Last Thursday Scott Guthrie was in Belgium and gave two presentations: one on the new version of Visual Studio, code named "Orcas" and the second on ASP.NET and Ajax tips and tricks.

The presentation was organized by VISUG, was free, and clearly had a lot of success here in Belgium.  

He presented several new features including:

• Support for .NET 2.0, 3.0 and the new .NET 3.5 projects, this means you can already start using the new Visual Studio with your old .NET 2.0 projects.
• Improved debugging capabilities for Ajax and client-side JavaScript: I just loved the way your Internet Exporer client page is loaded as a separate item in Visual Studio Explorer, and in which you can then debug. For anyone having debugged JavaScript using alert() statements, it's finally over!
• Intellisense support for client JavaScript classes
• Improved CSS editing WYSIWYG: Visual Studio uses the same features as in Microsoft Expression.
• LINQ: it was only the second time I saw a demo on this new technology. Still have to read further about it, I'll start with this: http://www.asp.net/sandbox/app_blinq.aspx?tabid=62
• Also related to LINQ: the database schema mapping to object classes. By dragging your tables into the designer, Visual Studio automatically generates the classes for you. You can watch the video on this on Scott's blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/01/28/video-using-linq-with-asp-net-in-vs-orcas-part-1.aspx.

There was lots more little nice things but these stood out for me. Can't wait for the CTP to come out and begin playing.

During the second presentation, on ASP.NET tips and tricks: even having read his blog regularly I still learned a few new things. Be sure to check out his blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/

And what about Sharepoint: the talk wasn't about Sharepoint but he did mention that a service pack for Sharepoint will come out later this year. The service pack will have support for Ajax in Sharepoint. So that's good news... weren't it for the fact that I need to use Ajax for my current Sharepoint project.
So for this I will probably take a look at the SharePoint Ajax Toolkit.