Here’s a rough summary of what folks are saying about the third DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper event held last Saturday, 3rd June 2006. If you’ve blogged about DDD3 and I’ve missed you, it wasn’t intentional, please let me know and I’ll update this post. Once again, huge thanks to the attendees, the speakers, the Microsoft events staff and catering folks, it made it a super day all round!

[Updated] Ben Hall enjoyed the ice cream and the freebies here. Ben reckoned we should aim for Level 300-400 sessions next time…point taken.

[Updated] John Winstanley, previous speaker, write about it here.

[Updated] Tom (Albinson?) provides a good write up over here. Again, your comments about the technical depth of the sessions are noted and will be address next time around.

Richard Peat blogged about his take on the day here. Somehow, I didn’t get around to speaking to you, sorry!

Barry Dorrans enjoyed watching his slides retract after somebody at the back of the room “lent” on the switch (now I should have photographed it, but I’m sure it has a “lift up” cover protecting it).

Liam Westley, his “resources” are here. Sadly he won’t be giving you £5000 to start your own company, but he’ll give you a spreadsheet and some other useful tips!

1 Chap From Blighty, Guy Smith-Ferrier writes about his day here. Guy has written a book about .NET Internationalisation.

Zi Makki has posted some photos over here. There’s no way I poured myself a glass of wine like that…it was staged purely for the camera, honestly!

Phil Winstanley has stuck his pictures from the day here. Colin Mackay has done likewise over here. Colin posts a short piece here.

Dave McMahon reviews the day here. At the same time he publishes my photograph of Dave and ex-FBI man, Ed Gibson (now Microsoft’s Chief Security Adviser). Ed spotted Dave, instantly recognising him from the FBI’s Most Wanted list. This picture confirms Dave’s capture! Dave’s partner in crime, not wanted by the FBI, Richard Costall publishes a short’n’sweet review here. Here’s a snap of Richard and Dave:

[Richard and Dave – caption contest: in the comments please!]

[Dave’s captured by Ed!]

I managed to catch up with Simon Harriyott, who I mistakely confused with Simon Thorneycroft – sorry SimonH, if you knew how many people I spoke to whilst at DDD3, you might be able to forgive me!

Jono Bacon writes about DDD3 and the interesting date the sixth day of the sixth month of 2006 – since I am a noted Metallica fan, Slayer are on my playlist too! Here’s a snap of Jono and John enjoying a beer:

Mike Ormond was there too, did you know that Word (in Office 2007) will let you post to a blog directly? Read more about my 9 favourite things in Word here.

Nick Swan, speaker, has posted his write up here. Nick also links to Chris Garrett’s photos. Here’s one of my favourites:

[Link]

Daniel Fisher, lennybacon, makes mention of the event here. Dan, we organised the weather too, it takes some doing, but we know the right people! Dan’s running a conference in Dusseldorf, 27th July 2006: NRW06, I will be there, talking about test-driven development, unit testing, and automating code coverage using unit tests.

Tags: ddd3 community

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!

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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!

Folks,

That’s the third DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper day over…huge thanks to the 350 of you who attended and made it a great day all round!

Those of you who won the prizes, MSDN subscriptions or a developer.* book, enjoy 🙂

I don’t know about you (and *we* need to know about you!), but I thought it rocked!

If you attended the event, we are really keen to learn what you thought of it, good or bad.

Please feel free to contact me via this blog, via e-mail (address is on this page: http://www.craigmurphy.com) or via the official feedback form here:

http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/feedback.asp

What worked for you? What didn’t work?

What rocked? What sucked?

Were the screen resolutions too high? Was the food too sugary? No matter how parochial you think your whinge is, tell us!

Please, do tell us, we read every item of feedback and make a point of actioning every one!

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There will be a fourth DDD later this year, keep watching this space amongst others!

If you liked what you saw and want speak at the next DDD, do two things:

1. Join a community if you haven’t already!
2. Get in touch with myself or any of the other DDD Organisers that you may have met on the day!

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Feedback, please!!

With DDD3 just days away, I thought I’d let you in on one of the giveaways!

If you attended one of the 2005 DDD events, you might remember a session by David Laing, 10 Facts and 1 Fallacy of Software Engineering, that made reference to Robert L. Glass’s book, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering…

…well, we’ve got a handful of copies of Robert’s most recent book, Software Conflict 2.0, to give away! All you have to do is be there, may be ask a really good question, or remember some fact about the session you’ve just sat in on! It’s that easy!

Huge thanks to developer.* for donating the books, it is much appreciated!

Software Conflict 2.0
The Art and Science of Software Engineering
By Robert L. Glass
Foreword by Andrew Hunt,
The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC

ISBN: 0977213307 Pages: 308
Price: $29.95 U.S. / UK £22.99
Publication Date: March 10, 2006 Publisher: developer.* Books

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Oh, there might be a couple of “community donated” MSDN subscriptions up for grabs too! Make sure you take along a pen and a small piece of paper!

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[David’s slides and material available here]