For the 3rd time, Jason and his crew did an outstanding job putting together a great conference. That's not to say I don't have any complaints this time around, but I'll get to those later. ;-)
My time in Ann Arbor started on Friday night around 7pm. After dinner with my family, I once again met up with Dan Hounshell and Joe Wirtley for drinks and a lot of BS'ing. :-) I do have to say it was kinda funny to see these two getting out of their car wearing shorts saying, "WTF? It's cold!" ;-) Anyway, topics ranged from Dan's work at Telligent, to politics, to bad interviews, to the firm Joe and I both worked at for a short time, to the pains of owning a house. If our waitress hadn't been so bad, I probably would have had more than 2 drinks though. :-\
After a terrible night of sleep, I got to the college around 8:15 where I quickly checked in and then hooked up with Dan and Joe again.
Session 1:
"Pragmatic Software Architecture and the Role of the Architect", Joe Wirtley. This was a really good session and if you couldn't attend, you should grab his slide deck. I think he did a great job explaining the role of an architect on a team along with their responsibilities. While I have never actually called myself an "architect", I have held the role more than once. During his talk, several great questions were asked and Joe did a great job answering / facilitating the discussion. BTW, did I mention there was standing-room only for this talk?
Session 2:
"Distilling the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime)", Josh Holmes
This is the second or third time I've sat in one of Josh's sessions and I was NOT disappointed. The abstract for the session said, "This talk is not designed to teach you one of these languages, but to tell you why you should investigate them." I can honestly say that I'm a lot more interested in checking out Ruby than I have been.
Lunch
At lunch, Dan, Joe and I discussed some of the sessions and I continued to pick Dan's brain about his work at Telligent and how they approach certain things (like TDD and source code control).
While Dan and Joe hit the vendor sessions, I talked to Vinay, a former co-worker, for about 30 minutes. It was nice catching up with Vinay, and hopefully we'll get together for lunch soon. I did give him a couple pointers about the remaining sessions and warned him to stay away from the one given by this guy.
Session 3:
"Introduction to Expression Blend", Mark Miller.
I swear to god this is the same session that Mark gave at the last DoDN. :-) Regardless, it was informative and entertaining. I think Mark is the only speaker I heard all day that said "shit"...and he said it more than once. ;-) Expression Blend looks cool, and maybe one of these days when I decide to start doing some WPF, I'll check it out myself. Mark tends to code on-the-fly, so while this session was entertaining, it was also a bit tough to follow.
Session 4:
Story Driven Testing, Jim Holmes
I think I've learned more about Fitnesse from Jim than anyone else. :-) it was a great talk -- standing room only.
Right before Jim's session started, Josh Holmes introduced himself to me. We talked a bit about a mutual friend and then he introduced me to Jay R. Wren. ;-) I had to ask Jay if he wanted to say the Pledge of Allegiance with me (all in good fun of course). ;-)
Session 5:
Building Extensible Applications Using the System.AddIn Namespace, Dustin Campbell
Dustin's talks are always jam-packed with great information, but like Mark's talks, they are always really entertaining.
The raffle:
Won a book. and a t-shirt. No Zune though. :-\ BUT, my friend Vinay actually won 2 copies of Telerik's RAD Controls and gave one of them to me! Sweet. :-) Thanks Vinay!
My complaints:
1. Gah! I hate box lunches and was lookin' forward to pizza again. :-) Jason said they lost their Domino's funding and it turned out the "wraps" were cheaper than pizza.
2. I know it's close to Halloween, but I really don't like black t-shirts. :-p
Anyway, I had a great time and can't wait for the next one!