The .NET Show: The 50th Episode!

It's true, we've now hit the big Five-Oh in production of the .NET Show!

Yesterday, we finished filming... er... taping this special episode, and needless to say we did something a little special this time. For one thing, we had a "live" studio audience that could sit in and watch the entire process, flubs, goofs, and waiting around for minor set changes, and for guests to arrive. We also streamed the filming to campus, so that Microsoft employees could watch it live from their offices. Haven't found how how many folks watched it yet, I -hope- it was a lot.

The topic I chose for this episode was "The Future of the Platform". No, we aren't going to reveal any hidden secrets or specifics about "post-Longhorn" technologies, instead my guests and I discuss the overall concepts of where technology overall is heading, how the platform could, should, and must adapt to be able to provide developers and users with great applications and solutions, and also about the underlying basic concepts that many of our technologies are grounded in, and how we continue to evolve them in order to make the platform more robust, secure, efficient, and interconnected.

My guests for the first segment were Brad Abrams, Michael Wallent, Steve Millet, and John Shewchuk. In the second segment, I talked with  Rick Rashid, the Senior VP in charge of Microsoft Research, and we discussed the role that MSR plays in examining and experimenting with various technlogies that can aid us in building a better platform. There is little in the way of direct and actionable develoment knowledge that we discuss in this episode, but frankly I found the overall discussion to be facinating, entertaining, as well as enlightening. I hope you will to.

We will hopefully have this episode out in three to four weeks, but in the meantime here are some pictures that I took backstage during filming:

 

Here is a pre-show shot of the set we are using this time.

Here is the director and producer of the show back in the production booth getting ready for the show.

Here's Erica getting made up. Since it's my camera, there obviously are more pictures of her on it then there are of me!

Once we finished with filming for the day, we all went next door for a party to celebrate with!

That Channel 9 Guy sure likes to get around, doesn't he...

Oh, and did I forget to mention that for Erica's Somebody@microsoft.com segment she got to interview Bill Gates? Here is a quick photo we took with Bill, Erica, myself, and the rest of the crew right after we finished: