There are two nagging questions that don’t have answers people like, so they just keep asking them over and over and over again.

1) Why does MSDN search suck?

2) Is remoting really dead and what about all the investment I made in it?

In case you thought that MSDN was unaware that their searching was kind of slow, well, they know! And they are definitely making a lot of effort to fix the problem. Though it’s incrementally. So when they release a new improvement, it may not be google, but it definitely sucks less.

From talking to some MSDN folks, I think the saddest thing for them is if someone starts at MSDN, can’t find what they are looking for, goes to Google and then gets pointed back to MSDN. That sucks. I have a google toolbar and that is 100% how I search first. But really, they *know* it’s a problem and they are working hard to fix it. Try not to twist the knife so much when talking to them about it.

Ahhh and the other oft-asked, oft debated, oft countered issue of remoting. Although MS is still trying to get the message out about the future of remoting – not everyone reads weblogs or goes to conferences. So there is a constant stream of “oh my god” happening. Besides the “is it dead (or dying or being deprecated or whatever”) question is – “what about all of the time/energy/money we spent learning/implementing” remoting. Again, along with the previous question – it’s not to be tossed, there will be ways to leverage that work, but still I think people are really mad about the change from that respect. The answer is really just about the evolution of software, learning better ways to do things and this is just part of that evolution. Regardless, it’s a tough pill to swallow. I just feel bad for people that are out in the front of audiences who get hammered with this stuff over and over again (especially when they are sick and all bundled up in a sweater…). Don’t kill the messenger – though maybe you can suggest ways for them to learn how to deliver the message more effectively.

So, if you really want to annoy someone at Microsoft, just ask them about these two things and surely, you’ll be successful in your endeavor.

I had to make some mods to my very first little excuse for diving into asp.net over 2 years ago, a small data management tool for my sister’s business. She maintains a list of stores which sell her products on an asp.net page (against an access database – hey, I didn’t have an online sql database yet) and then she pushes the data to an xml file over on her own [Frontpage] website and an asp page then transforms it with an xsl file to create a nicely formatted list of stores where you can buy her products.

Anyway…. 🙂 …. I had to make some changes to it tonight. What a piece of spaghetti crap it looks like to me now. I had no clue what I was doing with ADO.NET, performance, etc. Blecch. So of course I spent hours refactoring the major part of the app – couldn’t help myself.

I definitely made an “executive” decision that since I was going to get the DVD’s, I would not spend my entire TechEd time in sessions — though there were some speakers I definitely wanted to see doing their thing live while I was there.

I found the hands on labs valuable, being able to take the cert tests (which I have avoided for many many years) and what I call hanging around with my friends — and others refer to as networking — to be things that I could not do from the confines of my home office. I met and talked to a lot of microsoft people that are interesting to me, Kit George, Eric Gunnerson, Dan Fernandez, Jan Gray more more more more and though I didn’t get to check in with Keith Ballinger after his talk (which I definitely went to!)  I did happen to meet and spend some time with Lara Ballinger, who is another softie and just happens to be married to Keith. I completely missed seeing [fellow .NET Rock Star :-))  Paul Vick, which bummed me out. But I did spend a bunch of time with another VB’er Jay Roxe and have him PENNED IN for November at VTdotNet, right Jay???

Fun as always chatting with Korby Parnell who had a lot to gloat about during TechEd – VS2005 Team System is his baby.

I did attend sessions definitely (and I evaled all of them!) and if I had unlimited time I would have attended many many more. But it is just way too fun to get an opportunity to hang out with people you know, people you like and people that you have a lot in common with (even if they are way the heck smarter than you!)

Who says “hindsight’s 20/20”? My memory is smooshing the week together quickly.

TESTING

Tuesday morning I wandered down to the Pearson Vue Testing center to find that the tests were still half price (first 500), so I paid for Windows and Web tests and just sat down and took the Windows VB.NET certification test and passed it (narrowly!)

TABLETS

I spent a lot of Tuesday playing with some of the new tablets and wandering around the Microsoft area of the expo (including of course the INETA booth that they gave us).

I also did a Tablet development Hands on Lab. This is a GREAT lab, very clear and even though I have done some tablet programming already with the SDK I learned a ton. I will keep trolling around for an online version of this though I don’t see one right now. Keep an eye on the MSDN Tablet PC Developer center

HERE IS WHERE TO FIND THEM! Thanks to Barry Gervin.

MORE TABLETS – the BOF

I finished up the DevLab in time to run over to the Tablet PC BOF that I was leading. This turned out to be an awesome gathering. I met a bunch of bloggers that I knew online: Steele Price (here’s his blog post on the BOF) and Jay Glynn, for example. Kent Tengels was there, though we had already spent lots of time together since he was at the INETA summit and we bumped into each other throughout the conference (TechEd is funny that way – 11,000 people and you can almost count on seeing people you know over and over..a good thing of course). Also a bunch of folks from the Tablet Team were there including Arin Goldberg, Frank Goczinski and David Hale. The nicest surprise in new faces was Mark Woods, one of the students from Washington Univ. in St. Louis, MO, who had come to compete in the last rounds of the U.S. portion of the Imagine Cup and had come in second place with their very interesting Tablet PC application designed for educational purposes. Also at this session were two people from Univ. of Vermont Business School including one that I knew well by email but had not yet met in person.

I love the BOF’s …they are so free form. It took a while to get everyone to feel comfortable with  that format, so I talked about some of the different things I have been doing with tablet development and started asking questions. Luckily, with familiar people, I knew what some of them were up to so I was able to ask questions that were a bit leading to draw them out….then it really took off. We talked about everything from business apps to educational apps to visual apps to architectural applications. Jane ______ from Microsoft Research was there and has been very involved with what’s going on in the universities with Tablets. We also got a little technical since some people had not realized they could have easy access to the tablet team so they started to ask some deeper questions. I had to pull the direction of the BOF away from that because it was way over most of the rest of our heads.

DINN-DINN with the Tablet Team

After the BOF, Arin, Frank and the rest of the team took the crowd out to dinner so we could just keep the conversation going.

MSDN Parteeeeeee

I had to bow out at about 9 as I had been invited to the MSDN party over at the Bitter End and definitely wanted to go. The MSDN party has been one of the my favorite parties at the past TechEd and PDC events I have attended. Since I was allowed one guest, I brought Stan Schultes, who was at dinner. It was the usual crowd which just gets more and more fun every time – and of course some new [to me] faces as well. I dragged myself out of there so that I could get at least some sleep in before starting the next day.

Still no Kate…but that would be fixed on Wednesday.

Denise Smith posts the top speakers at TechEd. The #1 was based on only 5 evals where the others had a lot more. This doesn’t seem properly weighted. Nothing against Patrick who got the #1 spot, but I think they should do something like not include talks with less than a certain number.