Monthly Archives: November 2007

Commuting, Developer Events

TechEd 2007 – Sharp Dressed Men

The NxtGenUG chaps have been practicing their Spanish, learning how to dress in a manner that makes them more attractive to the opposite sex and have been making a nuisance of themselves whilst grabbing podcasts with some pretty top-notch guys! You have to listen to these podcasts – Dave, Rich and John catch up with some technically fantastic and witty podcast victims! All the usual excellent content – nice work guys!

Congrats to Dave on being voted 6th best speaker…out of 300! Huge success there, Dave – well done!


[photo courtesy of Barry Dorrans]

Whilst the NxtGenUG chaps were in Barcelona, I was over in Las Vegas – expect to see podcasts including Mark Miller (of CodeRush and Refactor fame), Dr. Neil Roodyn (extreme software guru), Oliver Sturm (of DevExpress fame) and a “mix” of sound bytes from folks at the Developer Express TechSummit 2007. I’ve also got some cool video footage of Kent Alstad and me wondering around the DevConnections exhibition area.

You’ll find David Platt in this series of podcasts – this is the David Platt that I mention over here – the one with the book signing!

The One With The Baby…
They’re leaving on a jet plane, hopefully they’ll not be back again! The boyz are off to Barcelona, and in between check-ins, in flight meals, landings and registration, they find time for a quick podcast. Richard Evans, the TechEd Ticket Competition Winner joins them and they chat with chief “TechEd Organiser Man” Neil Palmer from Fitch Live, the company behind TechEd. We also have the first swag review and John expands his vocabulary beyond “All Wright”…

The One With The Arriba!…
Day 2 and the boyz are getting into the swing of things, learning Spanish too … John gives us his best Arriba after telling us about the house wreck of a media centre session, Rich talks about the Keynote, and Dave’s been talking F# in a fishbowl. Don’t miss a great interview with Michael Foord on IronPython, it’s a cracker …

The One With Dave’s Phone…
Day 3, Dave breaks into an interview with Andy Wigley and Peter Foot to try to get his phone upgraded, but there’s no hope! We catch up with some more Speaker Idol contestants and Dave meets up with Sondre Bjellas, Regional Director from Norway. Richard Evans gives us a review of his day, thankfully, John’s still at a party so no more “Arribas”!

The One With The Sewage…
Dave and Rich head back to the hotel after a hard day at TechEd. What’s that smell? Controversy reigns over speaker idol after Michael Howard marks the Australian guys down for being Australian. Dave speaks to Bart De Smert, last years speaker idol winner, who now works for Microsoft. Rich interviews Shanku Niyogi, Product Unit Manager at Microsoft, and ticket winner Richard Evans on his daily report. Recorded in Pong-o-Vision.

The One With The Pack Of ******s!
Day 4 and TechEd Developers 2007 is reaching a crescendo. The session ratings are on the up, the country parties are done, its Speaker Idol final day! In a gargantuan contest between 4 superb presenters, there can be only one winner. The Boyz speak to the winner of Speaker Idol and the ‘missing’ judge, whilst Dave gets a 15 minute whirlwind from David Platt and realises his year’s ambition: a cracking interview with Ted Pattison, trainer, author and speaker extraordinaire!

The One With The Pistachio Nuts…
Day 5, and as TechEd draws to a close, we find the Boyz celebrating a brilliant week of sessions, Speaker Idol, networking and Pistachio Nuts. We catch a fantastic interview with Rafal Lukawiecki after his Top Voted Session on Data Mining, and also with Mario Sprutzerfrom Austria the Tools and Languages Track Owner at TechEd 2007. Dave is in shock with his session ratings, and is getting ready to get lathered at the Speaker Dinner, and we finally find out what Mick Lohan from GAMTUG has to say …

Barry’s photos are over here.

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Community, Developer Events

Developer Express – TechSummit 2007 – day 1

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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.

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Developer Express – TechSummit 2007 – day 2

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