Sunday, October 26, 2008

PDC2008 Report, Day 0 (Sunday)

This week I'm at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) and will be blogging daily to give a blow-by-blow account for those unable to attend personally. The PDC takes place every 2-3 years and is where Microsoft unveils the latest technology to software developers.

Although PDC2008 doesn't kick off officially until tomorrow (Monday 10/27), it was in full swing today for a pre-conference day of training sessions on existing technologies. In my case, I signed up for the all-day training on WPF which was given by the famous Charles Petzold. The training was very helpful and I think I know enough about WPF now to try to build something serious with it. Charles Petzold is a good and humorous speaker and I enjoyed listening to him. Now when I read through his WPF book I'll be able to hear his tone of voice speaking to me.

Although there were a lot of people here today, it'll be really packed tomorrow when the full conference is in attendance. I'm glad I got registration out of the way today. The "goody bag" this year is a black bag that says Windows 7 on the outside. Inside is a PDC2008 T-shirt, a schedule/guide, and various inserts from sponsors. The really good stuff is going to be given away on Tuesday it seems.

The buzz and expectation is that cloud computing is going to take center stage for this PDC. We'll find out tomorrow morning during the keynote address.

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