So how many of you attended DevConnections this year ? Well I supposed I should ask who did not attend DevConnections this year (cricket cricket). This year (2006) alone close to 5000 that's right 5000 developers, admins, dba's, toilet bowl cleaners, you name it attended the conference.
Can you imagine 5,000 IT folks in one large room all together ? Believe it or not everyone and I mean everyone had a great time! Ok...so not all the conferences were so great I almost feel asleep when Sara Tahir gave her presentation about exception handling in SQL Server 2005. No offense to you Sara, I think you are a great speaker, but the topic was just a bit zzzZzzzzZZzzz...and hearing people cry for 'well is there support for the finally keyword since there is a try / catch' had me chuckling. Folks this isn't C# / VB.net it's SQL Server (on a side note Sara mentioned there will eventually be a finally clause (prolly to handle some sort of memory resources on the SQL side..ya that's it :) ).
The best speaker of all I would say for the ASP.net side of things wasn't a Microsoft employee (drum roll please)...and the winner is Stephen Walther. I didn't realize the unleashed books that I had been reading was the man giving his presentation on things such as:
- web parts
- portals in visual studio.net
- tips and tricks with vs 2005
And the great thing about it was...he actually did it without the typical cocky egos of most programmers. Congrats Steve, if you're reading this you did an excellent job and since you're here you probably have nothing better to do!
Scott Guthrie of Microsoft who apparently is the ASP.net program manager still doesn't know how to unmute his speakers using Windows XP. On the opening day (6th of November 2006) Scott had a demo to show all the attendes of the conference. The demo of course included some audio from a company who has been using ASP.net with Atlas or was it AJAX ? Anyhow it was great hearing about 4,000 developers yell "It's at the bottom right hand corner" and others yelling "Open the control panel". I kid you not we sat there for about 2-3 minutes just trying to get the sound unmuted. Hey Scott if you're reading this just double click your speaker icon in the bottom right hand corner of Vista / XP. If you don't have a speaker icon look for sounds in the control panel (ha ha!!). Just kidding around, Scott did an awesome awesome job presenting ASP.net 2.0. I can't believe how fast he is when he writes code, it is amazing to see him on the PC. I got a lot of the Tips and Tricks as well as writing ASP.net 2.0 applications.
Tom Rizzo was the man when it came to Sharepoint and even Exchange. I mean the guy knows his stuff inside and out, he seems to really enjoy what he is doing. His discussion on KPI's as well as the administration side of things was pretty detailed (even saw people take notes). The example sharepoint portal site he demoed had a pretty slick look to it. I think he stated he'd post it on his blog but I've yet to see it. I think its a matter of just applying some themes.
The Good
All the speakers and especially:
- Scott Guthrie
- Tom Rizzo
- Stephen Walther
- Sara Tahir
What else was good...DevConnections did an excellent job on serving us lunch with entrees including:
- filet mignon
- chicken
- potatos
- grilled veggies
- tossed salads
- lasagna
- veal
- pork chops
- salmon
And a whole slew of other eats!
The Bad
Here's a tip to the devconnections people, no one in there right mind wants iced tea or water to drink with their meal. That was the ONLY option given to us...spare us the cheapness and if you're going to tender to developers you best have some mountain dew / beer. The breakfast was horrible with basically:
- bagels
- coffee
The 20 pc lab was pretty pathetic. You have close to 5,000 people coming...at least setup 100 PC's...a line to check your email. I hope you all cleared your browser history and cookies when you finished checking your adsense account and your gmail e-mail. Saw so many people clicking the 'Remember My Password' button and never clearing out their cached data.
http://aggreg8.net/ who is the Microsoft version of LinkedIn sponsored an all you can eat / drink / massage from 12-6pm on Wednesday. That's right..all you can drink as in vodka, corona, red / black labels, cranberry juices, margaritas, etc. etc. etc. So wait why did I place this under The Bad section. Well because the "all" you can eat and drink ended within one hour because of the number of drinks aggreg8 was giving away. Suddenly what was supposed to go on from 12-6 still went on without any free drinks or any free food.
The Mandalay Bay hotel from outside looks great...but from the inside (the actual room itself) it was total ghetto! Seriously for the regular joe blow staying at mandalay bay it costs close to 350 bucks. The devconnections attendes got a discount rate for 200 bucks a night. I wouldn't sleep or stay at Mandalay Bay if it were 25 bucks a night. The rooms are exactly like any ordinary room you'd find at a Holiday Inn. Sorry guys your 4 1/2 / 5 star hotel is spectacular from the outside, as soon as you get into the rooms you're lucky to get 2 stars. And for heaven's sake when you put new soap in the bathrooms have the decency to take the damned soap out of the box / packaging..its hard taking a shower and trying to pry that plastic tape off the soap!
The cost of the basic conference was approximately 1200.00 bucks. If you registered for some of the pre conference workshops (meaning you got to actually sit there and write out code kind of like a training session) tack on about 500-1000 bucks more. You ask was it worth it? Put it like this, there is a lot more training out there that is far better for less than 1200.00 bucks. Would I go again? Only if my current job wanted me to o so dearly attend next year!
What Exactly Did I Get Out Of It
Well I did lose a lot of sleep and a lot of money considering the conference was held in the Mandalay Bay right in Las Vegas, Nevada. I did go away learning a lot about:
- portal web parts using asp.net 2.0
- some tricks with web.config files
- tricks with visual studio.net
- learning how to use KPN (Thanks Tom Rizzo)
- sharepoint 2007 administration
Ok now for some pics:
As I said DevConnections was held at:
Sure it looks great from the outside..but be warned if you get a room here...
Across the street we see:
The MGM Grand which I heard isn't any better than the Mandalay Bay from the inside (according to a passenger on the same flight as me).
Next to the Mandalay Bay Ghetto hotel is the:
Which looks a lot like egypt:
And of course next to the Luxor we have good ol New York New York (which by the way is a really live happening hotel):
And so we start the day off by hoping into the rental:
Never thought I'd be driving a toy.
And we head over to Mandalay Bay:
Planning to see:
So let the conferences begin:
That's Fred on the right who I met...think he was from Washington. Then I bump into this guy:
Not sure what kind of coding this guy does but he sure can shoot pool:
There were plenty of books there:
But barely any PC's:
Somehow the below animal stole all of my money!
I even met some cool Canadians
Boy does the excaliber look like Disney Land or what ?
The conference had some prize drawings in which they gave this guy a laptop:
And Isaac Stubbs who doesn't know how to ride a bike won a Harley:
Cant believe you pulled it off Isaac Stubbs, especially with this many people:
I on the other hand won a ton of these:
A total of 20 T-shirts from that Conference, few of them duplicates but hey it's a t-shirt. Hey Idera, I'm still waiting on my free SQL Server Superhero t-shirt in the mail. Just because I got one at devconnections doesn't mean you're off the hook for sending me my free one in the mail (which I have been waiting on for 3 months now)...
