Cleveland Day of .NET 2008 is History!

On Saturday, May 17th, we held the first Cleveland Day of .NET and it was, from all accounts, a success.  It sounds like everyone had a good time, met a lot of new people and learned about technologies they would not have been exposed to in their normal jobs.  This is exactly what we were trying to accomplish.

How it got started

All of this came about because a few community members were talking on twitter about Cleveland needing a Code Camp or something similar and deciding to do something about it.  Myself, Sarah Dutkiewicz and Michael Letterlie, none of whom new each other in person, decided to create this.  A few days later was an ArcReady where Joe Fiorini and Corey Haines also joined in.  By the time we had our first meeting Sam Nasr was also an organizer and by the second meeting, Mike Slade was with us as well.  From the very first meeting, where most of us actually met each other, until the Cleveland Day of .NET took place was just under three months.  This group of people pulled off a great conference without any of us having done anything like this before.  If you see any of these organizers out in the community, thank them, they all deserve a big congratulations.

A Good Day

In the weeks since Cleveland Day of .NET I have heard directly and indirectly from many people that all say it was a good event.  Sponsors, speakers, attendees and organizers alike all feel that it was a good day.  Of course there are things that can be improved upon for next year, that is true of any event, but the day did accomplish what we set out to do: Provide a locally hosted developer focused event for fellow developers.

Thanks!

In addition to the people that worked so had to pull this together, plenty of other people are deserving of our thanks.

Speakers

When we were first organizing this, we dreamed big but were skeptical of getting very many speakers.  We were wrong.  After deciding on time and tracks there was room for 24 sessions and 4 vendor sessions.  When we placed the call for speakers, hoping to get 24 good responses, we had almost 50 talks proposed, it ended up being quite a task to trim that down to the 24 that we had room for.

Some drove long distances, some spoke at very little notice, some were speaking in front of a group for the first time.  All of them did it completely for free, no gas money, no free hotel.  Ok, so some of them may have just come for the opportunity to drink with fellow geeks :).

Please thank all of these speakers when you see them around:

• Richard Broida
• Joe O'Brien
• Dan Hibbits
• Sam Nasr
• Dan Hounshell
• Alan Stevens (Drove furthest - from TN)
• John Stockton (Yea, that's me)
• Josh Clark
• Brian Shura
• Nate Kohari (First big presentation)
• Carey Payette
• Jason Follas
• Chris Woodruff
• James Bender
• Michael Eaton
• Amanda Laucher
• Joe Brinkman
• Joe Fiorini
• Dave Redding
• Len Smith
• Brian Prince (Cursed me during presentation, not the first time, probably won't be the last)
• Sarah Dutkiewicz (Worked on presentation until the very end)
• Leon Gersing
• Joe Wirtly

Community

Without the support of the local development community this event would have been pointless.  Both of the relevant user groups, the Cleveland C#/VB. NET SIG and the Cleveland .NET SIG helped to spread the word and offered any support we needed.  The community members that attended put up with the narrow hallways, lack of lunch and no good meeting place yet offered nothing but praise.

Sponsors

There was also a lot of support for Day of .NET from local companies as well.  Without the generous sponsors all the effort put in would never have been enough since it always ends up coming down to money.  We had a great bunch of sponsors that all were very supportive and adaptable, even when we weren't sure what we were doing.  If you would like to thank them yourself (and please do) here they are:

• Microsoft
• 4TechWork
• Hyland Software
• Bennett Adelson
• Lazorpoint
• Exential
• Beacon Hill Staffing Group
• TEKsystems
• Sogeti
• Robert Half Technology
• PreEmptive Solutions

We also had a number of companies donate books, software and swag to give away:

• JetBrains
• Redgate
• Pearson Education
• WROX
• Microsoft

Finally

It's all over now, we're all finally caught up on rest and back to life as normal.  But let's not let the momentum die, we've started something here, lets keep it going.  And I'll see you in the community.

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.

Review: Cleveland C#/VB.NET SIG 4/22

Once again this review is coming a couple days late, I'll try to get a little more punctual but since I've been working on that for decades, don't count on it any time soon.

First, the venue/crowd.  It was held at the Berbee office in Brecksville as usual, although most likely for the last time.  Sam Nasr, who coordinates this SIG, is leaving Berbee so will be looking for a new location (if you want to host it contact him through the site above).  The room was fine although it looked like we were about at max capacity for the room with around 30-35 people.  Pizza was a little late but no one seemed to mind, at least not that I noticed.  It also got a little warm but with that many people in a small room that is to be expected.  And they were all staring at me, so maybe I was the only one warm.

This month at the Cleveland C#/VB.NET SIG the presentation was Silverlight 2 in ASP.NET presented by well, me.  This was my first time giving a presentation like this in a long time so I was a tad nervous that day.  Ok, more than a tad, I was VERY nervous. I felt like my presentation was weak and that I wasn't ready to give it.  I may be my harshest critic (at least I hope so) and in thinking about it later I definitely have some things to work on, but overall I think people learned a lot from the presentation.  I actually surprised myself with the number of questions that I actually knew the answer to, and there were a lot of questions.  Lots of questions.

What did I do wrong?

• I was unorganized
• I had notes to keep me on track but didn't follow them
• I let questions derail me
• I would go too deep into an explanation and had a hard time getting back on track
• I didn't prove my thesis
• I don't know that anyone noticed this until I pointed it out over beer.

The good part about everything that went wrong is that I know how to fix it. Practicing in front of real people will help quell the nerves and let me pay attention to my notes.  Practice will also help me handle off-the-wall questions better.  A small change in my slides and a more focused demo will prove the thesis better.

Overall the feedback I've been getting from people is that is was a very good presentation.  Personally I know I have a lot of room to improve, but you have to start somewhere.

P.S. Go register for Cleveland Day of .NET, I'll be posting some exciting updates about that event soon.

Review: Cleveland .NET SIG 4/8

So I'm a couple days late in writing this, but it's ok, I took notes :).  Overall this was a good SIG, would have been better if I actually cared about BizTalk though. 

Why Review

First off let me explain for a second why I feel like I need to write a review of these events.  Personally I think I get two things out of writing these.  First is the chance to tell others that didn't attend about all the cool stuff they missed out on.  I think this is a great way to advertise future events by talking up past ones.  The second thing gained is that by analyzing the past, we can learn things about the future (can you tell I was a history major at one time?).  In this case, by looking at what went right and what didn't, we can come up with ways to improve in the meeting next month.  Or someone from Kalamazoo or Austin or Sacramento might get ideas for their own use group.

Venue

The venue was the Cleveland Microsoft office in Independence (notice, not actually in Cleveland) and we had both Developer Evangelist Jeff Blankenburg and Architect Evangelist Brian Prince.  This was Brian's first SIG/UG trip to Cleveland since becoming a softie.  The usual pizza and Coke was present as was the worlds worst collection of giveaways in the history of SIGs, but more on that later.  The only venue related issue was the A/C needed a kick in the pants which Brian was happy to provide.

Community

This month Richard Broida gave a talk titled "The Intelligent Programmers Guide to BizTalk" and if you remember last month's review he talked about tying to get the crowd more involved.  First on the crowd involvement.  I will give Richard credit, he definitely tried to mix it up and for the most part I would say it worked.  Nothing is going to change completely overnight but this was a good first start.  Some of the things he tried were being more conversational, walking among the crowd a bit and joking around.  Also he didn't jump straight into the talk, he started by introducing the MS guys and asking for announcements, which of course I had one.  I got up and spoke for a few minutes about Cleveland Day of .NET trying to get people to register, speak or sponsor.  Jeff even got up to encourage people to speak.  Overall between the numerous people talking at the beginning, Richard joking around and his walking around, it really did get people more involved.  Personally I think there is more to do in that arena but this was a very good step in the right direction. 

Another step in that direction of course is the after-party.  This month we had 14-15 people, not bad.  We had a few people that were new to the bar and had no previous connection to anyone in the group, which indicates it isn't becoming a 'click' but that others do feel welcome.  Once again I left way too late but enjoyed every minute of it.  Poor Brian had to drive all the way to Columbus after the bar, which we didn't leave until 11:00PM.

Presentation

Honestly I can't really judge the quality of the presentation as I'm not a BizTalk person.  At all.  Don't want to be one either.  One thing that I think came up at the bar was bullet points.  If you've read Beyond Bullet Points, well, it says to basically not use them.  I counted 27 bullet points on one of the BizTalk slides.  Now I'm not going to say that's bad since that is the norm for presentations today.  Two things about the presentation that I didn't like: 1) it felt like too much information for one presentation 2) there wasn't a break in the middle.  Any talk that long needs a break to let people stretch and socialize in the middle.  As I said, I can't really speak to the content but judging from the questions presented, Richard does know his stuff and showed numerous features that interested people.  I did learn one cool thing: functoids.  Not exactly sure what they do but it just sounds cool, Functoids.

Wrapup

I said earlier that the giveaways were well, bad.  Not all of them but overall, it lacked.  There was a backpack I thought was kinda cool, a couple copies of Halo 3 and, get this, two Windows Mobile Berets.  That's right, a beret with a MS Windows Mobile logo.  Wow.  The drawings started as you would expect, first a copy of Halo 3, then the backpack.  Next was something I don't think I've seen before, the next person 'passed'.  He didn't want anything that was left (Halo or Beret).  The next couple people also passed.  Finally someone took Halo, then the first beret went.  Then a couple more passed until finally Jeff just gave the remaining beret to the first person that would take it.  That person happened to be Joe Fiorini and he wore it all night at the bar.  Jeff took a picture of Joe in the beret, he's probably going to pull it out at an opportune moment.

Overall it was another good SIG and a good after-party.  Less than two weeks until I talk at one of these, hopefully I'll be ready :).

Review: Cleveland C#/VB.NET SIG 3/25

Last night was the March meeting of the Cleveland C# / VB.NET SIG.  It was really the February meeting as well since that was delay multiple times due to weather, gotta love Ohio.  This was my first trip to this particular group and I really enjoyed it.

The topic for the night was SQL Server 2008, with Sam Nasr as the presenter.  Since he is also the leader of the SIG it was pretty much all Sam, all the time.  Since SQL Server is still only a CTP much of the information is subject to change but it does look like they have added a bunch of new features that will make development a little easier.  Nothing ground-breaking, but some niceties.  My favorites are some of the new datatypes such as Date, Time and HierarchyId.  I've been wanting them to have a separate Data and Time type for a LONG TIME.

This crowd is a lot more interactive and the group at the BA hosted .NET SIG.  During this presentation there was a lot more discussion, and not just asking and answering with the presenter.  Sometimes a question would be answered by another person (or people) from within the group.  It made for a very good experience. 

Several things come to mind that may cause such a difference in the group dynamics.  First, the average age of this group is probably ten years older than of the other one.  Typically with age come experience and more of a willingness to be "out there" where others can see/hear you, both of which increase the likelihood of speaking up in a crowd. Another factor could be that this crowd and the venue itself were smaller.  The more intimate setting also makes it more comfortable for people to be themselves.  I would name as a third factor that Sam actively tried to engage the crowd, and while that is a needed aspect of interaction, presenters at the other SIG also try this, so although this is a good and needed thing, it doesn't set this group apart. 

One more thing that I would name as different and good is that it felt more informal.  Sam sat during much of the presentation, granted it was partly to reach his laptop, and that help the crowd feel as equals.  Also instead of just jumping into the presentation there was a little bit of a conversational feel to the non-presentation aspects of the night.  Even the presentation felt that way.  I can't point to one thing in particular that made the night different but I think all of the above items contributed to a better experience.

After the presentation was over Sam had a few of us come up and announce Cleveland Day of .NET.  We talked it up and asked people to register and to ask their bosses to sponsor, I think it went over well.  Sam also announced that I'll be doing next month's talk on Silverlight 2.  I guess it's too late to back out now.

And there was an after-party at the Winking Lizard on Rockside again.  There were about six of us there, ok, exactly six, and it was a fun time.  We were talking about how old Mike is :) and what we started programming on and such.  I came to realize that I'm nearing old.  Ick.  The chat was so fun though that before we know it the clock said 11:00PM and we split up to get sleep before work.

So it was a good night, good crowd and I look forward to next month.

Review: Cleveland Microsoft Launch Event 3/13

On Thursday was the Microsoft's launch event for Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008.  If you don't know what those three things are you might as well stop reading now :).

The event was held at the downtown Marriott, right off of public square in Cleveland.  If you haven't been to Public Square for a while, it was a big pile of snow and construction.  Mud, no working stop lights, half of the sidewalks not even shoveled.  Was a great impression for Cleveland overall.  Yes, that was sarcasm, get used to it, you will be seeing it again.  Once inside (the correct building) though it was fine.  The meeting room for the developer track was fairly large, someone said 750 seats, and it was full at the beginning.  Chairs were a little too close together for my taste but oh well, it worked.

Supposedly there were four sessions but really it was more like three as there was no real delineation between the first two.  Jeff Blankenburg and Brian G. (Developer Evangelist from Chicago) tag-teamed the first two sessions with Brian covering the marketing slides and Jeff doing the demos.  It worked pretty well and they are both very engaging speakers, not people to just read from a static script.  Jeff's demos might have been easier for him if his mouse was a little closer to the same level as his laptop.  The podium was cramped so there was probably a 18" drop to the mouse.  I'll bet that was comfortable.  The demos went well with only minor glitches that were easily resolved.  We all got a chuckle, well, outright laugh really, when we learned that apparently the AJAX password strength checker at it's default settings thinks that "password" is a strong password. :)

The second half of the developer track was done by Bill Steele.  Bill didn't let us down with his usual blend of humor and presentation skills.  My favorite, and the crowd's, was when he showed us how to use a semi-colon at the end of a VB line.  It's simple really.  You have to prepend it with a ' (for those that don't know, that is a remark char in VB). =)

I know I haven't covered the content but you can get all of that online at the Heroes Happen Here virtual launch event.  What I will say about them is that if you don't know anything about VS 2008 yet then you need to go watch the presentations to get a feel for the new features as they are very nice.  It was worth my time to go and miss most of a day's pay, even before the free software, which is nice btw.

Before the event I spent probably 30 minutes talking with Brian Prince about organizing community driven events.  He gave me quite a bit of good advice which I have passed on to some key people already.  If any of you don't know we are planning an event which will be officially announced later this week so check back in a couple of days for a cool announcement.

Review: Cleveland .NET SIG 3/11

Last night was good for a lot of reasons, but was lacking in a few others.  First the good.

The speaker, Miguel Castro, was great.  He is a very energetic speaker with a lot of relevant experience.  His talk on URL rewriting using Module and Handlers was informative and interesting.  The presentation had the right combination of details and high level overview to both demonstrate the "why" and the "how" of URL rewriting.  He included multiple methods to achieve the results and gave advantages and disadvantages to each method.  Examples were clean and to the point as well, not cluttered with things that he admitted you would need in a real-world app (like error handling, caching etc.), but demonstrated the needed points.  I learned a ton and definitely plan to see him talk again if he's ever in the area.  Since this was his first trip to Ohio though, I don't expect to see him in the area again any time soon :).

After the event a group went down to the Winking Lizard for drinks and conversation.  That is where the good networking/community building took place.  There were about a dozen people total went to the bar, which isn't too bad since this was only the second or third time it was done.  It was a good group too, Richard Broida, Jeff Blankenburg, Sarah D. (Not even going to try spell it :)), and a bunch more people came by.  We talked Day of .NET, SIG stuff, and other technical topics but basically it was a bunch of BSing.  Apparently Jeff is nearly as big a smart ass as I am, made for a fun conversation.  There was also more interest in starting a user group in the Akron/Canton area, it might be time to get that going.

Now for the bad.  At the actual SIG event the crowd was dead as usual.  Almost no interaction from the crowd.  Miguel did his best to get interaction started but the crowd just didn't get it going.  At the after-party (that's right, it was a geek after-party), there was some discussion on what can be done to facilitate a more interactive group but personally I don't see anything changing anytime soon.  If we start a group in the Akron/Canton area though I do see us doing things a little differently.

Overall I had a great time, learned a lot and met some cool new people.

ArcReady Cleveland - 2/5/08

This morning was the ArcReady Cleveland event with the topic of Service Lifecycle Management. This is a very valid topic these days with more and more organizations creating services and not really having any strategy on how they plan to update/upgrade those services.

Josh Holmes kicked off the event, introduced us to the speaker and then promptly disappeared until the giveaways at the end. Well, he was there for the break too. Josh not speaking at this event didn't detract from anything though as the speaker was quite capable and didn't need any hand-holding.

So the speaker, Chris Madrid (at least I think that was his name), had his slides together for a different event I'm guessing as he skipped over the majority of them but still managed to get his point across. Josh is supposed to provide a link to download the entire presentation for those interested. The first half of the talk was about concepts instead of practice and while that is very appropriate for an architect talk, he was moving fairly quickly and people weren't engaged. He then demonstrated a little codeplex app they have built that acts as a service gateway and adds capabilities such as versioning and logging. Nice app that they are hoping to keep up to date but as it's not a sanctioned product you get what you pay for.

Unlike the last couple of ArcReady events, the crowd was dead quiet until after the break. He about had to beg us to start talking. I think the biggest barrier to conversation was that very few people in the crowd had any relevant experiences to share. Once he got to demonstrating the app people really started to get it and conversation (mostly in the form of questions) started. The talk was oriented towards enterprise IT departments instead of at ISVs so not everything translated directly but he did make a good case for the usefulness of at least having a corporate-wide defined strategy as for how to deal with service lifecycles.

There were three to four times the number of attendees as were at the last ArcReady event including numerous people that I 'think' read this blog (which is a small number). I ran into an old co-worker, a current recruiter trying to lure me away and several other devs trying to get a code dojo/camp started. Hopefully with some of the contacts I made to day we will get enough momentum going to actually start an event.

As far as I know the next event I'll be reviewing will be the March 13th launch event. I may attend a SIG or UG before then but XNA and Ruby don't fit in my path so I doubt it.

Oh, and the streak continues, no prize for John.

Popfly How To- That was easy

Wow!

So at the .NET SIG the other day, one of Jeff's demos was of Popfly and wow was that simple. For the last couple of days I've been walking around the office here talking about how cool Popfly is. So I'm posting some of those same points here (as well as pics of the cutest kid on the planet).



I've got to say that Microsoft's Popfly is the coolest free online app I've seen in a long time. It's
ridiculously easy to create cool and powerful mashups. So easy a 10 year old could do it, yet still fun and powerful enough to make geeks happy.

In fact, I've included a spinny thing (that is a technical term in my offce btw):


What are the steps required?

1. Open the popfly site and log in with a Live Id
2. Drag a few "blocks" into your workspace
3. Drag connections between the blocks
4. Set a few configuration items

That's it, all there is to it. So, how did I create this cool spinny thing? Simple

1. Added a Flickr block
2. Added Photo Carousel
3. Draw line from flickr to photo
4. Set flicker type to Photoset and give the id
5. Run It, you're done!

That's all there is, nothing more. It's really that easy. Popfly is already getting a ton of press, I think it's only going to grow. I'll definitely be using it more.

Cleveland .NET SIG 1/8/2008- Silverlight 101

Tonight I attended the Cleveland .NET SIG hosted by Bennett Adelson with Jeff Blankenburg as the presenter. The topic was Silverlight and was basically a test run of the same presentations that Jeff will be giving at CodeMash later this week. In fact, this is part of the reason I'm not attending CodeMash, I got the content I wanted most anyway.

So on with the review.

Jeff was pretty well prepared, he had his slides put together professionally and his demos accomplished their goals of showing various features of SilverLight and of building upon each other nicely. He did have some trouble with some of the demos the first hour but while he was frustrated / embarrassed by it I don't think came off bad. Really all of the issues came down to the fact that this was his first real run of the content with an audience so he forgot a couple things that I think he knew, just was a tad flustered. I don't want it to sound like it went badly because it didn't, a couple little hiccups but overall a good pair of presentations.

The only complaint I would have, and this isn't a real complaint, come in the second presentation. In this hour he concentrated more on cool implementations like Tafiti and Popfly than on "how to". Now that may have been the goal the whole time but well, I wanted more meat :). And also, it did feel like, and Jeff actually said at one time, that he was staying away from the demos after the pain he went through during the first hour.

Still, overall, I think it was a good meeting and I'm glad I attended.

Atmosphere: The pizza was good and greasy, the room was full and Mr. Annoying was there as usual. I'm not going to name him because he's probably a nice guy but the person to whom I'm referring has been at every event I've attended for a while and ALWAYS asks loud, grating, almost confrontational questions of the presenter. I'm sure many readers know exactly of whom I speak (well, type). Really, I think Jeff did a good job of handling him, even got him to shut up for a while, but not until he had completely derailed his train of thought. Really I think that's probably what knocked Jeff out of his rhythm in the first hour.

Oh, and my losing streak continues. Still no door prize. For those keeping score, a few years back (like 2001ish) I won a few things from MSDN events and such. Since then: NADA. Zip. Zilch. A month ago I was at an event with about 12 attendees and 5 giveaways, still nothing. I'm hoping that I'll win a 'metric ton' of goodies on Thursday (hint, hint).

Buckeye Traffic

Anyone that has ever driven in Ohio in the winter knows that the roads are not always um.... great. For several years I have been visiting a site maintained by ODOT (www.buckeyetraffic.org) that shows the ice/snow condition of major roads throughout the state. Previously the user interface of this site has been less than perfect. In fact, it had one behavior that annoyed me to no end, it would expand the browser window to full screen size upon entering the site, the user had no warning or option. Even with the bad user interface though I used the site often since the data was quite helpful.

This weekend we had the first real nasty storm of the season so I surfed on over to the same old site and apparently it's been rebuilt, quite nicely in fact. They have built the application using ASP.NET using Windows Live Maps as a platform. I can't swear to it but I think they are also using ASP.NET AJAX, I think I recognize a few pieces of the AJAX Control Toolkit even.

There are a couple of pieces that are not perfect:

• Load times are quite long sometimes, apparently the State can afford a good site but not bandwidth


• When a user scrolls the map the data does not reload

Now, I don't want it to sound like those problems take away from the app because they are only minor issues. Overall the it is a huge step forward and a great example of using Live Maps as a platform and a practical use of AJAX.

One question I have though: Who built it?

MSDN Event - Cleveland 12/13/07

This is the first review of an event I've attended so if there is more (or less) anyone wants to hear let me know. Not like anyone is reading this yet anyway.

Like all MSDN events there were three sessions and for once all of them sounded good in the marketing materials. Usually there are only one or two good ones and you have to sit through something you don't care at all about to get to the good ones. Bill Steele gave this presentation as he is the Developer Evangelist for this region so he has been doing this for a while now. Overall I think all of the sessions were good this time but I still came away disappointed. Part of my lack of enthusiasm I blame on having already downloaded trials of Expression Blend and VS2008 so I already knew much of what he was showing. The other issue was since this was at the end of the quarter, his last presentation in fact, much of the material was already outdated and there weren't any handouts left (DVDs or t-shirts).

The venue was fine as long as the fire alarm doesn't evacuate us all and there is enough room for everyone. Oh yea, the fire alarm DID go off and there wasn't enough room. Maybe it's time for a bigger room. Overall though the venue was fine, I was there for the content anyway, not the premium seating.

First Session: What’s New for Web Development in Visual Studio 2008
The problem with this was he was demoing the Beta 2 bits instead of RTM bits. Overall though this was a good session, nothing that I didn't already know from reading ScottGu's blog or playing around in it myself.

Second Session: A New Paradigm for Data Development with Web Based Data Services
This was a very good session. Bill gave an overview of LINQ and then got into LINQ to Entity and Astoria. Since I hadn't really looking much into LINQ yet I found this session to be very informative. These look to be very cool technologies but won't work for the app I'm working on at the moment. I will definitely have to play around with it more though as it seems like cool stuff.

Third Session: Building Rich, Dynamic Web Experiences with Microsoft Silverlight, ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX
This was basically a Silverlight/XAML demo. While I didn't learn anything new it was still cool. Silverlight / XAML / Expression Blend just tend to demo well as it's easy to create complex animations. Now, what he didn't show is the learning curve to create anything actually functional, that's a little harder. Still it's cool stuff and I can't wait to build a production anything with it.

So overall in this rambling I left feeling deflated but when I think back on it I think it was worth missing half a day's pay to go.