It “sold out” within days of registration opening.

It attracted over 345 attendees (the waiting list was cleared down the day before).

It was (and is) DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper!

—

The first DDD of 2006 kicked of on the 3rd of June, attracting huge crowds of information-hungry developers along a handful of non-developers. With sessions covering a vast array of platforms and technologies, there was something for everyone (and if you were stuck, there was always the Haagen Daaz ice cream, so graciously laid on by Microsoft catering!)

Once again, Dinus Cruz (pictured, below) scared us senseless (I nearly typed another -less word there!) with his low-level hacking of the CLR. Dinus was in good company over lunch, which saw Microsoft’s Chief Security Advisor, Ed Gibson join the party. Ed, a retired FBI agent, spoke about Organised Crime and Criminal Activity on the Internet, it was a truly superb 25 minutes!

[Dinus Cruz]

Ed wasn’t the only superhero present at DDD. Joining the ranks of Ian and Phil who stepped in to a missing speaker’s slide deck, Richard Fennell was given no more than 6 minutes notice that he was needed on stage! Feedback tells me Richard did a really good job and pleased the code hungry audience! Rockin’ Richard, truly rockin’!

[Richard Fennell]

[Ian Cooper]

Youngsters
And would DDD be the same with the every popular “youngsters“? I caught these two enthusiasts taking a well-earned break upstairs near Memphis and very close to the speaker lounge: obviously they were keen to get close to the action! Actually, that Sony Vaio, it’s playing Faulty Towers! Guys, if you want to identify yourselves, please do, I’d be happy to link to your blogs, etc.

[Youngsters]

Method in my Madness
A while ago I got in the habit of taking photographs whilst kneeling down. It spooks a lot of folks. But in this case, it worked a treat. Dave McMahon (right) meets Ed Gibson (left).

[Ed and Dave]

[Ed Gibson, retired FBI agent]

[I’m telling you, it was this big…Ed tells us just how big that fish was]

[Los tres Amigos – Michael Willers, lennybacon (Dan Fisher) and Dave McMahon]

In this next picture you can see the Microsoft team hard at work…Mike Taulty, Mike Ormond, Mark Walton, Richard Erwin, Martin Parry…Dinus Cruz is there too, as are Matthew and John from VMR Consulting (hats off to these boys, they came to learn about development such that they could get a better understanding of what developers actually do – I gave them a swift overview of Visual Studio 2005, discussed design patterns, nunit, cruise control.net, test driven development amongst a handful of other topics!) In this picture, you see Mark Walton and Richard Erwin going through Visual Studio Team System.

[All work…]

[Jono Bacon, with Ian in the background!]

After show party
Huge kudos to Zi Makki for organising drinks and food for the Saturday night! I enjoyed a Magners topped up with ice (not my usual tipple, but it was the end of a really hard, but hugely enjoyable, day)

Meet the Team
DDD is a team effort, and you, the attendees, as part of the community, are part of that team. There would be no DDD without you, without you, the folks below would have to find something else to do with their time!

Logistically, those folks you saw running around with a blue “DDD Organiser” badge helped make the event happen. There was the web-site, there was the food, the giveaways, the registration, the speaker certificates, the agenda, the voting mechanism, the feedback, the speaker liasion. Of course, huge thanks are also due to the folks that also played a major part in the day: the Microsoft Events staff who dealt with your registrations and prize draw tickets!

[Tony Rogerson, Phil Winstanley, the lovely Melita Walton (yes, wife of the aforementioned Mark!), Craig Murphy]

[Ian Cooper, Benjamin Mitchell, Jonathan Hodgson, Mike Taulty and his alter ego!]

[Zi Makki]

Other pictures
Phil has some pictures here.

If you have published some pictures, please let me know (e-mail or comments) and I’ll update this posting.

All good things come to an end…or do they?
Like the high that the wicked cool euphoria a rock concert leaves you with, DDD achieves the same high over the course of the day. Likened to “TechEd squeezed in to a day“, DDD will be back and it will have all the same good ingredients (namely community community community). I left DDD3 with the same “feel good” that I did when I left TechEd 2000 (which also rocked), the buzz continued with me as I drove the 500 miles back home to Scotland.

DDD4, it won’t be long, you can be sure of that, watch this space feed!

In the meantime, we want your feedback!