Microsoft Developer Academy event will take place at January 31. It should be highly technical event. You can see the list of proposed lectures in this survey . It is your opportunity to vote for the topics you are most interested in. Fill free to make any suggestions or propose topics that are not on the list.
ASP.NET AJAX (formely Atlas) RC released during this weekend. Like previous versions it is available in 3 parts: Core ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions 1.0 ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Futures December CTP - core platform with additional functionality that remains under development ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit - Shared-source community project consisting of samples and components