But it works on my PC!

Whist at PDC and the VBug conference I have heard a a good deal of chat over the future of paying for conferences and user groups. This is in the light of all the PDC sessions being available on Channel9 in under 24 hours and that the content at the Vbug conference is also available at free events like DDD.

The question boils down to can a person or company justify paying a good few thousand Pounds, Euro or Dollars to fly half way round the world when they could see the same content at home? In my previous post on the PDC I suggested it was worth it for the networking, and I still think this is so. However, I have heard an interesting slant on this from more than one person; this is go to the city were the conference is but not to the actual conference; just taking in the parties and maybe watching content via the Internet where available.

For some people I think this might be a viable option; as long as you get the right party invites! For example at TechEd Europe there many community orientated events organised outside the conference because this is the one time most relevant people are in the same city. Also if you are in this group then you may struggle to find time to go to the actual conference so maybe this plan is viable or even preferred. However, for the average developer I am not certain it is the case, too much of the networking happens randomly inside the conference corridors and at meal tables. For this ‘outside the conference’ model to work you have to know who you want to meet and get invited to the right places/parties i.e. you need some profile in the community

As to the other point whether Vbug like events will continue I think we need to consider who they are aimed it. I had expected at the Vbug conference to see a lot of faces in the audience who I see at DDD, but this was not the case. There were a few but not a majority. Then again I don’t see the same faces at DDD as Alt.net. We have a number of distinct communities going on here, there is some cross over but not that much. I think the three broad groups are:

• People who go to events (free or otherwise) during office hours – VBug attendees, and people who come to the events we host with Microsoft.
• People who will go an event in their own time, but it is a passive learning experience – like DDD on a Saturday or a speaker at a user group
• People who want to discuss what they do either in a user group over a beer or at an Open Spaces format conference – like Alt.net

We are never going to get all three groups merged into one. People will move from one to another and maybe attend all three, but that is their choice.

We are lucky in the UK that we have such an active and high quality community so all three groups can be supported, it will be interesting to see if any one type prevails (judged by attendance) as time goes on. However I do not expect to see any type disappear soon.

So back home now after a reasonable journey back from LA all things considered; so I have had a bit of time to reflect, was the PDC good?

Well I think I enjoyed my previous PDC in 2005 more, your first time always sticks in your memory. I think that this might be due to the fact that at the 2005 PDC LINQ was announced and it was a real left field thing, nobody seemed to see it coming. Due to the prior announcements (leaks) there was nothing that was not expected at this years PDC.

This said, it does not mean the the announcements were not important, for the future of Microsoft probably far more important than LINQ was. You could argue that Azure is more of an IT pro announcement, on a day to day basis it will certainly effect them, due to remote hosting of core services, more than developers who will still basically be using .NET via WCF, EF etc. just altering a connection string or two. So an announcement at the Professional Developers Conference was in itself interesting, but where else would Microsoft do it?

On a more step change for developers front, will Oslo change the world? Well in my opinion not yet, but this was a PDC so we expect the new ‘real’ product to be a few years out. Next year’s PDC 2009 I think will see the Oslo and Dublin technologies productify (is that a word?). It is worth comment that a PDC two years running is rare, so Microsoft must have something up their corporate sleeve.

Since getting back I have done the conference survey and I found one question interesting ‘does the fact that the sessions were all available via www.microsoftpdc.com effect your choice to go to the conference in the future?’. I have to say yes, but on reflection it was worth the trip. A conference is more than the keynote and breakout sessions, maybe there is a future in fully online conferences but it is not there for me yet. Whether I want to travel best part of half way round the world is a interesting point; a 2 hour flight to Barcelona did seemed attractive when sitting in Heathrow Terminal 5 prior to my11 hour flight. But I was lucky I suppose, a friend was off to Hawaii for an air compressor conference the same week I was in LA (each to their own I suppose). The location for me does not warrant the travel, the inside of a conference centre is much the same in any country. I suppose a factor here is how much time you spend in the conference against the beach, for me if you are going to a conference it is to learn not have a holiday (or hunt for swag!), but I am not sure all people have the same opinion here. Some people seem to see a conference a reward for work done in the year, so at treat not a learning experience.

So will I be at PDC 2009 – I expect so. Whether Black Marble send as many to the PDC as opposed to the various TechEds I am not sure, this is a discussion we need to have post conference season. We defiantly need to cover both types of conference, as does any forward looking Microsoft partner, but the ratio is the question.

As for me next it is the Vbug conference I am speaking on VSTS; I believe there are still spaces available, maybe I will see you there.

The keynote today was all about MSR, interesting as ever. I particularly liked the demos of Second Light (Surface computing that reaches beyond the surface of the physical pc) and Boku (a system to help children program). The latter is close to our hearts at Black Marble due to the work we have done on FPL, another system to teach children to program (watch out for free downloads of this application soon)

It was also interesting to see that there was a date for a PDC 2009 – shows that Microsoft have plenty of new things in the pipeline.

Outside of the keynote, what could be more directly useful to me will be Visual Studio Team Lab, a new SKU for 2010 (sorry still can’t find a link with more details) that will manage the provisioning of test environments: Hyper-v VHDs are stored in a repository and created using pre defined rules as part of a build process. Test can then be run either automatically or manually using the new VS2010 test tools. Test results are then fed back into the TFS work item tracking system including screen shots, error test information – in fact enough information to allow a developer to connect to the Hyper-v pc at the point of error and debug. This idea is something we are working on internally with current VS2008 and Hyper-V tools. Unfortunately we are unlikely to see Team Lab until VS2010 reaches beta, so a good way off – so I am going to have to persist with our own internal projects it seems.

Well it was all end user focused today; Windows 7 and experience in Live systems. All looks very nice, given the usually question you have to raise in a connected environment over personal data security. I am sure Microsoft have done a good job of physical and logical data security, but the whole concept of mesh networks opens up a huge potential for social attacks. No developer can protect against the user clicking on an ill advised email or now mesh link; I know I have fixed too many friends PCs with the XP Antivirus 2008 Trojan of late, where they click on a link because an email said their anti virus was out of date, they thought they were doing good.

It was interesting that the major third party demo’s big demo’s were both from the UK: Tesco and the BBC. Is it me or does the fact Tesco plan to offer a WPF application to handle your online orders but also manages family photos see a little scary? Where is their reach going to end?

The second half of the keynote was the Don Box and Chris Anderson show  - excellent as ever. A whistle stop tour of programming against Azure. And all the demo’s coded against the live web sites even worked!.

At the PDC expo drinks last night I was asked to show age ID to get a drink! Just me it seems, nobody else from the company.

I thought I was doing well to be carded on my 30th birthday whilst in the US, but 10 years on it getting silly – You must ask how do I keep my youthfully countenance? Wish I knew, but they say it is youth culture here in LA.

So my new aim is to get asked to prove my age to get a drink with an OAP bus pass.

So it seems we are going to have themed days at the 2008 PDC and day one is all about  the Azure services platform. Though judging by the expo stands the key announcements for tomorrow - Oslo and Dublin are out there too. As conferences go it seems a bit confused to me, I guess Microsoft are aiming for three big bangs at three keynotes; but we seem to have had a big bang today and splutter of future items.

However, I might be wrong, there could be stuff we have not even suspected, lets wait and see what we get tomorrow. Don Box and Chris Anderson are usually good value whenever they present so I await their keynote session with anticipation!

So as to Azure, a new move for Microsoft? Well not really it seems the logical next step especially given the offerings of Amazon and Google. It will be interesting how this develops, but on a first quick look Azure seems a very strong offering, I guess it will all be down to price in the end. Oh and if you trust Microsoft to host your business data.

After Alt.net I had thought getting an ultra light notebook was a good idea. At most conference I need to browser, blog and read email; I don’t need to carry around a full development desktop replacement laptop.

Whilst at ReMix I had enough of the old battery in my Acer laptop, so just before it ran out of juice again I ordered a Dell Mini 9, which was actually cheaper than my HTC phone! Today it arrived, a lot sooner than I was expecting, Dell has said it would be next month.

My first thoughts? Well the keyboard is small, typing is an interesting experience as I type this post. Also I would like a disk activity light; during the XP setup there a good period when I was not sure what was going on, a flickering led is always reassuring.

Other than these minor gripes it seem very good, it is light, the battery life seem as advertised and it is fast enough for Office 2007 (so I can use it for presentations) and messing around development (I popped on C#  Express but there is disk space left for VS2008 if I needed it).

I will report further when I have lived with it a while.

So how was ReMix? well a bit like last year not earth shattering, but what can you expect. We have PDC in a month so there is going to be no major announcements, also this is a rerun event from the US MIX conference, again reducing the chances of anything new.

So if you are a developer and been to TechEd or just to local community events (and as Andy Westgarth said we are very lucky at the quality and number of community events and speakers in the UK) you will have heard nothing new about Silverlight etal. Though it is far to say that this may not be true for designers, and I felt the development track was pitched at this level.

It is with design where I think ReMix was different this year; there were noticeably more designers present and I thought the design track a lot stronger. As I had seen most of the developer track elsewhere I spent a good while in designer sessions, and as usual when going beyond your normal bounds it makes you think.

What has been bubbling in my mind is how does the design process fit into agile processes? Bill Buxton in his sessions (and new book) spoke about how it was important for the designer to provide a variety of concepts for the client/project and not invest all their effort in a single design, thus removing choice form the 'client' . It got me think should the same apply to the developers/architect? Is this even possible? At the grossest sense it would mean developers would propose (prototype?) versions of a product in PHP, Java, Flash ASP.NET, Silverlight etc. Now we all know this does not happen, early in a project a hopefully informed choice will made as to the technology to use (often this choice is made in the choice of who gets the business - a PHP house or a Microsoft house), and it is rare a change will be made in base technology once the choice is made. Even though a project is agile there are limits as to how major a change of direction could be,

So is this a difference between design and development, in web design we can ask the client how it should look, you still need to provide quality design with sane user interactions, but the client can have some choice e.g. 'I like  a more cartoon style', 'I want just like that but in red'. You are not going to get the same interaction from the bulk of clients for development and architecture, it is rare you hear 'Just like that but can you use SOAP'. Development constrains tend to be just that, things that must be done to meet a standard, not something open to choice at the non specialist level.

So ReMix was an interesting event, and good to see many friend from the community. And if it opened my mind to something new it must have been worth attending.

It is all well and good Microsoft saying that a developers and designer can share the same project WPF/Silverlight files in Visual Studio and Expression Blend, but whilst Blend does not have the ability to use a source control repository (TFS, SVN or anything else for that matter) and actually strips out  any source control binding it finds in a project file, this is for me unworkable experience. How has this product got to V2 without this feature?

For any company interested in a quality development process source control must be the most basic safety net, irrespective of how agile their methodology is.

I suppose there is one agile model where it could almost work and that is the designer and developer pair programing on the same PC with Blend and VS installed - but how realistic is that? and certainly does not scale beyond two people.

So as I am at Remix, I just asked Scott Guthrie when we would see source control in Blend - he said next version, some time next year, but on the plus side it should also include TFS work item integration. All good but we need it now, this is such a barrier to adoption of the Blend products.

Just seen the keynote for Remix in Brighton, I must say that Bill Buxton's part was one of the best keynotes I have seen (watch out for the streamed webcast). For me the most important thing for a keynote is to set the tone, the meme, for the conference and his session certainly did. OK it is good to see the demos of products but you can't beat a good bit of thought provoking public speaking. First time I have seen this done well by Microsoft since the last PDC a couple of years ago. Interestingly, setting the tone was something always done very well at the Sun JavaOne conferences I attended in the late 90s.

Bill's concept of strength through bring together excellent people with different skills, but with a common understanding and language, to make strong teams was also a common theme from Alt.net and the post bar drinks from last nights VBug meeting. If the whole team does not buy into a concept whether it be excellence in design or TDD then delivering high quality product is down to luck.

I think I will be doing to Bill's other sessions.