My friends and I piled into an SUV at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. My idea of 5:30 a.m. activity does not include travel, in the dark, to an overpopulated city. However, this was an opportunity to hang out with friends for the day and possibly take in some good developer content. The last launch event..same friends, same ungodly hour and unfortunately we left a little dissatisfied with the event. So with this iteration of the process, we thought that surely Microsoft would come through in spades, given that the Chicago crowd is one of (if not the greatest) largest populated launch shows that Microsoft rolls out.
You would think that with this many people in attendance (5k+), surely Uncle Bill or Monkeyboy would make an appearance.
No...and thats where things started to go downhill.
Robert Youngjohns stepped up to the podium to do the keynote. Who? Exactly!
Wait a minute..didnt this guy work for Sun Microsystems not too long ago? Yep. Months ago, in fact. And he's a salesman. Microsoft just brought him on board. A Sun salesman at the keynote, telling us how excited he is about the new technology? Seriously? How excited can you possibly be? You just joined the company. No
Bill. No
Steve. No
Monkeyboy dance for me.
The BI demo during the keynote crashed. The demo gods bent down from Mount Olympus and smote his whole presentation. I felt pretty bad for the dude because it was obviously a system issue and he struggled to illustrate, vocally, what it was he wanted to show us and how it fit into the Microsoft BI program. But not today my friend. So they moved on, while poor Mike snuck around back to strangle someone, who undoubtedly is surfing
Craigslist today.
So ends the keynote.
First session...."Break Through Challenges with Visual Studio 2008" All powerpoint. No code. a 45 minute commercial. The presenter did an awesome job of selling Visual Studio 2008. Made me want to buy it. Oh wait...I already have it. Ok...no big deal. Still nice to know that all of the features that they promised would be in there, are indeed in there.
LUNCH! Microsoft hands out some pretty nifty lunchboxes, with quite the selection of goodies. However, if you picked Chicken instead of Turkey..too bad for you cause they looked, smelled and most likely tasted horrible. They were so strong smelling that the lunch box absorbed the scent. But cool that I got a neato lunch container/box thingy. I like free stuff. During lunch, i eagerly awaited my software pack that we would be picking up today.
Microsoft's various evangelists promoted the fact that "Today we're going to give you Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Sql Server 2008. Sweetness. My MSDN expired not too long ago and I've been eagerly awaiting the new stuff; most desired was the Server 08 disc for its awesome virtual support.
So anyway...enough salivating..back to the story line here.
After lunch, we noticed that the launch crew was handing out the cd packages and one could procure the stuff a bit ahead of the nerd herd. So we pick up our much wanted software pack:
Server 2008 - its a trial version.
Sql Server 08 - it's the CTP version.
Visual Studio 08 - it's the standard edition..sorry no deployment tools, remote debugging, sql integration or TFS for you my friend. please drive through.
okee dokee. a little disappointing but i'll survive. its hard to really complain about free software. oh wait, i just did and it didnt seem hard at all.
Next Session.
"Reach End-Users With next Generation Web applications."
Sweet...I'm all about the next generation, star trek or otherwise. Bring it on.
First words out of the presenters mouth....this is NOT about Silverlight.
Hmm...o.k. Maybe some other stuff. Maybe MVC. Demo some of the cooler 3.5 stuff maybe?
no.
UpdatePanel.
and yes...THAT UpdatePanel.
Wait? Didnt we hear this presentation/demo like two years ago?
Yes...yes you did.
Many people walked out of the demo. Including myself and the two amigos.
Disappointed? You betcha.
5+ hours in a car just to sit through a keynote by some newb, get handed trial software and the endless powerpoint commercials. And lets not forget the UpdatePanel demo.
wow.
and shame on you vendors for not giving away useless swag. Nothing. No pens, no light up blinky things to amuse my kids. No little squishy balls to entertain me during the UpdatePanel demo. Nothing. But you sure were quick to scan my little badge UPC thing to fill up your spamULater database.
O.k. yeah..Dell did give away some bright neon green shopping bag thingy. Wearing/Carrying such bag, however...kinda effeminate. But good luck to you other 2000 dudes that managed to score one.
oh yeah...no Tshirt.
I was kinda hoping to pop another official Microsoft Visual Studio tshirt onto my chunky torso. But no.
No tshirt this time around. I guess times are tough in Redmond now with no one buying Vista.
So I took a day off of work (I'm independent, so translate that into 'i lost a whole days wages') for this little diversion.
Still...a day with friends, surrounded by my fellow nerds (about 5000 of them) seems to justify the loss and disappointment. I'll probably do it again next year when Microsoft launches their next round of productivity tools. Maybe
Monkeyboy will show up this time.