Introduction
(You can now check out the podcast here.)
What a swaggingly fantastic day! We started off by ‘swagging in’ – being given a goody bag full of freebies, courtesy of the swag masters – Rich and Dave. You always know you’ll come away with lots of top notch goodies at any NextGen event.
It was good to see such a high turnout – the main conference room at Reading TVP was packed out. We also had lots of non-members who attended!
Keynote
Dave, Rich and John gave a roundup of the events during the first year of the Next Generation User Group. It’s amazing how fast things have progressed in such a short time – already, there are three regions, each with strong attendance each month.
Community
Kevin McDaniel of Microsoft gave a talk on the importance of the developer community, and how much work everyone puts in to this vital facet of Microsoft. This includes Microsoft, people who run the groups and also the people who attend.
Awards were given out for best presentation and best nugget in each region. This was based on feedback given via the website after each event. All the regions have had a lot of excellent speakers during the last year (MVPs, Microsoft staff etc.), so the winners had to beat some stiff competition.
Presentations:
- Oxford - Barry Dorrans - Hacking Websites for Fun and Profit
- Coventry - Guy Smith-Ferrier Internationalisation
- Birmingham - Alun Rogers - Fighting Viruses and Malware
Nuggets:
- Coventry - Pete McGann - XNA Gaming
- Birmingham - Martin Wright
- Oxford - Geff Lombardi - Background Worker
Speakers
Rafal Lukawiecki (twice)
Rafal was the first speaker, giving us an overview of the most important security features of Vista. This was a talk that I particularly enjoyed. It underlined how important this operating system is, and why it took so long to produce. Rafal is consistently voted the top speaker at TechEd, and this is a great achievement for someone who speaks mainly on security.
His second talk, in the afternoon, focused on future paradigms in development. We discussed the evolution of our current best practice, and looked at declarative languages. Will we move from imperative programming to declarative? Rafal postulated that we would perhaps have to stop looking for the answer, and maybe start refining the question….
Lorna Brown
It’s always great to have speakers from Microsoft Research in Cambridge. Lorna’s team focuses on use of computing within people’s homes, looking at new ways to use technology. We saw ideas such as the Whereabouts Clock,allowing us to see where members of the family are, and HomeNote, a way for members of the household to communicate.
Oliver Sturm
Oliver focused on using dynamic languages, demonstrating how to use python to hook up with WPF. He created a new Dave, did a Dave.Expand(), and a several other cool things with graphics.
Oliver is always entertaining to watch, giving a lot of very solid content and at the same time injecting some humour. His style involves getting into the code and writing methods and functions on screen, which is no mean feat. This was a real eye opener for me, and I’m keen to learn a lot more about dynamic languages.
Mike Taulty and Daniel Moth
Mike Taulty and Daniel Moth gave an overview of the new language enhancements in Orcas. This was another great talk. My particular favourite was using extension methods, which seem really useful.
Swaggily Fortunes
At the end of the day, what do you expect from Rich and Dave other than a game show with lots of swag. We asked 100 developers ‘What is your favourite HTML tag?’……….
After a hard fought match between the Microsoft and NextGen teams, NextGen won. While this was going on, Dave and Geff were pelting the audience with bags, T-shirts and various other items of swag.
Finally, we all queued up to get another bag full of swag. After ‘swagging out’, it was time to go home. Everyone I spoke to had a great time, and I think this was the best one day event I’ve been to.
|