This year for PDC 2008, we have decided to learn from a successful model used by various customers (like the ALT.NET crowd) in order to help ensure that PDC 2008 is the best conference ever. Our goal with these un-sessions is to really enable attendees with common interests to have some great conversations in an efficient setting. So what is Open Space? Taken from the description we have on the PDC website (you can also refer to the Open Space Technology entry in Wikipedia): Open Space is a way to bring together groups of people interested in a common topic to have an interactive discussion. In an Open Space session, there may be an expert who is passionate about a topic presenting to an audience or there may be a small group of people discussing an idea. Four principles of Open Space: - Whoever comes are the right people to be there
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
- Whenever it starts is the right time
- When it's over, it's over
All you need to do is suggest topics onsite that you wish to discuss and participate in sessions that sound interesting to you. It’s the unconference with content by attendees, for attendees. Not only are we doing Open Space at PDC 2008, we want to make sure it is a _real_ Open Space. None of this "Microsoft doesn't understand, they don't grok it, they entirely and utterly butchered the whole Open Space concept". Not only are we passionate about this topic, we are also fans of the Open Space movement. Of course there will be modifications that will have to be made to scale this to the size of a PDC as well as the fact that this is more of a "conference within a conference", but we hope those changes will keep the essence of Open Space unchanged. If you have any concerns about Open Space @ PDC 2008, you can contact me directly at jason.olsonATmicrosoftDOTcom. I would love to hear from any of you regarding this topic. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you in L.A. participating in Open Space @ PDC 2008! FOR THE DEVELOPERS!!!!
Jason Mauer and I are doing an Open Space session tonight @ 6:30pm in the Open Space Theatre at MIX 08. If you are a musician who happens to be a computer geek for a living, come on by, chill out, and enjoy. Hope to see you there!
Hey all, I will be at the wonderful Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada this week working at the MIX08 conference. Drew Robbins and I are a couple of the guys "behind" Open Space @ MIX, so we will most likely be parked in the Open Space area most of the week. Feel free to stop by and say hello if you are at the event.
Originally, I was the owner of what used to be known as "MIX Chat" (usually referred to as "Ask The Experts" in Microsoft Conference speak), and Drew was in charge of Open Mic. Drew had the idea to bring in the Open Space idea into the conference instead of the old Open Mic method. When he approached me about the idea, I loved it and jumped in as well. So, now, there is no longer a "MIX Chat" this year as we are looking at integrating it more directly into the conference itself. I guess we'll see this week how it works out!
Rory is doing some videos at Channel 9 on the Microsoft Research TechFest event happening at Microsoft this week. If you want to see how Microsoft's own version of Area 51 is shaping and changing the future of technology, you should ABSOLUTELY watch these videos.
The first video has just been released: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=288554.
There is a lot of cool stuff coming out of Microsoft Research. Even Google won't stand up to some of these technologies :). We shall prevail :P. It's important to realize that Microsoft is filled with geeks just like you. We want to create cool stuff that changes the world. And what better way to emphasize that than taking a dive into Microsoft Research :).
Enjoy the video. And feel absolutely free to send this link around. This is truly exciting stuff coming from Microsoft and most geeks should be able to find some type of excitement in it :).
I realized something when I woke up in the middle of the night before leaving Florida. There was one particular common quality (among many) between all my favorite sessions at Tech Ed that got me thinking. All my favorite sessions were talking about software issues that were independent of a given Microsoft technology. Meaning, in my favorite sessions, the technology used in the solution to the problem was merely an implementation detail. Of the sessions I didn’t like, a good number of them were sessions that were simply “hocking their warez” (“drinking the Microsoft kool-aid” if you will).
I’m a strong believer that the qualities that contribute the development of high quality software are qualities that trascend their implementation, qualities that are can be applied to numerous different technologies. It is in part due to this belief that I enjoy presentations that discuss these qualities. If you’re not a good developer now, there is no amount of technology that can be applied in order to make you a good one. Technology can’t make crap into a diamond. Perhaps technology can make crap into crap of a less pungent nature, but technology won’t eat swallow crap and spit out a diamond. Often times, it is garbage in, garbage out. I suppose that’s why I’m intrigued when people keep looking for technology that will make them develop better. Improving efficiency is one thing, but improving quality is a whole different ballgame.
I’m so interested in these abstract qualities that I get rather turned off when people start selling their products and explaining how the said product will fix everything we need fixed. Perhaps I’m just getting more skeptical the older I get, but I’ve seen way too much vaporware to seriously listen to marketing speak. I’m not saying that the presentations were all marketing speak. It’s just that I would much rather see content related to the world than watch an hour and a half firework show.
I just finished this track presented by Ted Neward (of TheServerSide.Net) and Gregor Hohpe (author of “Enterprise Integration Patterns”). I have to say (and this may surprise some of you that have been reading my prior Tech Ed posts) I totally enjoyed this session. Since I’ve been focusing on the presentations and such, why stop, eh? Gregor obviously knows what he’s talking about. I find myself, especially after the first day, enjoying seeing presentations where the presenter isn’t just reading off the power point slides. Quite a bit of the presentation was more conversation, architect to architect, which I also enjoyed tremendously.
Although I’m sure there are others that might not like Ted Neward’s presentation style, I am not one of them. I like how personal he is. I like how, as a presenter, he talks with/to his audience (rather than reading to). I think with some of his jokes, there might be people that get offended which is too bad because it’s nice anytime seeing a presenter who has a sense of humor. I’ve lost count of how many dry presenters I’ve seen over the years. The act of presenting and listening can be awkward enough, let alone when the presenter isn’t making an effort to relate to or interact with the audience.
I found that this presentation basically drove home a lot of points that I’ve been thinking about lately. I like messaging patterns. Not only for their scalability but also for their ability to lower the coupling within an existing system. Today I plan to attend the cabana so I can chat with Gregor and Ted. I basically want to get their opinions (with their experience) about some of the ideas I’ve had. Mainly, the idea of using a messaging system (or messaging patterns in general) in order to lower coupling between subsystems within the same application. I personally feel that messaging patterns just don’t shine in distributed applications. I think that when applied properly in the right context, they can be very powerful within a single application also. Any of you who have read my prior game articles have possibly seen the lean towards messaging structures that I’m starting to take, when applicable.
Hopefully a couple more of the sessions I attend today and tomorrow are this good (perhaps I did just wake up on the wrong side of the bed Monday). I give this one 9/10 IBM Thinkpad X41s (just because the new X41 is THAT sexy).
This is a quote directly from Don Box when he was asked to describe himself for a video that Mike Hall was making for Tech Ed (in the middle of his session). It was actually kind of eerie because Mike and two cameramen came running in from the back of the room and ran all the way up onto stage. It was almost like watching a very geeky version of Cops. Anyways, here’s the quote:
[Don Box describing himself]: “Consider me a representation of an ideal”. Classic! What a great quote! I was laughing any time I thought about that today. Way too geeky!
I noticed a quote from a recent post by Julia Lerman (aka Julie Lerman (right Julie? HA! (I’m just glad I finally know what the whole “Julia” vs “Julie” thing is all about (I can’t tell you how long that was bothering me for (I lost several nights of sleep over it for a matter of fact (not really, but it could have happened)))))). If you’re two lazy to click through to that link I will post the quote here:
“Tech Ed for me is more about catching up with people and meeting new folks”.
After having a chat with Julie on the bus ride back to the hotel today, I realized that I totally agree with her. Where I have gotten the most value out of Tech Ed this year is the social networking aspect. The amount of people that I’ve been able to finally meet or to spend time hanging out with has been great (it’s funny how difficult it is hanging around with someone when you live across country from each other). I think it might just be the sessions that I’ve been going to, but I was hoping to get a lot more details and content from the presentations than just a twenty thousand foot overview. I must say though that I did attend some enlightening sessions (like Don Box’s discussion on “Metadata Soup”). The way Don Box looks at different development paradigms is quite refreshing.
But back to the social networking aspect of Tech Ed. Tonight I was able to spend some good time having a blast with Chris Williams (aka Blogus Maximus (that never gets old for me!!!)) from GeeksWithBlogs. Some of you might be surprised since it seemed like Chris and I exchanged some words over the whole “Signal To Noise” ratio thing. Well, I have to say that Chris is HILARIOUS and I absolutely enjoyed spending time with him (hopefully we’ll get some more time, eh Chris?). I’m proud to call Chris my homie! And while I’m on the matter, I was also able to spend some time chilling out with Jeff Jullian. What a great guy!
And now that I think about it I was able to have a great (albeit short) conversation with both DonXML and SqlDiva. What a hoot! I look forward to seeing more of those two in the future. I also got to spend some time with Chris Goldfarb, Rich Claussen, Cory Isakson, Stuart Celarier, Jason Mauer, etc. The list goes on and on (too many people to mention!!!).
It continues to amaze me the number of connections with people that I make simply because of blogging.
I never thought I would say this about Tech Ed, but it’s actually refreshing to attend a presentation that wasn’t a direct reading from a set of powerpoint slides. Scott’s presentation was quite good. Then again, Scott is a great presenter. I just wish other presenters would go read the presentation tips he has posted on his blog.
The talk wasn’t quite about what I thought it was going to be. On the other hand, it was much more “hands on”. On the “not what I thought it would be” side, Scott largely talked about how they applied code generation at Corillian, rather than about code generation itself. However, I can’t help but think in the back of my mind that this is actually a good thing. What it did was provide a good context in which to learn all about what code generation is good for. I don’t know if I would have liked it better though if maybe he drilled into more detail about a specific application of code generation rather than an overview of a bunch of different applications.
Overall, I think it was a great presentation. I give it a 9/10. An A for this one. There might be a chance that the only reason I haven’t awarded it a 10 though is because I want some room to grow in case I hear a better presentation (which if the way presentations have gone so far is any indication, this WON’T happen (which is definitely disappointing)).
Good job, Scott.
Well, I only have a sentence or two for a Day 1 wrap up, so I won’t be long, I swear. I’m not sure how often I will be posting like I did today (who knows, you may not hear from me the rest of the week), but I will try (or not). On to the wrap up…..
The best way that I can wrap up most of the presentations today is with a quote of how I responded to someone else today when they asked me how the day was:
“I had the apparent pleasure of seeing a bunch of live powerpoint readings. It was like poetry, evidently.”
And with that I’m out!
I was really looking forward to this session……… until it started that is. At first I loved the approach the presentation team was going to take. Basically, instead of power pointing all of us to death, they were going to do a run-through of the entire software development process (from spec to deploy). My excitement didn’t last too long though. I believe it ended when I realized that they were going to do the EXACT same presentation that is ALREADY on the net. I may be alone here, but I didn’t fly all the way to Florida to see presentations that I could have seen at home on the webcasts. Geez!
I think in hindsight, I must be in some kind of finicky mood today because I found the presentations didn’t live up to my expectations. Oh well, perhaps after some more sleep, I will be a little more “open-minded” tomorrow  .
See ya’ lata’, alligata’
Good news: There was some good information in this session.
Bad news: It took 45 minutes to get to it.
Once again, a presentation that was FAR from perfect. I don’t know where to start. In my opinion, the presentation seemed backwards to me. Basically, there was a 30–45 minute demo showing how to use a simple factory. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no context provided before the demo to know anything about where you were at. You only got to the good stuff after the demo. And by that time, we were running short on time so the last part was just hurried by. Since the session was called “*Building* and Using Software Factories” I made the assumption that it would actually be about *building* software factories (and maybe a little bit about software factories in general). I think the session could have been renamed “Using Already Existing Software Factories” and expectations would have been met better.
The other complaint was that there wasn’t even much about “using” software factories. Quite a bit of the demo was “okay, let me open these files I have on the hard drive that are already coded and hooked up to use the factory”. Not a lot of help in my opinion. But that’s just me.
I’m starting to think that perhaps I woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something this morning. I’m not yet ready to admit to myself that I just attended to lack luster presentations in a row. Once again, I must give that one a 6/10. Passing, but just barely.
Luckily, the session I’m sitting at waiting for is “Microsoft Visual C# Under The Covers: An In-Depth Look At C# 2.0”. Considering that the presentation is actually being done by none other than the man Anders Hejlsberg himself, I’m hoping this will finally be the quality of presentation that I was expecting from the whole conference. Here’s to hoping…..
Well, this session was not exactly what I was hoping it was going to be. I suppose for what it is worth, the depth of the content was fine for this early in the week. However, I was really hoping that the talk would go into more depth than it really did. One quick lesson I learned (simply because I heard Scott Hanselman talk about it and then had it verified myself in the first track): get to the sessions early if you want a seat. The sessions really fill up fast. I wasn’t about to go without a seat in the first afternoon session. I’m just now settling down for the “Software Factories” session. Luckily, this time I got a really good seat because I arrived twenty minutes before the start of the session.
As for the Connected Systems session, I think the presenter left something to be desired in the way of presentation skill. I don’t know, perhaps I’m just spoiled from seeing people like Scott present. I find that after seeing presenters like Scott, I’m getting pretty picky about presentations (although I would like to say that Ari Bixhorn did a wonderful job on the Indigo session on Sunday at the User Group Leader Summit held by Ineta).
Piece of advice for anyone putting together slides: use friendly colors. There was one slide in this session that contained white words on a light green background. Not only that, but they were quite small and could not be seen in the back of the room. Just a minor annoyance. I also got the feeling that the presenter didn’t get too familiar with the slides before the session. It sounded like he was reading from the slides a lot and not communicating directly to the audience. If I’m in the audience, don’t read to me! I can read the slides just fine, as well as being able to read the slides a lot faster than you can talk them.
Other than those picky things, I got *some* good information from the session, but was left wishing the session would go into more detail.
I’m not one to give any kind of ratings to any kind of things. BUT, if I were, I would give that presentation/session a 6/10. Passing, but not with flying colors.
Ciao!
While I’m not sure I would describe Steve Balmer as larger than life, he’s pretty darn close, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the keynote (mostly because of Steve Balmer directly), it wasn’t as good as I was hoping for. This is mostly because the keynote definitely seemed more targeted towards IT Pros instead of developers, methinks. While there were several developer topics discussed, it was definitely geared towards IT Pros.
One thing I’ve definitely underestimated is the sheer amount of people that are here at the conference. Just to put it in perspective, Steve mentioned that there are around 11k people here at the conference. While that may not sound like too much, once you see all of them packed into a convention center (even as one as large as the Orlando Convention Center), you start realizing just how big that number of human beings is (especially taking into account “robust” or “pleasingly large” people like me).
Once my friend Rich posts his pictures from the keynote, I will try to update this post so you all can see how it looked from the inside. Well, I better stop posting since I’m actually posting this from the first track and I really should get back to learning.
Oh, and if you see a bunch of posts at once coming from me, it’s because the wireless connections in the convention center aren’t exactly stellar. So, I’m writing all these posts in BlogJet and I’ll post them when I get online (which may not be until tonight).
Ciao!
Well, I'm here finally. If any of y'all are here, I'm staying at the JW Marriott, Orlando Grand Lakes. Give me a little ringy-dingy if you want to catch up sometime (or just track me down at the conference (or you can send me an MSN Messenger message at jolson88 AT yahoo DOT com). As for tonight, I be needin' me some rest after such a long travel day. Peace out!
|