As the comments on the second Developer Day start to hit blogs around the country it is rather ego inflating to see my name in "lights". Last time we were scored by attendees and I assume this time we'll be scored as well, although as I missed the speaker briefing due to the traffic jam at the entrance to the Microsoft Campus I completely forgot to remind people to fill in their score sheets. This may not be a bad thing though because, as usual, I got carried away <g>
The problem with scoring sheets though is you don't get any feedback beyond the score and its nice to get comments on content and presentation style. I have discovered thought that quite a few channel9 members were in the audience, so what better place to ask for feedback. So, just for my mother I'm going to hunt out and aggregate any comments I can find!
It was all good. Laugh out loud funny in places, good useful solid information, and you looked as if you were enjoying yourself which always helps make a presentation more enjoyable (Ian Smith, Channel9)
Barry's MSBuild talk was really good. I had considered volunteering to do a talk on MSBuild myself, but when I saw that Barry had already offered, I backed away slowly, making no sudden movements. Barry is way more qualified than me to talk on the subject, as he wrote some of the SDC MSBuild tasks, whereas I just use exec tasks to call command line programs. (Simon Harriyott)
I suspected Barry Dorrans, who posts regularly and intelligently on Channel 9 as Blowdart, would give a good talk, and I wasn't disappointed. His talk on MSBUILD was informative and laugh out loud funny in places. For some reason I'd mentally pictured him as likely to be "technical and earnest" but he came across as quirky and entertaining and has clearly done a lot of presenting in the past. Of all the speakers I heard he probably appeared to be enjoying himself the most, which is always a good sign. Great stuff! (More from Ian Smith, on his own blog)
in particular I came away fired up to learn more about the following technologies ... MSBuild - (Barry Dorrans maintained a high level of interest in this potentially rather dry subject) (Charles Cook)
Barry Dorrans has been excellent value at both DDD days, and his talk on msbuild did not disappoint. (Sam Meldrum)
Simon points out that I pronounce project to rhyme with blow-ject, rather than the more conventional object. It must have been the elocution lessons as a child.
For those who can't wait till the official site posts the presentations and sample code I've uploaded them here; as a zip [90k] and as an HTML export from PowerPoint. Jonathan appears to have recovered and slides and code are going up on the official site for you to download.
[11:45] My mistake about score sheets, they weren't used this time, all feedback is done online. Not sure how I feel about that, anyone can submit, including those who didn't attend!