"A right-wing conservative female developer"

Good. Glad to hear I'm not the only one.

Oyasumi Nasai. And probably by now, Ohio Gozaimasu.

I also attended the Columbus, Ohio MSDN event yesterday and since Microsoft is asking for feedback, I would love to provide mine. I agree with most of what Dave wrote. The OOP session was introductory but I still enjoyed it. I think it would be a good idea to continue with more OO sessions each quarter moving into more advanced topics.

I think the reason the MapPoint services wasn't real well received was because it came off like a sales presentation. The presenter said something like "very few developers are using this, you need to go buy it."

The ASP.NET 2.0 demo was enjoyable even though I've seen it before. It's always good to see the new stuff coming.

I agree with Dave that the perfomance and optimization session was the most disappointing. I too was expecting some coding techniques and best practices for achieving optimal performance but the talk was mainly how to use Perfmon. As such it should be titled something like "Measuring performance with Perfmon."

I've attended all the Columbus MSDN events this year presented by both Bill Steele and Ken LeFebvre and I think the problem with missed expectations is that attendees don't have enough information as to what to expect in these sessions. Some of the events I've registered for, I didn't even know the topics being presented until the last minute (I just registered figuring anything from Microsoft for developers was worth my time). And even when the topics for the MSDN events are published, there is usually little or no description of the detailed topics to be covered. Yes, I realize these events are free and a great value being offered by Microsoft but for consultants like myself, I am giving up a half day of billing so there is a cost involved.

Also, as far as expectations go, Rory. What does Microsoft expect from the attendees. It seems there has been a lot of effort to get the attendees to participate in the topics yet the events are held in a large dark theatre with a couple hundred people where the speaker cannot see or hear the attendees. I raised my hand and voice several times to ask or answer questions but the speaker usually didn't notice which is understandable considering the venue. I like having the events in the theater because the slides and code is so easy to read but don't think these should be interactive events. I think Microsoft should decide whether it wants these events to be "intimate" or not and locate/schedule them accordingly.

Thats my opinion. Please continue to tweak the events but don't stop them! They are not perfect, but I've yet to attend a MSDN event where I didn't learn some things.

Jim Anderson, MCSD
Consultant
Columbus, Ohio

Being the right wing conservative female was interesting. "Only in Eugene" is everyone's favorite phrase here. Life isn't boring here.

The presentation was great. I liked the OOP presentation. I think Rory did a good job summarizing major OOP ideas in an hour. Optimizing ASP had logical, good ideas. MapPoint was not as interesting because I don't use it myself. ASP.Net 2.0 looks very exciting. Great stuff!

Will you ever get indexed on blogs.msdn.com?

You should be.

I'm looking forward to seeing Master Pages.

I've already done alot of work in this area a la Paul Wilson's techniques though...

Found more on Fidgets by Mr. Fidget himself:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&th=42ae20901371f6e1&seekm=6j6q61%249ms%241%40nnrp1.dejanews.com

I still can't figure out what they are, exactly. Please, post pix!

Oh... the above Fidget link... that was moi.

Proof That Blogging Works

The way it ought to be - Microsoft and feedback