Types
We got a demonstration of the next generation SQL Server product, Yukon. Yukon provides the ability to implement stored procedures, functions, and user-defined data types in the .Net language of your choice, since SQL Server Yukon will host the CLR. We saw demos of a user-defined data type and function defined in managed C# code and called from a stored procedure written in T/SQL. The main takeaway here was that T/SQL wasn’t necessarily going to be replaced with managed code, and that there are still instances where T/SQL will be advantageous over managed code …

Breakout Session - “Indigo”: Services and the Future of Distributed Applications
Don Box gave an excellent talk on service oriented architecture and compared and contrasted it to object-oriented technology. He drove home the concepts of services, messages, clients, and systems, and differentiated Indigo services, which exchange schema or contract between server and client (more secure), from current DCOM and CORBA technologies, which exchange objects (less secure). He also stressed that Longhorn will be the first platform to be truly object-oriented from the ground up, and to continue to use .Net Enterprise Services to implement web services as opposed to .Net Remoting to stay on track with Indigo …

Miscellaneous
Attendees get a backpack suitable for carrying books and a laptop. The major giveaways inside: a licensed copy of Office System 2003 Professional edition, and a copy of the second edition of Writing Secure Code (and, of course, a t-shirt) …