Last month, the 2024 edition of the .NET Conf: Focus series took place, concentrating on AI development within the .NET framework. This event catered to developers of all experience levels, offering both informative and interactive sessions that showcased how AI can be integrated into .NET applications. The conference stood out as one of the most technical events in the Focus series, with numerous in-depth presentations.

The Focus series is a spin-off from the larger annual .NET Conf, a free event organized by Microsoft and the .NET community. Each Focus event highlights a particular technology related to .NET, featuring a variety of in-depth, hands-on sessions for developers. These events are one-day, live-streamed events with talks from community experts and members of the .NET product teams.

.NET Conf: Focus on AI was unique, as it centered on the latest AI developments and how they intersect with the .NET ecosystem. The sessions covered a wide range of topics, from introductory AI concepts like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to advanced technical discussions on AI tools in .NET applications.

The conference opened with a keynote by Scott Hanselman, Microsoft's Vice President of Developer Community, and Maria Naggaga, Senior Program Manager for Visual Studio and .NET. They emphasized that AI is a fundamental part of the future of .NET, highlighting how modern applications are evolving into intelligent systems.

During the keynote, several AI concepts were introduced, including ethics in AI and RAG, a topic of particular interest to developers unfamiliar with AI. Naggaga explained how RAG could be effective, particularly in customer service scenarios where AI works with real-time data. Hanselman demonstrated GitHub Copilot as an intelligent coding assistant, emphasizing the use of domain-specific data to create smarter applications.

The second session was led by Stephen Toub, a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, who demonstrated how to incorporate AI into existing .NET apps. Toub live-coded a console app, showing how Semantic Kernel could be used to simplify AI integration by separating AI services from the core logic of the application.

Daniel Roth, Program Manager for ASP.NET, conducted a hands-on session on creating AI-powered web apps using Blazor and .NET, showing how to leverage AI for enhanced user experiences. Bruno Capuano, an AI and .NET Advocate at Microsoft, presented a session on integrating AI models into .NET applications, using both local and remote small language models like Microsoft’s Phi-3 for text and vision processing, which the audience found valuable.

Several shorter sessions followed, most lasting around 30 minutes, and continued to explore topics introduced in the keynote. While many sessions focused on Azure-based solutions, they provided actionable insights for building AI-powered applications in .NET. Other notable talks included the use of AI agents to automate workflows, building personalized AI assistants using Teams AI, and applying vector embeddings in .NET for recommendation systems and RAG applications.

A key takeaway from the event was the audience’s concern about privacy when using AI, particularly with RAG, which relies on domain-specific data. Although there was no dedicated session on this, engineers addressed some of these concerns during live Q&A and mentioned plans to publish a technical article on the subject. Another prominent concern was the cost of using Azure services, a recurring issue based on past cloud projects. Additionally, attendees questioned the future of ML.NET, with some wondering if Microsoft would discontinue it in favor of newer AI tools.

For more details, the full agenda is available online, and the entire event can be watched on YouTube. Session slides and demo code can be accessed via GitHub.

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