Review: ArcReady 4/30

So this review is a little late (and a little short) but don't worry, I took notes :).

This was Brian Prince's first appearance at an ArcReady event as the Microsoft Architect Evangelist and well, he did a great job.  Personally I don't know how long he can call himself "the new Josh Holmes" because personally, I dug this presentation more than most of the ones Josh gave.  I could be biased though since this topic is one that directly relates to my job more than most have.

Content

The title of the presentation was "Architecting for Scalable and Usable Web Applications" and was broken into two sessions, one on scalability and the other on usability.  The first session was definitely the better of the two in that it had more meat protein.  I would say that this is partially due to the fact that there are more concrete ways to tackle scalability than there are on usability design.  Usability is much more abstract, a "you know it when you see it" kind of thing.

Both sessions had many techniques to try and tools to use when tackling their respective issues.  Personally I learned a lot from both sessions, I will use many of the items in the future, no question.

Presentation

Brian did a great job.  If you've never seen him speak, you are missing out.  He comes across as clearly knowledgeable yet humble, is free to admit when he doesn't know something, and is guaranteed to throw in some obscure Sci-Fi reference that most of us understand but wouldn't have been able to pull out on the spot.  He also has a way of speaking that keeps you engaged and learning, which for some tech talks is no minor feat.  In our area Brian is giving a talk on soft skills at Cleveland Day of .NET on May 17th, come see him, you'll be glad you did.

Day of .NET Is Almost Here!

It's almost here! 

The first Cleveland Day of .NET is in a week and a half (assuming you read this the day I post it).  Everything is moving very quickly now.  Sponsors have stepped up to donate the money to pay for the venue, t-shirts and all the other things.  So many great speakers came forward from the entire Heartland District that we had to turn half of them away.  With only word-of-mouth advertising, there are nearly 200 attendees registered.  All of this has been pulled together by a small group of dedicated volunteers.

Generous Sponsors

In the last few weeks we have had a lot of great sponsors come forward.  Without them this event wouldn't have a chance of succeeding.  Please visit their tables, attend their presentations and listen to their pitches.  Visit our site for the most up to date list of these sponsors.

Great Speakers

We had nearly 50 proposals for talks but only have the space for 24 sessions.  This made it very difficult to choose which talks to accept and which had to be cut.  I can honestly say that not even one talk was cut because we didn't think the presentation or the speaker were appropriate or skilled enough.  The list we did come up up with covers both new and upcoming technologies like LINQ and Silverlight but also what people are using today like ASP.NET and SharePoint, we even have a few methodology style talks in there.  The only thing I see as wrong with the schedule is that I can only physically attend one talk at a time :).

Almost at capacity!

As of this morning there were 192 people that had registered and indicated that they would attend.  Another 16 had registered but have since said they cannot make it.  What this means is that there are only 58 more slots for registrations before we have to cut it off and turn people away.  If you haven't registered yet, or keep forgetting to tell your co-workers about it, time is running out.

Hard Work

A lot of people have been working very hard to bring this thing together but it is finally almost here.  We all truly hope for this event to be a great success and for people to come away with a wealth of new knowledge and a better appreciation for the local development community.  That sense of community, or rather a lack of it, is what caused us all to get together and start planning this event.  Please come and learn about some technology, tool or technique to help you in your job, and meet the fellow developers that can help you in your career.  Oh, and lets all have a good time doing it!