HDC 2004 Wrap Up
To quote Hawk from the Road Warriors, "ohhhh, what a rrrrusssshhhh!"
Joe Olsen, the Man behind HDC rode up to Des Moines on Thursday to make sure all was good and for the reception. Philip "Rocks" Rieck did the driving the same frigg'n day he had an operation on his back. That's what I call impressive. The conference site was good, I thought, because of its location, but unlike Matt, I thought the facilities were pretty good. Of course, I had the Party Room again. It was funny to see the room full of geeks we had a one point: yours truly, Sam Gentile, Adam Kinney, Joe, Philip and Phil Wolfe were all huddled in my room typing away and a have some "warm-up" brews.
After a quick run to Cheddars for dinner, we came back to the reception. I didn't actually listen to much of the discussion between Sam and Rocky Lhotka, though, mostly because I knew I'd find myself agree with Rocky too much. Instead, I hung out with the other attendees and heard some really good stories about what folks are doing with .NET and what they are looking forward with the next version. I don't know that I really came away with anything more than a great sense of anticipation for the new bits!
The alarm clock rang Friday morning so I could be ready to help with check-ins at 6:00 AM. After Rocky's keynote, I went back to my room to check on the status of a DTS job. That was a mistake, since I spend the next two hours fixing that and missed presentations. I really liked Rocky's talk though and found myself very much in agreement with it: the jury is still out on what SOA is -- it needs time and investment to mature. Frankly, the implications of it from a dev's prospective still have my head spinning.
I did get to see cool Robert's Service Broker demo. While SB isn't my particular cup of tea, Robert does a really good job of breaking it down to the basics and really helped me understand it. I also got to watch Scott Colestock talk about BizTalk 2004. Scott also does a great job of breaking down the complexity into bite sized chunks.
I especially want to recognize Joe for all the work he did -- while I helped a bit with the speakers, the sheer amount of time and effort Joe put into this was amazing. I'm proud be part of his user group and circle of friends. Joe won the first HDC UG Leader of the Year award. Well earned, I say.
By the end of the show, I was exhusted and happy to be heading home. I feel like it was a great event over all. Really solid technical content and great networking opporunities. I'm really looking forward to HDC'05 now!