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by Peter van Ooijen.
Original Post: Dutch Devdays, what was it like ?
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Last week, March 7th and 8th, we had the annual Dutch Microsoft Developer days.
A very impressive start was the beamer used for the keynote.
An immersing stage wide display containing windowed input of several PC's and/or video camera's. Must have been either an expensive rent or it broke down as the second conference day we had just the usual view.
On a conference like this you get the opportunity to see and hear some international people. We had Scott Guthrie demonstrating Atlas.
The greatest thing about Atlas is how you use it as an extra layer on top of an asp,net 2.0 application. Just wrap a part of your webform in some atlas tags and you've got partial postbacks. Also quite nice is the way atlas script interacts with existing webcontrols. There are loads and load of resources on Atlas, Scott's blog makes a good starting point. The main thing I've seen is that Atlas is not another new start in web development but a smooth evolutionary step.
Another great speaker was Bob SQLskills Beauchemin who did an in-depth series on SQL 2005. One of his sessions was in a room approximately 150 chairs wide, just 20 rows deep. In such a setup you have 2 big screens with a presenter in the middle. Nobody knows which direction to look
A guarantee for a stiff neck at the end of the story. I really don't understand this, it should be no problem big to rotate the whole inventory 90 degrees.
Always a good show is Rafal Project Botticelli Lucawiecki who did a series on security. He is such a lovely speaker.
At first ear his talks are a friendly, pleasant and optimistic babble but when the words start sinking in you realize the content is pretty serious, of great depth and keeps you on the tip of your seat.
A final word on this
The shot was taken on a presentation on designing a GUI. It was an old show (recognize the Office '97 bullets ?) I had seen before but it's still very true. I know users don't want to think but one aspect of the conference gave the impression developers want to stop thinking as well. Meant as entertainment we had the "singer" Bob Hangop doing Dutch carnival songs all day. You could not stay away from Bob, he was loud and kept popping up again and again. Carnival is something which divides the country. You just had to take side. Most people I've spoken were not at all amused. Please, please, please never again... I do want to think, that's what I visit the Devdays for.
Having said that my overall impression was that .net is really booming. Not just the evolution of the software but also the enormous increase of job opportunities. Usually the exhibitors mainly try to sell you tools or training courses. This time they mainly were trying to buy something. You ! I'm still a one person shop but with the increasing complexity of software projects and so many interesting opportunities I could change my mind.
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