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Last post was all about my travelling, so this one will be finally about the conference itself ...
Generally, I was impressed about the conference. The only problem was is that it lasted too short, because there were lots of good sessions to attend and speakers to hear. Organization was also at the level; checkin, food, souvenirs, repro-material, conference rooms, agenda, all good. Anyway, you can find the list of sessions here.
On keynote session there was a short intro about upcoming technologies in .net world, especially about three technology tracks in which Microsoft currently spend its money and energy the most: Silverlight, WPF i AJAX. Of ASP.NET, of course, except the Silverlight itself, there was a few words about MVC (model-viewer-controller) model, dynamic data, and data binding.
Because it's been hard to decide which sessions to attend, I've decided to 'roam' around the subjects as much as I could, to catch all different topics.
In the following text, I bring some memos about classrooms I've been and some of my personal impressions:
Translating Architecture to Technologies (Dahlman)
This session was total disaster! When filling the questionnaire, I gave Dahlman a weak mark, and as I've seen on other questionnaires, I was not alone. Man just didn't know to lecture this, although good and interesting topic (I've instantly remembered my good friend Maro Marcinko, which is Ph.D. for design patterns). At first, he began to explain the basis of design patterns since gang-of-four and further (a little bit boring, man!) and then he started to describe one by one pattern. Generally slides were ok, but the man was such a bored guy!! He succeeded to get everyone asleep and until the end of the session only a few guys left. Pitty!
An Overivew of ASP.NET MVC (Haack)
Actually, it was bad that one another session was cancelled scheduled at that time (Windows Forms and WPF - Interop), because it was something that interested me a lot. So I went on this one. But I didn't regret it. It was a good one; very well presented model, with all its strengths and weaknesses. More about it you can find at this sites (on a Scott Guthrie's blog).
Performance of Every Day Things (Richter)
Well, I heard a lot about Jeffrey Richteru, but I never met this guy. He's really a pro, and he answers on every question without doubt giving the impression that he masters on everything he says. And it's probably so. In his lecture, he talked about possible improvements of the performance of .NET applications by using some of his own tests. Tests were very neith done and they compare different ways of doing things, such as: usage of IDispose interface, finalizers, StringBuilders, GC, arrays, and so on. In one way or another, good tips & tricks for every developer.
Day of Threading (Richter)
It's interesting that Richter dedicated the whole day of his lecture to one topic, and that was the threading. I went only to one session, and this one was in the middle, but it was so dynamic and stuffed with the facts that it was enough for me for that day! All that I thought I knew collapsed in one second after I began to listen to that guy. The subject just went deeper and deeper until the bytes and registers of processor that I've just been lost after a while. You have to read his book (I got it from my friend after he won it as a prize, so I thank him: svaka čast, Vlado!) CLR via C# to be at least listener of this lecture. Respect, Jeffrey!
Practical Workflow Foundation (Mehner)
And now, once again, a little disappointment. I had an impression about WF as something brand new and perfect, ideal stuff for my future adventures on software development, but then, nothing new and nothing special about it - it's a small super-limited BizTalk. Besides, it seemed, at least from demos, very slow and complicated. So, the general impression about it was not so good. By, Mehner, as he told, had some experience about it, especially working for some government agency, something like that, and that it proved very well, blah blah.. Hm, I guess, the time will prove who is right. I hope that Mehner will be right, not me.
The Microsoft AJAX Library (Prosise)
This man was obviously well-know for auditorium, as it was very croudy. I'm just surprised in what Microsoft spends so much money. I mean, Ajax.. I know why it spends so 'flashy' money in Silverlight, but for Ajax I don't understand. Especially it is a subset of something already existing. It's just like VBA and Visual Basic - doesn't make sense to have it separated and support it separately. Ok, anyway, nice session with lots of insiders info about roadmap in general.
Builidng Great Web Applications with Silverlight 2.0 (Prosise)
Silverlight, Silverlight,.. all the conference, and so micro IT world just brooming about this spectacular 'thang' with that eluminesquent silver platting (that just reminds me at Abba and all those sissy-like guys in flashy suits, geez). Besides, nice showing of silver light - version 1.0 and 2.0 (they finally get rid of the scripting), but unfortunatelly, as everything else, spitted version as for political reasons (as we know who should they want to throw away from the throne), and only few supported controls and lack of support. We'll see, we'll see...
WPF Internals (Ritscher)
Bah, this is the man you should ask to make a commemorative speeches - I mean, man is a grave. You should motivate him for a life, not just for a session. After story about internals, I couldn't get a grip of anything, not just WPF. Ok, he shown some good slides, though. Man was just lazy to prepare for it or he lost all of his life energy, since he didn't mention any of the examples or anything LIVE. Although he sweared in bright future of WPF (well known Microsoft's paradigma: "king is dead, long live the king"), a man sitting in auditorium doesn't get so much of impression that he blooms of happiness and elan. Ok, maybe he had a lousy sleep (I know what is it, because of my three young kids), or maybe I'm too critic (well, my nominations for the sessions were been refused twice recently, so I'm worst looser).
WPF Data Binding (Ritscher)
Eh, da je bar bilo ispričano kao što je bilo na slajdovima (po drugi put). Nažalost nije se stiglo do pravog 'mesa' a to su template-i i 'napredno' data binding tehniciziranje, pa stoga mi je stvarno bilo žao što je konferencija bila završena s tim predavanjem, te sam imao dojam da mi treba bar još jedan dan za odslušati teme.
Ah, šta sad. Prošla su i ta tri dana, New York je već bivao poznat, a catering s predavanja se već lagano topio pješačenjem po Manhattanu. Dolazio je i taj vikend kad smo morali natrag u Europu, pa u Hrvatsku ;) Lijepa konferencija, lijep grad, puno dojmova...
Goodbye NYC, the city that never sleeps, sleep tight!
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