Boy, do the organizers know how to choose the guys speaking at the keynote.
Not only Tim Huckaby (not a great technical blog, though) was extremely amusing and has a great background, but he also did a superb job to sell how great applications his company develops.
Not a lot of Visual Studio 2010 (but enough to include a demo effect in the reincarnation of naughty projector to show-off Beth Massi's savoir-faire) but a lot of WPF coolness. Including some amazing-looking applications for Surface. THAT is pure coolness, but do not expect a lot of clients paying the big bucks it costs.
Domain.Driven Design Chalk-Talk
And only now, I know what a chalk-talk is :-) And I like it. But let me tell you it does not mean practical talk.
Some information about anti-patterns never goes wrong. Some further clarification for concepts in "The Blue Book" are always a winner too.
Very, very interesting talk, even no line of code or technology-specific technique was displayed.
Pragmatic Architecture
Architecture, what an abstract concept when applied to computing. Sweet spot for some, almost insult for others... This was a try to clarify what it is and what it is not. And if the try comes from one of the most entertaining guys in the industry, Ted Neward, we have a recipe for success. Lots of funny stories, jokes and a message: an architect understands, reassess and explores. All within the limits of pragmatism. Oops, spoiler. Not really, you really have to be there to feel the message.
He has a loud voice. And he is not afraid to use it :-D
Challenge of Silverlight Architecture
There are people who can talk fast. And then we have Kathleen Dollard (weird site) who is not also a extension of those, but she is also full of energy and knows how to transmit it. Energy and knowledge. Even me, being a Silverlight nOOb, could understand where and why she was going the place she was going. She presented a way of architecting LOB applications which I think I will follow if I ever come to do something in Silverlight. I was extremely pleased to attend to this one talk, although the description of it wasn't the most descriptive ever.
Real World Practices with TFS SCM
Well. My company uses Team Foundation Server as a source control repository and has a continuous integration server using the same product.
We all do have a SCM right? But do we take the most it can offer to us?
That was what I was happily try to find out. And, to be honest with you, I took some other very valuable information but as the talk was a bit rushed towards the end, my major points of interest (branching strategies, do's and dont's, etc..) could not make their way in. A pity, but at last I got to understand what the heck a workspace is.
SilverLight + MVVM == Easy
Last one from a veeery long day. And coming to think of it, not a very good choice.
Do not get me wrong here. The speaker was very good and the subject was very interesting. Buuuut, it had pretty much the same content as "Challenge of Silverlight Architectures" I attended before.
I still could grasp some more nifty tricks and raise some disagreements (I still believe the viewModel -or the mapping mechanism to viewModel- has to take care of data formatting, leaving the view as dumb as it can be, just for databinding and commanding).
Besides the speaker pointed out how a long a way the platform is in terms of unit testing, which I have to definitely agree.
Take-Aways
Let's throw some highlights:
- Cool-factor demo in the keynote
- Ted Neward's amusing stories
- Trying to catch everything that was being fired from Kathleen's mouth.
- Get to know why we should avoid bidirectional relationships in domain modeling
I was hammered at the end of the day. Literally exhausted, mentally and even physically (two-odd days there but jet-lag still playing games). I forgot how demanding a conference like this is. So, no party for me: dinner and straight to bed wanting for some more goodness the next day.