Microsoft’s MVC programming model for web applications can be a challenge to those new to it, especially those coming from a web forms development background. There’s a lot more manual effort involved and things that happen at runtime may not be obvious.

But the internet is bursting (overwhelmingly so, depending on your perspective) with free and open source tools and libraries that can make your life easier. It’s knowing which ones to pick that can be the challenge, since they can range in quality from gold standard to garbage.

This session will be a less of a presentation than a group brain pick – we’ll start with a few excellent tools that can give visibility into your runtime and some libraries that can reduce coding, but the goal here is for attendees to talk about their experiences with open source packages that they can’t live without in their day-to-day development. If you’ve got some strong feelings about I’d-rather-chew-aluminum tools and libraries, then bring those up as well!

The target audience here is the general web developer and Microsoft MVC developer regardless of skill level. Be prepared to share your ideas and experiences.