Deeper in .NET Recap
April 27th, 2006I have been busy the last several days since the weekend event. I had a great time and I learned a lot. But what I got most out of the experience was the positive impression I got from everyone. There is definately a lot of excitement and energy in the .NET community and definately in Milwaukee. And now that .NET 2.0 has been out for a while and Atlas soon to released, there is so much potential for amazing changes.
Bill Hatfield covered Atlas. He said that there are plans for 50 to 100 Atlas related controls! Right now I do not believe there are even 100 existing controls in the toolbox. The current release has a Go Live license so you can run with it if you like. And if you would like to show off your Altas skills, you can enter the Mash it up with Atlas Contest. What I really like about Atlas is the fact that you get a great deal of powerful functionality without having to touch a line of Javascript. Instead you deal with Properties on the controls or the XML configuration which is inline with the ASP.NET page. Atlas will have a big impact this year. I really like Bill's presentation style. I would definately go see another of his sessions at any event.
Julie Lerman presented ADO.NET and all the new goodies which are a part of the .NET 2.0 framework. She showed much more than I was ever curious to know. She is a self-described data geek and it shows. She gets really excited about pushing around data, especially when she can stream it! Several of her demonstrations showed me techniques to work with data which I was not aware was possible. I have to spend more time wrapping my head around it. And while I am not as much a data geek as Julie, everything I do with .NET somehow involves a database, so her experience is invaluable.
Scott Hanselman is the speaker I knew best prior to the event. I have been listening to HanselMinutes and have also purchased the book he co-wrote, Professional ASP.NET 2.0, which is packed full of information I use daily. So with all my exposure to his work already I was looking forward to seeing him in person. He has a unique presentation style. His brain is obviously over-clocked. There is no better way I can put it. His machines is jam packed with utilities which he calls up expertly to do his work at record speed. His humor was also unexpected but quite funny. His nuanced humor about VB.NET versus C# made me laugh. I never expected to laugh at someone typing, deleting and commenting out a semicolon. That was appreciated because his presentation was packed full of highly technical information and the humor helped it all go down much more easily. I have compiled a list of links for some of the tools which Scott showed off in his presentation.
This was definately a worthwhile event. I also enjoyed the hallway conversations and networking as well as the late dinner at Rock Bottom on Saturday night. (thanks for Korby for covering the tab!) I look forward to the event for next year.
( I would like to thank Scott Isaacs and the Wisconsin INETA User Group for organizing such a great event. )
April 27th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
[...] Deeper in .NET 2006 -- A Huge Success I've been putting off writing this post because I didn't know where to start. I still don't know where to start... Thank God It's Friday ... While it wasn't all fun and games, Deeper in .NET was a lot of fun. What many people may not know is that Deeper in .NET 2006 actually kicked off on Friday night, April 21. On Friday we had a little get together with the speakers, some of the local bloggers, and other "friends of the community". It was very casual, and the "Welcome to Wisconsin" buffet was perfect -- who could pass up fried fish, brats, and other Wisconsin-y things? Because one of my friends is a drummer, we were also able to get a couple of bands to come play Friday night for a few hours. Both A Little Known Nothing and Mood Infusion were great, and they both have CDs available for purchase. I'm still getting comments about that night. Then Came Saturday ... The morning started bright and early, and there was a long check-in line by 7:15. Fortunately, the check-in process was much smoother this year, and thanks to my wife Kelly and her boss Kate (C&C Recruiting), the line moved pretty much non-stop. To save time searching for pre-printed name tags like in years past, this year, we managed to get our hands on a high-speed label printer, and we printed the name tags off as people checked in. All attendees had the choice of C# or VB.NET name tag. Looking back, I should have kept track of the number of each language since about a dozen people have asked me so far. With tons of prizes to give away throughout the day, we decided to give away a few prizes at the beginning of each session. So we pulled five random names before Michele, Scott, Julie, Bill and Jason started their presentations. We still had a ton of stuff to give away at the end of the day, though. There is no way I can do Deeper in .NET justice in this post. It was incredible, and I'm very happy with how well it went. A number of other people have posted about their thoughts on the day. Here are a few links: Chad Albrecht, from our Executive Committee Avonelle and Val, from Minnesota Julia Lerman, a speaker (also here) Korby Parnell, from Microsoft (also here) Brennan Stehling, local developer/blogger Both Julia and Korby have posted a number of pictures. One of these days, I'll get mine up. If you took any, please send me a link. (I'm sure I missed some posts, but you can trackback or comment below.) Sunday, Monday, Tuesday ... Well, since Deeper in .NET finished, I have been sleeping terribly. Aren't you supposed to lose sleep before something big, and then sleep better after it is over? Not the case for me for some reason. I didn't lose any sleep leading up to DiDN, but haven't had a good night's sleep since. I think it's time to break out the Tylenol PM... Next Year... This year was a big success, but that doesn't mean that we haven't picked up some new ideas for next year. If you have any ideas pelase feel free to let me know. Published Thursday, April 27, 2006 12:19 PM by sisaacs Filed Under: Community [...]
June 14th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
[...] But when this site does not have an example which works for me I can use Expresso which is a powerful tool to build and test regular expressions. And once you are done with the pattern the tool can give you C# or VB.NET code to copy into your application. Dave also reminded me about the .NET Reflector which every .NET developer should know about. It allows you to decompile assemblies and display the code in any .NET language. I learned about this at Deeper in .NET and have used it a few times so far. [...]