Sushi with Charles Petzold, Kathleen Dollard and Esther Schindler … [read more …]

[A DevLife post]

Posted from BLInk!

Shirley & Gary Brothers (who run DevConnections) invited the speakers up their amazing suite in “THE Hotel” at Mandalay Bay for cocktail hour this evening. Here are some photos… We are such good and reponsible speakers though and had to leave so we could work on our talks!

Evjens

 
Active Nick, Brian Noyes, Paul Litwin, Juval Lowy, Robert Green

Kathleen Dollard, Dan Appelman

 
Charles Petzold, Kate Gregory, Torsten Grabs, Active Nick

Robert Green, Shirley Brothers, Bernard Wong, Ken Getz

 
Our Wine Steward!

Really … I wish I could just go to all of the amazing sessions around me. So many things I haven’t explored yet in VS2005 that I could  be learning!! Though of course, I’m thrilled to be able to share what I have learned by giving the sessions. So I will just keep working at making my own sessions as good as I can.

I did sit in on a bit of Kathleen Dollard’s “Polishing your Winforms Apps” session this morning. There is just so much to learn…

There are a LOT of attendees here this year. I overheard someone (not official) say something like 3000. That would be amazing. I think it was 1600 last year.

Posted from BLInk!

They are both sessions that I am doing tomorrow.

Customizing your Debugging Experience at 8am (gotta talk to Carl about those 8am sessions) and then my favorite ado.net 2.0 topic at 2pm. Tomorrow. Vegas. DevConnections.

Posted from BLInk!

Where better to talk about the MenuStrip, ToolStrip and other cool new WinForms controls but in Las Vegas. Jessica Fosler who owns these pieces of VS2005 WinForms is presenting today. Unfortunately, I’m now up in my room prepping my own 4 sessions but definitely enjoyed meeting her this morning in the speaker room. Charles Petzold was there who’s new Programming Windows Forms (for VS2005) book has an entire chapter called “Cruising the Strip” in his book about these tools. Being in Las Vegas had us all giggling over the possibilities of jokes Jessica could make in her presentation. Hopefully, we didn’t corrupt her too much.

Posted from BLInk!

Typical – must leave for the airport in 1/2 hour and have been doing client work all morning. Still have to pack (thank goodness I washed all my clothes already). Hopefully my travelling duds aren’t too wrinkly!

I am so looking forward to another DevConnections conference and then a vacation in Zion National Park and Bryce Canyone with my husband!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

If you are going to DevConnections and plan to get outdoors:

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

One of the things that I am looking forward to at DevConnections in Las Vegas (besides the conference, besides the sessions and besides to my return to Coral Reef where I Kathleen Dollard and I ate 3 nights in a row last year…) is seeing my friends that I only see from one conference to the next. Although I’ll definitely miss Alex Homer and Dave Sussman (and didn’t see them in October as i didn’t go to the MVP Summit), there is a whole host of friends and people who I admire and really enjoy a chance to chat with, who are speaking at Connections (too many to list) that really make these events extra special. Take a look at the speaker list for VSConnections, ASPConnections, SQLConnections and the special 20th anniv C++ Connections (which is bringing together the C++ elite – many academics as well as practioners).

This is of course only enhanced by all of the conference attendees as well. Last spring, I had a great time hanging out at the INETA booth in the exhibitors hall and helping people find user groups in their area or even encouraging them to start one! Getting a chance to “expand” on the sessions is also great – there is only so much you can cover in the time frame of the sessions – and it’s fun when people are interested in digging further into a particular area over lunch or a beer or just hanging out in the common area.

When it gets close to time to leave home, leave my beautiful little state, leave my pets and hubby behind, I start getting sad and wondering why I have chosen to do this. But as soon as I arrive at the conference hotel and am immersed in the buzz of so many people with the same passions as myself, there is no question as to why I am there.

One new entry to the Connections conference is Charles Petzold who is going to talk about ink as a new medium for developing applications. You should have seen Charles doing his tablet pc talk last winter at Windows Anywhere. It was a rare opportunity to actually watch him think as he demonstrated how one experiment led him to another and then another. I sure hope his talk is not scheduled at the same time as any of mine.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

As I leave for DevConnections in less than a week, it’s time to put my head into Las Vegas now, though it’s difficult to extract it from South Africa. DevConnections is going to be awesome. I already love this conference but with the addition of having a launch party, it will be that much more fun. Tuesday is all Microsoft sessions and then Wednesday and Thursday are the rest of us. I have two talks on Wed and two on Thursday – lots of different topics as usual!

Wed 8am: Customizing the Debugging Experience in Visual Studio 2005 with New Debugger Attributes
Wed 2pm: Leveraging SQL Server 2005 Query Notifications in ASP.NET 2.0 and ADO.NET 2.0

Thur 8am: Deciphering C# for VB Developers
Thur 2:45pm: A Look at WSE 3.0

Another event that will make this trip special for me is that my husband is coming out and we will be going to the desert for five days afterwards. I will be returning to the beautiful Zion National Park and then we may check out Bryce Canyon, the Hoover Dam and some other sites as well.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org