The Hidden Architect - Building Solutions for Smaller Organizations

Speaker: Dan Appleman - www.danappleman.com

He started with "This is a just slides - no code session" and I thought "Oh, no...". But it turned out to be a really good session.

Dan Appleman is one of my early .NET-idols ever since I read his book "Moving to VB.NET" back in the days of .NET 1.0. As the title suggest he addressed the problem of getting an architecture when you're alone on a project and the customer/employer don't have the money to hire some expensive consultant... but wait, that would be me wouldn't it?

Well from time to time I'm in project where I'm the only developer and many of the things he said pushed buttons on me. He gave some really good advice and in the end this "no code"-session became a moment of reflection on how to handle projects/customers/requirements/ etc when you're all on your own. He shared a lot of "war stories" in a nice way and if most of the previous sessions made me feel like I immediately wanted to run home and try thing out, this one made feel like I more often should calm down and reflect on how this are.

Because all techniques eventually will disappear or be replaced with something new (and better) this is probably one of the sessions that I'll benefit most in the long run.

SharePoint Object Model & Web Services Kick Start

Speaker: Todd S. Baginski - www.sharepointblogs.com/tbaginski

So, time for a detour again...over to the SharePoint track

I really liked the style he delivered it in, cool, humble and letting the knowledge and wisdom he presented stand by it self.

He has created a windows app, "MOSS Toolkit", using the SharePoint Object Model and went through some of the code in that app. He had the intention to share his application with those in the audience who wanted it and had prepared an USB-stick to transfer it to our laptops. The problem was that at least 200 people raised their hands when he asked...big laugh! We'll have wait until he put it on his blog. The parts that he showed was not only useful as is, but also a good example of how to work with the object model against SharePoint and since I guess that I'll approach SharePoint from this direction this session was perfect for me.

Well, here's the link to his code on his blog.

Unraveling the Entity Framework

Speaker: John Papa - www.johnpapa.net

I haven't read much about EF so it was about time to learn what it is, how it works and if it is going to be useful in any way. He did a good job in showing all that and I'm planing to go to another session with him about EF tomorrow to get a deeper knowledge about it.

The Model View Presenter Pattern in Real World Enterprise Systems

Speaker: Dino Esposito - weblogs.asp.net/despos

Now, I've been listening to Dino a couple of times before, and it looked like a great topic, so my expectations where quite high. But as it turned out I am nice by saying that this was not one of his best performances. If I, just for a while, turned off my political correctness filter I would say that his performance sucked.

To his defense I'll say that the world probably has changed in this area after his session was sceduled. It's that MVC framework that MS announced a couple a weeks ago , if you remember. He had tried to turn the focus of this session to compare MVP with MVC in general, and with the MVC Framework in particular. But even if there where some "not so bad" things the session wasn't coherent at all.

I'm sorry to say but in the way this session was delivered and in the shadow of the MVC Framework, this session should better have been canceled.

But anyway, it made me want to go home and do a nice MVP implementation, and perhaps a MVC as well, in the ordinary aspx-way to act as references to the things I'll try out with the MVC Framework.

.NET Rocks! Live!

Speakers: Carl Frankling & Richard Campbell - www.dotnetrocks.com

Guest: Kent Alstad

Subject: Performance Tuning (of ASP.NET)

I admit, I went to this one just to see my favorite pod cast show live. But the subject was really interesting and I recommend you to listen to it when it is released.

Summary of day 2

Not as many highlights as yesterday, but over all a good conference day. The thing to bring home today is Dan Applemans reflections on how to act as a single developer in a non IT-department environment.