DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper 3 conference, otherwise known as DDD3 took place yesterday Saturday 3rd June 2006. For those of you who don't know, this conference is held at Microsoft, but is NOT run by Microsoft. It is run 'By the community, for the community', and true to it's name is organised by some key community leaders from around the UK. What a great turn out of speakers and what a fantastic turnout of developers! Guys and Girls from all over the UK came to listen and learn about the technologies they work or or wanted to work on!

Sessions varied from a great in depth session entitled "SQL Server Tips and Tricks" by Christian Wade through to a really thought provoking session on OpenSource by Jono Bacon. On the security side Dinis Cruz did his Terminator bit on the .NET CLR and there was a late appearance too at lunchtime by Microsoft's new Security Advisor on Organised Crime on the Internet, Ed Gibson - what an impact he made, an ex-FBI man, I wouldn't like to have been on the wrong side of him in his previous job - Wow! Other sessions included LINQ, nHibernate, ASP.NET 2.0, 'Indigo' and Testing and Debugging. Well done to Phil Winstanley and Dave Sussman for filling in at 4 minutes notice!! likewise for Richard Fennel from Black Marble for filling in at much longer notice.... 6 minutes!

Having attended the previous DDD I felt that this one was even better, with a great buzz about the whole affair. Speaking to Craig Murphy and Phil Winstanley, feedback from the attendees seemed to bear this feeling out. I must admit I didn't attend in full any session in the morning, as Rich Costall and myself were preparing (sorry - finishing preparing) our own session called '.NET Hidden Treasures', a lightening trip through some lesser known areas of the .NET Framework plus a few cool new features from .NET 2.0 and SQL 2005. I was really very nervous in the morning and after the session finished, the drop in adenalin levels cerainly knocked me out! Still, the audience seemed to enjoy the talk, my only complaint is that Richie's Microsoft sock puppet got a bigger applause than my first demo in which I actually did some live coding!! Still it's a tough road to the top ... After doing our bit, Rich and I managed to get a couple of great Video interviews for the NxtGenUG members, watch this space...

I must make a mention of John Thomson and Craig Murphy of Scottish Developers who made the long trip down, plus others from their group, and likewise of Andrew Westgarth of VBUG who did a great job of gathering his troops from Newcastle and in helping out with the organisation. These guys are true enthusiasts, travelling hundreds of miles in their own time at at their own expense to attend a developer conference.

Personally I thought the event was fantastic, and if you attended don't forget to give DDD your feedback on here (whatever you thought - right Craig?). Finally, I'd like to thank the community leaders who took time to organise this event. I cannot remember everybody, but I would particularly like to thank Benjamin Mitchell, Craig Murphy, Tony Rogerson,Ian Cooper, Jonathan Hodgson, Zi Makki and Phil Winstanley. Also, I have say a great thanks to Melita Walton of Microsoft who did another fantastic job of hosting us all on the community leaders day on the Friday, and in coordinating the event on the Saturday. Thanks too to Mike Taulty, Mike Ormond and the rest of the DPE team from Microsoft for giving up their Saturday to help out at the event. I'm REALLY looking forward to DDD4!