WebDD Event
Having missed the last two community-organised Developer! Developer! Developer! days, the announcement of this WebDD day, albeit with a rather differently targeted audience, was a pleasant surprise. The aim was apparently to target not just developers, but designers too - ideally with a 50-50 split - and although it seemed more like a 90-10 split in favour of developers, this still felt like quite a different crowd from the one that usually attends events on the Microsoft campus. And not just because there were more women (although counting three women instead of the usual one - we missed you Sarah! - probably doesn't count THAT much!)
I thought the attendees were on average slightly younger, definitely whiter, and rather more bohemian than the usual DDD crowd.
The event itself also felt, to me, more like an 'old school' Microsoft MSDN event than a community one, somewhat surprising given the attempt to reach out to the designer 'Web 2.0' crowd. Not that MSDN events aren't great events, just that they're very much more focussed on 'promoting the positive' and ignoring any negatives that might trip potential customers up in the real world. I don't think this was just because the big attraction was Microsoft's Scott Guthrie. Guthrie is Microsoft's general manager for IIS, Visual Studio, ASP.NET and pretty much every other Microsoft web product you can think of - ie a real 'rock star' in the Microsoft web programming world. Securing his services, this far from his natural home, was a real coup for this event.
Scott Guthrie Talks
Scott's talks were very much of the marketing 'canned demo' variety that are favoured by Microsoft-sponsored events like TechEd and MSDN days, but with the real advantage that he REALLY knows his stuff and is happy to field detailed technical questions as the demo's progress and time permits. Although there was very little 'here are the gotchas' that make events like DDD (which I believe has a core policy of only allowing non-Microsoft speakers) so special, there was plenty of 'Wow' to compensate, such that even the most hardened cynic (that'll be me then!) with the most jaded palette should have come away enthused and keen to get their hands on the CTP of Visual Studio Orcas when it becomes available towards the end of March.
As with previous Reading events there were three parallel tracks which didn't have official titles but which I found myself labelling 'Microsoft Marketing', 'Developer Topics' and 'Designer Topics' - so hopefully something for everyone!
Scott's track was by far the most over-subscribed, such that one felt rather sorry for 'competing' speakers finding themselves with more space in front of them than is usual at these events. We don't often get 'rock star royalty' like Scott at these free events, and everyone (including me!) was determined to try and make the most of this rare opportunity.
I don't have the time or space to summarise all the cool stuff that was demoed (a lot of it - particularly around the Orcas release and its JavaScript debugging and CSS improvements - was new to me), and videos of the talks will be available to those who want the details. But it is worth saying that Scott deserves a big round of applause for dealing so well with us Brits. Not only did he have to cope with the British variant of the English language (he spelt 'catalogue' OUR way!) but also, during repeated attempts to make the talk more spontaneous, our notorious British reserve. Things got rather silly when the only user names suggested for demos were 'test' and 'test2', and became positively surreal when the users were assigned the security role of 'sausage'. Did the caterers who served attendees with bread rolls filled with hot sausage for breakfast have pre-knowledge that there would be much talk of 'sausage roles' later that day???!
Expression Everywhere
Microsoft's new Expression brand naming was very much in evidence, with stands and smiling staff everywhere. I've already ranted on Channel 9 about the diminishing value of Microsoft's MSDN subscriptions, with everything 'beta' now being given away on the web, and flagship 'high ticket' core products given away at launch events, and we saw a continuation of this trend with a nice surprise for attendees - a free copy of Expression Web (£259 on Amazon as I type!), the product that has been withdrawn from MSDN subscriptions apparently because it's 'not meant for developers'!
Grok Talks
Although Scott's talks were hard to resist I tried to make a point of checking out some of the other speakers over lunch and in the afternoon. The lunchtime 'grok' talks - short, sharp overviews of subjects, were very good and I enjoyed the demo's of Vista speech control, Vista Media Centre and Vista Gadgets that I caught. As you can see Vista was very much in evidence - not just in the talks but also in the form of a huge plastic 'Wow' (the Vista promotional slogan - oh dear!) sculpture in the grounds of the Microsoft campus (see the banner title at the top of this page).
Other Speakers
As is always the case, there were more sessions than there was time to attend, so I missed many talks I would have loved to have heard. There were two that I did manage to get to, avoiding the long queues for Scott's talk on WPF/E. Dave Verwer gave a good, honest ("'Ruby on Rails' has been over-hyped") introduction to his chosen subject, delivered using a Mac laptop (How did THAT get into the building?!) Barry Dorrans, as ever, gave an informative and entertaining performance - this time on the notoriously difficult subject of CardSpace. Frequently politically incorrect (click on the last photo on this page and check out his laptop decoration for an example of what I mean) Barry has a style that I can only describe as 'uniquely his' (in a good way).
A Good Day!
WebDD was, by any standards, a success, and hopefully more events will follow. This was yet another chance to get up-to-speed in a timely (and extremely cost effective!) manner, and those involved worked really hard to make sure all those of us who attended had a great day. So, thanks to everyone involved and I just have one last question: when's the next one chaps?
