Managed World

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’

[#BEGIN_RANT#]

Is it just me, or has the proliferation of mobile devices actually made people more rude and less considerate of others? This is a major pet peeve of mine. I call it “mobile manners” (well, not really (and you can tell I’m not a marketing guy by that horrible name :D)).

Basically, this kid in front of me has his cell phone ring in the middle of the presentation. If that wasn’t rude enough, he not only didn’t silence the sucker, he answered it and started talking. WTF?!?!? It wasn’t enough of a clue that everyone around him was staring at him. NOOOOOOO, he was just blissfully chatting away. Does he not realize how much of a dick he’s being?!? I guess not.

This is also my annoyance with the almighty Blackberry (the mobile device, not the fruit). I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been sitting in a meeting and someone’s Blackberry goes off. And what does this person do? Of course he doesn’t put it away or silence it, because that would be too polite. And we can’t find ourselves being polite in this day and age! NO! They whip out the Blackberry and start typing away at it, happily ignoring EVERYTHING that is happening in the meeting. This is especially annoying when this person is THE reason the meeting was being held in the first place. As if that isn’t bad enough, they do the same thing around clients and users!!!!!! What does that communicate to the client or user about you as a company? ARG!!!

I’m going to SCREAM if I have to deal with jerks much more this week.

CAVEAT: I may sound really pissed now, but I’m not. I’m actually in a really great mood and just felt like writing about something, so I chose one of my pet peeves.

Oh well, the session is starting, so I need to go unless I become the rude one in here. Here’s to hoping this one is better than the last two!!!

[#END_RANT#]

“Why don’t cha just stick the whole ding-dong in your mouth?!?!?”

And no, this wasn’t said to me. If you want an explanation, go over and ask Rich Claussen.

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…..