oData (aka Astoria and ADO.Net Data Services) is something Microsoft has been promoting for a while and is a response to the industry's demands for a more open, less proprietary approach to accessing and persisting data.

Karl Farrand will be taking us through how Silverlight, oData and Azure combine to solve some common scenarios when building rich internet applications.

In Karl's words - this will be a demo heavy presentation - I think we'll cope .

For most of the last decade Karl has designed and built specialised tax software for large accounting firms such as Deloitte and EY. He currently works for 7G, a SaaS provider specialising in tax calculation and reporting software. 7G use Silverlight extensively in their product offering to provide their clients with a rich, easily deployable and secure user interface.

Looking forward to it - should be a good one.