What an awful journey I have had since my last post, the trip back from the USA was fine; the problems started getting from the UK to Spain. Basically fog at Liverpool stopped all flights so we had to change airline and airport to get here in time for the TechEd conference. Should have been here by noon on Sunday and …

Seems quiet here today at the SOA conference, less people about. I wonder how many have sneaked off early for flights? It does seem to be mostly Europeans left, judging by the languages I have heard. This does not mean parking was easy this morning, as in the same conference center Bill Gates and Bill Clinton are …

When at Mix07 I posted about Robby Ingebretsen's excellent session on the relationship between developers and designers in the WPF/Silverlight world. Channel9 has just posted an interview with him on the same subject, well worth looking at if this is the type of project you are involved in.

There is more to Seattle than the Space Needle and flying fish at Pike Place Market. At the end of the SOA conference today I persuaded Robert to embark on a tourist adventure, to brave the Seattle traffic and go to Archie McPhee "Outfitters of Popular Culture" . It should have been a 20 minute drive... hour …

As with all conferences you tend to flag part way through, you start to think of the flight home and not having to sit in yet another session (no matter how interesting it sound on paper). It starts to seem all sessions are either in a cold draft or tropical atmosphere. At this point I have to say I am not looking …

I have focused on the the more developer end of SOA today. In the morning excellent sessions by Aaron Skonnard and Matt Milner on using WCF in BizTalk and best WF practices respectively, both provided an interesting set of gotta's to look out for. Check their blogs if this is an area you work in. In the afternoon I …

Not a great day for new buzzwords to me at the SOA conference today, so just the one: POX - Plain Old XML, as opposed to XML data with extra META data

Since arriving in the Bellevue/Redmond area I have been struck by the lack of people. Wherever I have gone it seems like the place was built for at least twice the number that are present, whether it be the shopping centers or restaurants. I wondered was it because: the others are soon to arrive half the people left …

So my thoughts at the end of day.... Certainly a useful day, but the conference seems a little slow. The breaks seem long,the sessions short and the breakout sessions finished quite early in the day. Maybe I am just used to the crammed in format of TechEd that go on late into the evening. On the plus side this format …

Sitting here at the back of the Kodiak room at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond is somewhat similar to the control room at JPL which I went to on my last trip to the USA. All is can see is a sea of laptops and heads just visible over the rows of desks. It is nice to have a desk and easy access to power and …