I took a day off working at a client site today to attend an MSDN 'Refresher' on the .NET Framework 3.0 technologies and Windows Vista.
MSDN events seem to have got smaller and smaller as more of Microsoft's marketing money has been reallocated to supporting community groups such as the London .NET User Group or Developer! Developer! Developer! Although I miss the 'big launch' feel of the old events in some ways, the more intimate MSDN events such as were held for the Visual Studio 2005 launch, and these recent MSDN roadshows are a big improvement.
Today was a day well spent, although if I'm honest I prefer the 'warts and all' approach of the community events to the 'positive spin' of the MSDN events.
Only Mike Taulty, I felt, really told it as it is in the way the user group meetings do, but I may be over-reacting to blog entries on the problems with IE6 flicker when using Atlas (Mike Ormond was clever enough to use IE7 for the Atlas demo, without telling attendees why, but then switched to IE6 for his Office 2007 demo whilst bemoaning the fact he didn't have IE7 to demonstrate it on - go figure!). The Vista presentation too said a lot about Glass without mentioning the fact that it won't be there for most users on existing equipment (especially laptops), and that driver support for even the newer cards is flakey at best.
But those criticisms apart, it was a good day that made really good use of the limited time available. For a free event that included a decent packed lunch, some free polo shirts (bearing the old 'WinFX' logo - bet there's suddenly a surplus of those available!) and a few other goodies too, it would be silly to carp. There were the usual demo hiccups (especially in the Office 2007 demo) but nothing too bad.
Mike Taulty gave arguably the best overview on Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) I've seen (and I've seen a few now) and then followed it up later in the day by doing the same for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Good stuff!
Mike Ormond did a similarly sterling job on Atlas, making me realise that it really is time I got round to working through the Apress book I have about Atlas and the O'Reilly PDF booklet on the UpdatePanel control.
Thanks to losing my notes on the train I've lost the names of the speakers who talked about Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Vista. The WCF was a good introduction to a rather dry subject. The speaker was probably the least "entertaining" of the group, with a delivery style that is probably more typical of the average developer than a Microsoft evangelist, but for me it was a useful presentation nevertheless. WCF makes life very very easy (says the man who's been struggling with WSE 2.0 for the last few months). It was good that his talk wasn't in the infamous graveyard 'post lunch' slot or I think we may have had a few snores in the room, but it's hard to make communications exciting if your name's not Don Box.
A special mention for the Greek speaker who gave a 35 minute whirlwind tour of Vista. If there were a 'best use of time available' award this guy would have won it. Somehow he manoevred his way through a large amount of material at a very fast pace, without losing me or most of the audience. It's a shame he didn't have more time as the following talk on Office lost its way somewhat and in the second half became a rather pointless (to my way of thinking) demonstration of the MSDN UK "Nugget" application rather than of the Sharepoint Server 2007 technology itself.
A good day, and the team who delivered this can pat themselves on the back for a job well done. It was certainly worth losing a day of lucrative work to keep abreast of what the current Microsoft thinking on these products is.