Tue Report

Mon Night

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Monday night we had a reception in the Expo Hall and there were a lot of people around.  We
gave out a bunch of VSIP t-shirts and VSIP 2003 SDK bits, including the Everett Extras
bits.

We continue to have some really interested customers who are learning of the new VSIP
(it’s free now) for the first time.  There
are also a number of customers who are learning, for the first time, that the beta
of Everett Extras is available publicly.  We
had one customer come by and I showed him how easy it was to incorporate a .NET User
Control into a VS Tool Window.  He was
totally enthusiastic at how easy it was to accomplish.  This
gave me the opportunity to demonstrate the beta wizard for generating a VSIP package.  I’m
really excited about Everett Extras and the whole VSIP team (especially the developers
whom I work closely with) should be very proud of what’s being done to enable customers
to solve problems and integrate their really neat features into VS.

Tue AM

I sat in on Eric Rudder’s keynote.  The
audience was very enthusiastic about new features in VB, ASP.NET, Smart Devices and
other newly announced products that integrate into VS.

I did more booth duty this morning after the keynote and things have definitely slowed
down.  We got rid of the t-shirts and
now only the most serious of customers are dropping by.  With
nothing free to give away, except a CD with SDK bits, people aren’t as interested
in hearing about VSIP and VS Extensibility.  It
is good, however, to get the serious questions and have time to actually demo some
of the bits for potential and existing partners.

Tue Noon

I sat in on Adam Nathan and
Sonja Keserovic for their session on Managed/Native Interoperability.  Adam
literally wrote the book on this topic.  He
was giving his book away with signature for lucky attendees who answers certain quiz
questions correctly.  (For the record,
I could answer these, but I held back for the benefit of real customers.)  This
was a great talk and it got me thinking that we’ve got more work to do in VSIP to
make sure that we don’t fall into the traps that were demonstrated in the session
and to make it easy for our VSIP partners to avoid them as well.

After this I went back to the booth and answered questions, demo’d EvEx some more
and generally couldn’t wait to get off my feet. 

We had the opportunity to sample some of the fine steak of downtown LA.  Craig,
Ken, Doug, Tom, Chris and my good friend Bill took a ride to one of the local establishments
and enjoyed a nice dinner.

Tue PM

After dinner, Ken, Doug and I went to meet with an existing partner to demo their
upcoming product and to talk about possible future directions.  It
was a good demo and they’ve got a great product.  I
wish I could say more, but you’ll just have to wait ‘til they go to market with this
and then I’ll include more here. 

The hotel we went to was the Standard Hotel in LA.  The
sign outside the hotel was upside down.  I
had a feeling this was anything but ‘standard’.  Inside
(on the 5’th floor at least) we found room labels that said “My name is: 503” instead
of the traditional “Room 503”.  There
were also is labels on the stairs that said, you guessed it, “My name is: stairs”.  One
of the rooms had been hastily converted to a “conference room”.  The
bed was still there as well as the funky modern furniture.  The
shower had no door and it was a completely white room (tile, furniture, fixtures,
bedding, walls, everything).  It felt
more sterile than a hospital.  I was happy
to get out of there and will never stay there when I travel, that's for sure. 
Maybe some people like that kind of thing, but it was fairly bad in my opinion.

I finally made it back to the Convention Center with only 30 minutes left in the Ask
The Experts session, but managed to learn of some cool Whidbey bugs customers have
found and talk to some customers about Extensibility and VSIP.

I took the opportunity to introduce myself to Adam and Sonja whom I have exchanged
some emails with, but have never actually said ‘hello’ to.  I’m
sitting in the Tools & Languages Lounge now, waiting for the Birds of a Feature
session on Managed/Native Interop to see what’s going on with others who do the same
things that my team does.

Fires

This morning I looked at the TV News and it looked pretty grim.  The
fires are still spreading and threatening even more populated areas.  The
smoke & haze outside the Convention Center was even worse today than yesterday.  I
estimate visibility to be less than 1 miles.  No
one on the streets seemed to be alarmed at this.  SoCal
attitude I suppose.