.Net Deep Dive wrap-up

Yesterday's ".Net Deep Dive" day at Microsoft Israel was a huge success. Over 1600 developers came to the event to hear about advanced development topics such as Agile/TDD and Production Time Debugging. Both of Royo's lectures were packed, with people sitting on the floor after the 700 or so chairs were taken.  I missed Jackie's lecture but I'm sure it was informative and fun - his lectures always are.

The knowledge and enthusiasm of the Israeli developer community never fails to amaze me.  A little kid – who couldn't have been more than 10-12 years old - cornered Jackie in the "ask the experts" session to ask about the CLR's implementation of 64-bit value types on 32 bit hardware. And a little earlier in the session, Gadi mentioned that he had heard of an obscure registry key which was helpful when attaching NTSD to a running process. Someone from the audience stood up and recited the full name and path - from memory – and explained what it did.  

This event really reminded me of how much fun I had as a speaker back in the days before joining MCS. Maybe my next position will provide more opportunities to participate in similar events. Giving the occasional user group presentation just doesn't give the same rush as a speaking to room with 500+ people...

Anyway, my vacation is coming to a close. On Sunday I'll be speaking at the .Net Architects user group followed by a Geek/Blogger Dinner, and then back to New York on Monday. Israel has been so much fun that I'm almost sorry to leave! J