Developer Buzz at TechEd 2004
I haven’t wanted to join the “Today at TechEd” blogging crowd, but we’re closing in on the end of the event and I did want to share some observations.
There are two main things that I have found a bit surprising.
1.) The interest in writing secure code. My team at Microsoft (MSDNEvents.com) presented A LOT of security focused events to developers in January and February of this year. The events satisfaction ratings were some of the highest ever, but the actual attendance numbers were not as high as I would have expected. The interest here at TechEd has been AMAZING. The Secure Developer events have been packed. My talk “How Hackers Hack” was the 2nd highest attended break-out at TechEd and the reviews and follow up interest was awesome. I’ve talked to APress about writing a security focused book and have decided to make one of my focus areas for web casts “Hacker” oriented.
2.) Whidbey / Visual Studio 2005. Attendees, Microsoft Employees, and the Microsoft Developer Division teams are PUMPED UP about the new features of Whidbey. It’s as though the core technology has been delivered and tweaked and now we’re getting to implement all the great ideas that we have been collecting since .NET was envisioned. The new May Technical Preview is super and packed with new stff for both Web and Windows developers.
Heidi Dill (one of my favorite Microsofties) sponsored a dinner with attending Microsoft Developer Evangelists and Developer Community Champions on Tuesday night. The new model for broad reach developer community engagement is being very will received and it was great to be able to put faces to several of the people I have gotten to know in email over the past couple of years.
Wednesday night was the “Regional Director” gala hosted by Eileen Crain (another of my favorite Microsofties). Let me tell you, you wanna hang out with some fun and gung ho techies, the RD crowd is the place to be.