I’m off to the MSDN Technical roadshow in Harrogate tomorrow, and am actually really looking forward to it this time. These events are free, so always well worth attending when they’re local, but some years are certainly better than others – it mostly depends on the material being covered. I remember one year circa 2003-4, when .NET was well established, but before the Whidbey release, so the majority of the day was effectively just a sales pitch covering elementary .NET concepts, presumably for those laggards who hadn’t yet made the great leap from VB6. Another data-binding demo, anybody? Yawn.
By contrast, this time round there’s no shortage of exciting potential topics, and as I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve been having difficulty making time to get stuck into learning some of the new technologies that are on the horizon. So the opportunity of a day out watching some powerpoint presentations, demos, and trying to soak up an understanding of this stuff really appeals to me – is that sad?!
The two sessions I’m most looking forward to are Daniel Moth covering LINQ and other forthcoming language enhancements in the Orcas release, and Mike Ormond‘s session on AJAX development. Should be good.
Oh, entertainingly, someone found my blog this week by Googling for “msdn event” dress code – my advice is to go casual; stick to the usual geek staples of t-shirt with jeans or combats and you can’t go far wrong!