Developer Express – TechSummit 2007 – day 1

It’s just gone midnight here in Las Vegas, just after day one of the inaugural Developer Express TechSummit. The clocks go back by one hour around about now…which seems odd because I felt as if I was an hour late arriving in Newark on Friday morning. Man these clock changes are confusing, still I get one extra hour today…no doubt I’ll have to give it back on my way back to the UK.

Today, I sat in on nearly five hours of technical content covering a brief history of Developer Express, the activities at the DevConnections booth, and an overview of upcoming products and release schedules. Julian Bucknall gave us on overview of where Developer Express are going with regards to WPF Charts, WPF Grid and the work they are putting in to the creation a Silverlight proof of concept. Julian continued to discuss the new features in the DXperience 2007 volume 3 release and the WinForms product line including some demos. Closing the day was Oliver Sturm, he spoke about the eXpress App Framework (XAF).

The demonstrations were very visual and as a result were particularly pleasing. Amongst other things, we looked at XtraGrid, XtraBars, XtraScheduler, XtraTreeList, and XtraCharts. However, my favourite demonstration today came from the power and the speed of the PivotGrid (XtraPivotGrid Suite).

Dinner was in Morton’s The Steakhouse, a truly excellent dining experience. I grabbed a few audio bytes whilst I was there. Expect to hear the likes of Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell, Julian Bucknell (and here), Courtney Edgar and Ray Navasarkian get vocal about the benefits of bringing together a bunch of like-minded influencers to discuss and critique the current Developer Express product line. Oh, and by the way, if you haven’t seen/heard Carl’s epic masterpiece Home At Least, here it is (thanks to DC for spotting this so quickly).

Tomorrow will see us chatting about the Developer Express ASP.NET offering. In amongst all that, expect to see some content from Mark Miller (of CodeRush fame).

This idea of bringing together influencers, including a number of Microsoft MVP’s, into the same space to discuss the Developer Express product set is a unique exercise. Community is important, sharing is important, feedback goes in two directions: we’ve heard what Developer Express have to say about their product set and they’ve listened keenly to what we’ve said in return. Remember, however, that not all feedback is necessarily positive, but all feedback is good feedback…if you understand what I’m trying to say! Even negative feedback has its uses.

Carl Franklin was kind enough to bring along of copy of Kerry Patterson’s Influencer, a good read for any evangelist.

Technorati Tags: Devexpress, Developer Express, Las Vegas, Morton’s The Steakhouse, Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell, Julian Bucknall, Oliver Sturm, DXperience