We’re two days into Devscovery and so far things have gone exceedingly well. John Robbins opened the conference with a keynote on software development, and after that we worker bees took over and began delivering conference sessions. John has dropped a lot of weight in recent months and is back into his old Army fighting shape. The first picture we took of him showed what appeared to be an empty stage. Then we realized you can’t see him when he’s turned sideways and took another picture at a 45-degree angle.
So far all my talks have been about ASP.NET 1.1, which is old news by now. Tomorrow morning I’m doing a talk on ASP.NET 2.0. I’m really looking forward to it because I have lots of fun demos to share. In fact, I won’t be using slides at all so I can fit as much cool stuff into the hour-and-a-half as I can.
Jeffrey Richter, Jason Clark, and Peter DeBetta are speaking at the conference, too. Jeffrey and his wife Kristin found a novel way to get to campus every day. Jeffrey has always had a bit of biker in him, but the geeky side usually wins out. Jeffrey has the only scooter in Redmond that’s powered by Microsoft Windows. He had to pull over and restart it three times on the way to work today.
Jeffrey and I are both fans of CBS’s The Amazing Race. I’m thinking he and I should apply for the next one. I could be the nice guy and Jeffrey could be the shrewd one. Lewis Frazer said “if they make it onto the show, be sure to tape that one episode.” It’s great to have support from your friends and colleagues when you set out on a big adventure.
What has surprised me most about Devscovery is that several attendees have traveled from across the country just to see the Microsoft campus. I guess when you’re a software developer (for Microsoft platforms, anyway), Redmond is the center of the universe. I do sometimes feel a sense of awe when I walk around campus. It’s a beautiful place, and there’s a ton of history here. And it’s an awesome place to hold a conference. I’m sure we’ll be back here for Devscovery next year, and I’m already looking forward to it.