I started the second day of devLink by doing my presentation on WPF for Developers. It was a new experience for me speaking in a college lecture hall, and with a microphone, but I think it went well. I had a good group of people for the first session in the morning. I had some good feedback from several attendees and good questions. If anyone attending my session has any questions, or comments, please feel free to contact me here.
I next went to an open space session on *DD, which covered TDD (Test Driven Development), BDD (Behavior Driven Development), and DDD ( Domain Driven Design). I've been thinking quite a bit about TDD since that session and talking about it with Leon. I see great potential value in TDD/BDD, but I haven't yet made the time investment to start using TDD. Stay tuned to this blog for future developments in this area.
At the open space, someone suggested that they would like to see TDD in action which led to an impromptu lunch session. The idea was to hook up to the projector and see someone doing TDD. We expected five or ten people the room and we ended up with the entire room full. It was a great idea, but with the larger crowd and spur of the moment execution, it didn't go smoothly. But, it was great to see so many people interested in TDD.
After lunch, I went to the Essence of LINQ presentation by Charlie Calvert. His presentation was similar to one I saw at the Cincinnati .NET User Group by Stefan Kyntchev in that it showed the underpinnings of LINQ. In his demos, Charlie created a basic LINQ to objects implementation from scratch using Lambdas, IEnumerable<T>, Extension Methods, Expression Trees, and IQueryable<T>. Along the way, he showed the part each language element plays in supporting LINQ.
I next attended the closing circle for the open space event. I enjoyed the open spaces I attended and as demonstrated by the number and energy of attendees at the closing circle, I think a lot of other people enjoyed the open spaces. About half of the people at the closing circle had never before attended an open space event. Alan Stevens did a great job organizing the open space event and I think as a group we've built momentum for more open spaces. So expect to see more open space events around the region in the future. And if you've never attended an open space, check one out at your earliest opportunity.
Joe Stagner did the closing keynote and gave us some insight into what goes on at Microsoft, and his thoughts about the future of our industry. Somehow, I did not win any gaming systems at the closing raffle. But Jennifer Griffin did pick up a nice monitor. Congratulations Jennifer!
I want to express my thanks to all of the organizers of devLink: John Kellar, Tommy Norman, Leanna Baker, Keith Elder, and Alan Stevens (sorry if I missed anyone). It was a great event and I think I will add it to the short list of can't miss events along with CodeMash.
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