Building next-level conversational AI apps with .NET and Aspire - Steve Sanderson - NDC Melbourne

Steve Sanderson demonstrates building conversational AI applications using .NET and Aspire, covering Microsoft Extensions AI as a unified abstraction layer for AI services. The presentation walks through creating chat applications with retrieval augmented generation (RAG), implementing semantic search with vector databases like Quadrant, and integrating custom data sources. Key topics include function calling, embeddings, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for extensibility, and development tooling for AI applications. The session emphasizes end-to-end application development rather than just model performance, showing practical implementations with real-time telemetry and debugging capabilities.