I left DevConnections for the Orlando airport and when I got there had another hour and a half before my flight, so headed to the Red Carpet Club. I walk in and as I go to sit down I see Dr. Neil. As I got closer to where he was sitting, there was Michele Leroux Bustamante and Mark Miller. A half hour later, in comes Tim Huckaby. So we’re all here with our laptops open, chatting and dare I say – gossiping. If you call talking about how cute someone’s baby is “gossip”, then I guess that would be the case.

I’ve been in Orlando at DevConnections for the past few days. I’ve been a little under the weather which has made it a little rough around the edges for me, but I’m surviving. While it was a bit of a challenge to present a full day workshop with a nasty chestcold, this was nothign compared to Kathleen Dollard who gave a Workflow workshop in the room next door with bronchitis. She knew she was sick but didn’t know how sick until I dragged her to a clinic that night and discovered she had a high temperature and bronchitis. Poor thing. She’s surviving and did talks today and has more tomorrow.

I met a young programmer named Scott Pio at the attendee party tonight who has been writing some great blog posts about being at DevConnections  on http://spoiledtechie.com/ — the experience as well as the sessions he has attended. It’s so fun to meet young developers who are just so ready to burst with their excitement about technology. It’s his first conference and I think the first time he’s been somewhere where the term “geek” is actually a complement! Definitely check out his blog and especially his posts about DevConnections!

While it’s very hard to leave Vermont when we are having incredible weather (70 – 80 degree days with blue and sunny skies!) I am on my way to Orlando, FL for DevConnections.

Once again, there is a full track dedicated to Data Access. I’ll kick it off with a full day of Entity Framework tomorrow. Monday is Microsoft day and I’m thrilled that there will be talks by Mike Flasko from the Astoria team and from Danny Simmons and Colin Meek of the Entity Frameowrk team.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we’ll have two more full days with topics like from LINQ to SQL, Synch Services, ADO.NET Perfomance, Entity Framework, Data Sets and more. And top noch presenters like Dino Esposito, Don Keily, Kathleen Dollard, Cathi Gero and more!

Look for the Data Access track which is listed in both the Visual Studio and ASP Connections conferences.

I’ll also be doing a session on Astoria Web Mashups in the ASP Connections conference. I was bummed that the current Astoria bits don’t line up with Silverlight 2.0 so I can’t do that demo any more, but instead I have put together a cool little demo combining Astoria with Popfly. As far as I know, it’s the only implementation out there. The session is in one of the 60 minute slots so I’ll just have to talk fast, par usual.

If you’re at Connections, say hi!

This is a great thing that DevConnections has been putting together for the past few conferences. There will be a separate luncheon area on one day for women attendees to get together and gab away. In the fall, we did it on the last day and everyone said they wished they had been able to meet each other at the start of the conference, not just as they were getting ready to go home.

So that has been accommodated. I’m looking forward to it yet again.

It will be on Monday in the Crystal Ballroom. There is no formal presentation, it is purely social.

The past two days at DevConnex have been busy indeed. I got a chance to write about them while waiting for my midnight flight home. Read more…

[A DevLife post]

My first two days at DevConnections have been busy. Read all about it here. Now I need to get back to making sure tomorrow’s talks will be great.

[A DevLife post]

DevConnections is this coming up this week! Here are some last minute things to know about.

The registration is unbelievable this year. There are nearly 5000 people registered for the combined shows. More stats: 190 speakers and held in a convention center that is literally one million square feet!

1. If it’s not too late, don’t forget to vote before you leave! Check with your town clerk ASAP.
2. There’s a Women in I.T. Lunch on Thursday for attendees and speakers. Space is limited, so sign up for it when you register.
3. Bring your suit! You may find some time to enjoy the beach and big pools at the Mandalay before, between or after sessions. The weather is looking great – low 80’s and sunny during the days.
4. Bring comfortable shoes since you’ll be doing a lot of walking. Not that I’ve ever seen a programmer in high heels. 🙂
5. Evening activities
   1. Monday Keynotes 6:30 – 8:30pm
   2. Tuesday 5-7pm reception in Expo Hall
   3. Tuesday 7:15 – 9:15 Microsoft Unplugged for attendees of ASP.NET/SQL/Mobile Connections (w/pizza & beer)
6. If you’ve never been to Las Vegas, get a pass for the local 2 decker bus that drives all the way up the strip and back. The strip itself is 4 miles and ends at the Stratosphere, but the bus goes past that and through the old downtown, too.  It’s $5 for a whole day (just pay for the pass as you get on the bus) and seeing the strip at night is a must. I only did this for the first time last year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_Strip
7. I’ve never done it but have constantly heard that the last minute tickets to the Vegas shows are the way to go as they are heavily discounted. I think the deal is just walk up to the ticket window shortly before the show. Something to consider. 

DevConnections (combination of 6 conferences: ASP, Visual Studio, Mobile, Sharepoint, SQL Server and Office) is only a few weeks away. I’m going out to present 2 sessions for ASP Connections (Managing & Deploying ASP.NET 2 Sites and Asynchronous ASP.NET), one for Mobile Connections (an advanced Ink on the Web talk) and a 1/2 day post-conference workshop on Advanced ADO.NET 2.0.

I’m sorely disappointed that my flight schedule is having me miss the Monday night keynotes, especially this one that Scott Guthrie and Brian Goldfarb are giving: Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and ASP.NET AJAX.

There is going to be so much going on at DevConnections, including some Microsoft “hear it for the first time in the U.S.”) announcements from Microsoft. I hope I don’t end up holing myself up in my room trying to perfect my talks again (so that means they need to be perfect before I go to the airport! :-)). Of course, there’s always the lure of the gambling tables and the girlie shows (just kidding – not really interested in either), but still Vegas is certainly a fun place to be when you do want to take a little break from the geek fest!

Now that all three of my DevConnections powerpoint decks and demos are online, I just wanted to have one post for linking to them all.

If you were an attendee of ASPConnections or Visual Studio Connections, you should have password access to this stuff on the DevConnections site.

Otherwise, they are on the presentations page of my pwn website.

On that page, the talk are listed alphabetically. Look for:

1. Advanced Data Access Patterns with ADO.NET 2.0
2. Five (Supposedly) Scary Things About .NET (That don’t really have to be)
3. Using WSE 3.0 Today to Prepare for WCF Tomorrow

On that last one, note that I have also recorded the demos associated with that talk. Check this post for links to those videos.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

The TabletPC Hands on Labs were very popular at DevConnections. I think I heard that over 600 people did the labs. Upon completion of the HOLs, the attendees were given a bright orange Mobile PC baseball cap. Throughout the conference, 3 attendees wearing those hats won a new Toshiba M400 Mobile PC (you know, a tablet). Lora Heiny has a lot of great pictures of the thrilled recipients here.

You can imagine that every time attendees were in one big room, for example at breakfast or lunch, it was a sea of orange, as they were all wearing the hats in hopes of winning the M400.

But even after all of the M400’s had been given away, people were still wearing the hats. They were kind of cool. At the closing session, where perhaps 1,000 of the attendees were all seated, I took this short video to show the sea of orange hats.

It is only 12 seconds long. The AVI version from my camera is 25 MB and the choppier WMV file is only 2.9 megs.