I just came back to Stockholm after spending a few days at Oredev in Malmö. Oredev turned out to be a fantastic event. I arrived in Malmö late Tuesday afternoon and checked in to my hotelroom in the center of the city. Later that evening I got in my "costume" aka suit. I very rarely wear a suit and instead stick to baggy jeans and a hoodie... But since the speakers dinner that night was in the Town Hall, I went for a suit. It ended up being a bit overdressed, but hey...I like looking good once in a while...
Anyhow, the evening was a great treat after a period of way too much work. Great dinner in the company of many interesting people. I ended up next to Robert Folkesson from Microsoft and spent a lot of time talking to him.
My talk was about getting started with Silverlight 2.0 and was already right before lunch on the first day of the conference. So I started the day by attending the keynote, held by Ted Neward. Very interesting and inspiring talk, but I was a bit too nervous to really focus. After that I saw Eilong Lipton, senior lead developer or something like that on the MVC team, talk about MVC... He ended up being judged "Best at Oredev". Good talk about interesting subject. Then I was up.
In the middle of setting up my kit, I had to jump down from the stage and shake hands with Bea Costa...I mean BEA COSTA/STOLLNITZ...the one and only...VERY honored. After that I also got to say hello to Tim Heuer...once again...TIM HEUER!!! Both of them were antending MY talk...that is nerv wrecking... Besides them, the crowd had a few more people that made it a very nervous erxperience... At least I think they were in there... Magnus Mårtensson, Sergio Molero, Johan Normén and Robert Folkesson... aka some of the guys from MEET...
My talk was a success according to me. I got through it without too many misshaps. Eric Stollnitz (Beas brilliant husband) pointed out some missed dots and semicolons during the talk. But all in all, I am VERY pleased with the way it went. After the talk I also had the pleasure of having lunch with Bea and Eric. For those of you who don't know who they are... Bea is lead on the test team for the Silverlight Toolkit and has worked on the WPF team as well as several other things... And Eric has worked 5 years on the Blend team and the last year at Microsoft Research. And by the way...according to Bea he is probably the best in the world when it comes to 3D in WPF...and I believe her... So it has been a real pleasure to be able to spend so much time with them and talk to them about everything... Thank you Bea and Eric!
And Tim is the program manager for Silverlight. Need I say more. He is THE MAN!
During the conference I was also interviewed by Robert for Microsoft and got to attend a panel debate about Silverlight 2.0. Very cool! Hoperfully both things will be on Channel 9 soon.
So what else did I see and do at the conference. Well... I did miss Tim's first talk due to the fact that I was having lunch with Bea and Eric way in to his talk and I didn't want to interrupt it by walking in late... But I did catch his second one about styling and templating in Silverlight, which was very good as expected. It was followed up by a cool "chalk talk" where we spent some time asking him every little thing we could think of about Silverlight, and he answered as well as he could. Very interesting!
I also saw Bea's talk about datacentric applications in WPF and Silverlight. Another very good talk. I didn't learn too much, but I got some things confirmed and that was good. In general, a very good talk and I like the way she presented it... This was also followed up by a really cool "chalk talk" with Bea...and Eric who gave up some very interesting things...
What else... I saw Patrik Löwendahl talk about Entity Framework. Good talk even though it was unprepared for different reasons. Not Patrik's fault though... And I went to an interesting talk by Magnus Mårtensson about having code dynamically create new code... Interesting topic. Especially with the features shown from the future .NET 4.0. Those features were actually shown using a video by Anders Hejlsberg.
What else...Yeah...of course. I saw a very interesting talk by Magnus Juvas avout being an architect on a big project. I'm IMPRESSED! And not to forget Glenn Block talking about composite application guidance... And Scott Hunter. He spoke about Dynamic Data WebForms 2.0. I'm not too fond of Dynamic Data for different reasons, but it was cool to hear Scott.
I also ended up on a very interesting talk about interface design for Surface and future tech by Daniel Makoski. Very interesting. ANother talk I ended up going to the "chalk talk" for. Got some cool info. I also ended up talking a lot to Daniel in the Microsoft booth later in the afternoon. He works at Microsoft for the Surface User Experience team (also called SUX) and did his presentation on a Mac Book Air or whatever it is called and then in the "chalk talk" revealed that he was using an iPhone... Hmmm... Well he was cool anyway. Even ended up giving him a ride to his hotel showing him where Slakthuset was so he could go clubbing that night. Hope he had a good time.
By the way, Daniel actually showed this video during his presentation. Very cool and gutsy move. I can't find the original on the web though, but the thing is that the video is ofiginal Microsoft, but the audio has been changed of course...
I also went to a talk about Silverlight 2.0 for mobile. Interesting and cool to see it running on a mobile device. Seems like it is gonna be out Q2 next year or something. I guess I would expect a beta at leat at MIX...
So...after the conference I'm very happy to have been there. It was my first ever computer conference and I got to talk. How cool is that! I had tickets last year, but couldn't go. Very good conference and I managed to meet some REALLY interesting people. I would really recommend you to go next year... If I'm lucky, I might even have the chance to talk there again. I really hope so... Thank you Magnus for hooking me up with the possibility to talk there.