.NET Musings

Once again, Mike Neel (@ViNull) put on one heck of a conference.  The new facilities were really nice, with a good layout for hallway conversations.  It’s always great to catch up with old friends, and I made several new ones as well.

One new friend I made is Layla Driscoll (@LaylaDriscoll). Layla in a Program Manager on the CLR team in Redmond, and came to give a talk on what’s new in the .NET 4 CLR.  It was a really good talk, but that’s not what impressed me the most.  Layla hung out with the attendees, speakers, etc the entire weekend (iow, didn’t just show up, give a talk, and then leave).  Once folks found out that what she does for a living, the flood gates opened up.  Lots of opinions about the CLR were given, and not all of them were complimentary (to be fair, everyone was gracious enough to separate the product from the person).  Layla handled it all with grace, and returned a lot of valuable information.  I feel that it shows that the product teams *do* care about those of us in the field, and are willing to take a bit of a beating for the good of us all.  In then end, it makes everything better.

We discovered the mobile Vuvuzela applications (for all three platforms), and had some fun tormenting Wally McClure (@wbm) over lunch.  Even though the US National Team lost in extra time, it was a blast watching the game in Market Square.

All in all, a great conference, a great time, great hallway conversations, and an event I highly recommend to all who can make the trip to Knoxville next year!

My code samples and slide decks have been updated, and are on my samples page http://www.skimedic.com/blog/page/Samples-and-Presentations.aspx.

See you next year, and Happy coding!