Owen's Blog

I’ve been a bit lazy recently (well actually I’ve been working really hard, just not on the things I want to find time for) but as Kirk said I’d posted the slides and code from my presentation here, when I hadn’t, I thought I’d better rectify the situation.

The slides are here:

The code can be grabbed from my public svn repository: http://bgeek.googlecode.com/svn/CodeCamp2008/

Hope that’s what everyone (anyone) is looking for.

If you want me to do more, just let me know and I’ll see if I can help you out.

Just found out MacGyver’s first name was Angus, huh who’d have thunk it.

Architectural concerns with the ASP.net MVC Framework – John Daniel-Trask

Ok so if there’s one thing I do want to say about this is that it wasn’t really about architecture, yet it had an arc stream code. JD is a great presenter, witty and quick and keeps the flow going well, but I’m not sure the material suited the title… a lot about TDD and dependency injection, and a more developer focused that perhaps it should have been. Was a great dissection of Kigg (which should be held as an example of what not to do), but should have been on the developer track.

Hardcore LINQ to entities – Adam Cogan

Ok Adam, you took way too long to get to point, also a few to many deviations from the point. I really don’t have any inclination to use Linq to SQL or Linq to Entities, they both seem too configuration heavy, I’ll stick to Lightspeed for my own projects.

Application lifecycle management with “Rosario” – Mat Velloso

So the new Visual Studio Team System is called Rosario, and MS are still going down the route of putting everyone into Visual Studio. I really don’t think this approach will work, there unit testing framework is far from the best. However the new test management application (can’t remember the code name) looks somewhat interesting. but I can’t really see it taking off, only time will tell. A couple of great ideas: Saving videos of tests, and snapshots of virtual machines at the point where the error occurred.

Designing Compelling User Experiences with Expression Studio 2 – Nigel Parker

Less practical advise in this one and more of a run through of a few cool sites and great user experiences that can be created with Silverlight. Silverlight has the potential to be a great technology, allowing an already experienced group of .net developers create some compelling apps. But the proof will be in the pudding.

Ok so second day of Tech Ed and my brain is awash with new ideas and techniques i can apply to my everyday work.

Last night we had a great Blogger’s dinner, where I met with a number of the people who’s posts i read on a regular basis, such as Alex Henderson, Chakkaradeep. Must say a huge thank you to Darryl Burling for organising it also thanks to Scott Hanselman who came along and spoke to us about blogging and gave us a number of tips and fielded more than a few questions.

Web Futures Panel – Scott Hanselman, Jorke Odolphi, Harry Pierson, Jonas Follesø

The first session I got to today as the earlier sessions didn’t appeal. The session seemed to focus more on where we are at the moment, and while it’s interesting I actually don’t agree with the general opinion that what’s great about the web on devices such as the iPhone is the fact that sites just work. I love what Xero and kiwibank have done in realising that the situations where I’m using these devices are such that I don’t want to be burdened by the cruft that comes with the full web application instead I want a very distilled usable subsection of the application that’s usable while on the move. I found it a bit disappointing that no one trumpeted the cleanliness and usability that’s shining through with these new breeds of mobile sites.

Advanced Cross Browser Layout with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 – Matt Hellar

This was the most disappointing of presentations, nothing much new here, but the slides were incomplete/out of date and the beta version of IE on the presenters laptop actually didn’t work as advertised, and didn’t pick up the EmulateIE8 tag that’s supposed to be the point of beta 2.

Pumping Iron – Dynamic Languages on .net – Harry Pierson

Harry did a great job of showing off the power of dynamic languages on .net, but I’m not as much a fan of Python (I find it scans worse than ruby) but as Harry is the IronPython guy, I understand why so many of his examples were in python, having said that a few too many of his examples were, “look at what I wrote” but that’s a minor thing. the IronPython and IronRuby ports look great, and looking forward to seeing the DLR drop.

Ok so you might have noticed a theme, or at least a name that crops up in the last couple of blog posts, there is a method to my madness, although I may have only learned about the method last night. (which amazingly makes me a time traveller, knowing what to do before I know why I do it).

It turns out Scott Hanselman is somewhat of an ego searcher (I see you Scott… there you are, just there), not in a bad way, but in a way that anyone who owns and maintains a blog should be, checking out and keeping up with the conversation that exists around your blog. So my plan finally worked out when during last nights geek dinner (at Tech Ed 2008) Scott did a search and lo, up pops my blog linking to his name. Wow. “My work here is done.”

No… seriously I digress from the point that I’m wanting to make. Well actually there are many points I want to make but only some of them are interesting.

If anyone gets close to meeting Scott Hanselman in person, please, please, please do so… I’m a bit like Leon Bambrick (did I ever tell the story of how we’ve both worked for the same company in the past?) I really love Scott, he’s the closest thing to a celebrity we have in the dot net tech community. Actually we have a number (Phil Haack, Rob Conery, Scott Guthry, Jeff Atwood just to name a few). But to be honest to call Scott a celebrity is actually missing the point. Ok so he’s quite a visible and well respected member of the .net community. That’s really great. But most importantly is that he has the ability to inspire people who are on the lower end of the stack, people like me; The willingness to go and actually have conversations with the community via our blogs, and that’s really where the value lies in what Scott offers.

None of us write blogs for money, if we did we’d be very, very disappointed. Rather, we write because we are passionate about something, something we want to communicate (sometimes doing it better than other times).

I used to think (until about 3 hours ago) that I wrote a blog for me, and me alone, but that’s actually not right. I actually want to write a blog to provide value. To provide insight, and inspiration (even if no one reads it) I actually want my blog to stand up on it’s own without just the excuse of “oh that was just for me”.

Hey hey hey, it’s another tech ed here in Auckland an another three day stint of me writing up my experiences of the talks that I go to and the things that I learn.

Instead of going through the day I’m actually going to start in the middle and work out.

Moving Beyond Industrial Software – Harry Pierson

So, this was possibly the most unexpected gem of a talk today, I wouldn’t have picked the talk on title, but there wasn’t much else on in the slot.

Rather than being about a technology or a specific thing coming out of Microsoft, Harry’s talk was about taking the overview of the whole IT industry, how it’s reflection should be in the post industrial age and how so many of the tools and techniques we have come to use and expect (especially in big it but applicable in all organizations) are starting to get torn apart as we refuse to follow the tenants of the factory work mentality.

His suggestions about how we should look at our role in the future were radical, and I’m sure scary to a number of people in the audience, but I agree with his assessment of the future, the game is changing, albeit slowly, and if people don’t take notice they’re gonna have their lunch eaten. I’ll try and write up a longer overview but for the moment try his blog: http://www.devhawk.net/

AJAX Enable your Windows communication foundation services- Rob Bagby

I have to admit I’m not sure if I got anything new from this one, mainly because I’ve done some heavy work with the WebRequest endpoint in the past, however there was a lot of really useful stuff, and the demos were really in depth, lots of JavaScript

ASP.Net MVC – Scott Hanselman

Ok first off let me say if you’ve never seen Scott talk, and you get a chance, do it. He is one of the most charismatic and engaging tech speakers I’ve seen. He also represents the somewhat new wave of evangelists coming from Microsoft who kind of get the reasons why people have been so actively against ms in the past.

This was the talk that I wish I could have given yesterday at Code Camp, it was engaging an enlightening, it crystallized for me a great deal about how to explain the way MVC is formed and shaped and the why. I love the MS MVC Framework, but i got more inspiration from the last talk of the day

ADO.Net Data Services – Scott Hanselman

Astoria Rocks, IQueriable over rest is da bomb. More later, right now i have to go and have a beer,it’s shaping up to be a great day.

Ok so my talk wasn’t the best I’ve ever given, and i have to admit I’m a bit disappointed , but the Code Camp rocks.

Started out dying on stage a little, the fact that I hadn’t given myself enough time to have a practice run through, the fact that my laptop wanted to die and take a while to load up the projects and the fact that I Scott Hanselman picked up my pronunciation of Route (“ROOT”) and couldn’t stop finding it funny. but hey at least he knows my name

No seriously, I really am enjoying the talks, watching Scott do code demos while still keeping the audience interaction high was a good thing to learn.

Scott showed me a cool little video recorder too, I might have to try and get hold of one so i can record my future presentations (oh yes I’m going to try again) and learn from them.

Everyone here is sooooo smart it hurts.