Day 0 :
The dev & IT pro days of this year are ended. It was great. Here is an overview of my dev days adventure.
It all started Tuesday evening. Together with my colleague Steve Keyen we already went to Ghent city. Around 17.30 hour, we arrived at the hotel. After the checking in, we went for a drink. We had a few "Duvels" at the Belga Queen. The weather was great so we sat outside looking over the water and to the lovely girls . Afterwards we went for a dinner (I can recommend the "Gentse Stoverij"). After dinner we went to another café. Around 1 O’clock we are looking for our bed.

Day 1 :
7.30 : Arriving and breakfast at ICC, just in time to arrive with a few other colleagues (Gill Cleeren, Gerry Appeltants,…). When entering the main hall, I directly see the Ordina booth. Ordina was Platinum sponsor and the booth was very large. We even had a bicycle for the visitors. Every one could take a ride. The fastest 3 people each day have won a Bicycle helm.
8.45 : Like always these days starting with an opening keynote. This year it was given by David Chappell. David talks about the most important MS innovations for 2007 (including .Net 3.0, Longhorn, Forefront,…).

Afterwards, the first session tracks started. I missed these session because of a phone call with the customer I’m currently working. Otherwise I would have followed the session of Jelle Druyts about the Guidance Automation Tool. I’m currently looking at this tool so it had to be nice to hear more about it.
The rest of the day I follow (together with the architect of the project I’m currently on) the whole architecture track given by Ron Jacobs. As I’m currently moving within my company from a developer to an architect. The nice thing was, that the architecture of the project, was defined very well with what Ron told us in his sessions. Ron uses a lot of history references for his presentations. In the beginning this looks strange but during his sessions you can see the link of historical architecture and IT architecture. A short overview of his sessions.

Session 2 was about the analysis requirements for architecture. What are they? Where do you get them ? Is it an investment or is it a waste of time and budget ? These are the most important questions where Ron has given us an answer. Another item was what are good requirements ? The answer for this is “SMART”. “SMART” stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-bound. Ron talked also during this session about Patterns and frameworks. Are they needed ? Know your patterns/anti-patterns.

Session 3 told us more about the architect security, availability and performance. Things like what you need to know about security, how can I manage it during the architecture design and what are the basics I need are explained. The second part was about the availability of the system? How do you define it, how to define the requirements and last but not least how do I set as an architect the right level. The last part was about performance. This was interesting, because there are a lot of words always going around. What about them ? Are they true or a myth ? Is performance a risk for the project ? And how do I implement this in my architecture.

Session 4 was about reviewing the architectural design. This was interesting for me, because a lot came back of what I always told my project team developers. You can map it mostly to each other, the basics are just the same. Document everything and review it with other people. Is worth to do it, certainly. It’s an investment which pays you back and will detect problems in an early stage.

The last session was about Saas or Software as a Service. The most important thing that I learned is that as it needs an architectural shift. Furthermore Ron gave us an overview about SaaS.
As a conclusion all the sessions where just great and I learned a lot of them.
19.00 : Dev Day 1 was done. We went back to our hotel. And then to the VISUG bowling. First we had some pizza and they where fast with the delivery. We ordered around 15 pizza’s and within 10 – 15 minutes they were delivered. After the good meal, we start with the bowling, but where forced to stop because of a power failure in Ghent around 10.30. A shame now we don’t know who the winner was. Afterwards we had a few beers () with the Ordina colleagues. Around 3 O’clock we went back to our hotel.

Day 2 :
7:30 : back at the ICC, a bit dizzy of the evening before, but after 2 coffee’s we were back alive and kicking.
The first session of the day was with Raj Pai about the new features of C# 3.0 (Extension methods, automatic properties, LINQ and how it works internally,…). Later I will blog more about LINQ.

I was lucky to have 2 "sidemeetings" with 2 speakers. The first was at 11 O’clock with Raj Pai. So I didn’t attend a session now. During this meeting we asked him several questions about LINQ. A few questions we have asked :

• LINQ and AD : The coding of this provider is stopped for the moment
• LINQ and DAL : Microsoft is still working on this issue.
• Debugging a LINQ statement : Break you LINQ statement in several parts and use the .ToList() statement
• Recursive processing over a sequence, Performance ? : Sequences are not possible at this moment.  Maybe later.

During our side meeting with Raj, my colleague Kurt Claeys did a session about CAB, so I couldn’t attend his session. But afterwards I heard only positive comments. Kurt Congrats! You did well.

The next session I attend was from Jeff Prosise about WPF/E. For me it wasn’t a very interesting session.

The last session I attended was about Implementing Continuous Integration with and without team system. Given by Roy Osherove. As I’m busy with Continuous Integration, this was an interesting session. I didn’t learned a lot of new things, but I got a few handy tips and tools. Afterwards I had a small talk with Roy, about a few things I had done. This talk will be continued later by e-mail and Messenger.

Almost directly after this session I got the second "sidemeeting" with Jeff. During this session we talked about WPF/E, ASP.Net Ajax and Asp.Net 2.0.

• Difference between WPF and WPF/E : 3D, Controls, Database access, Control Panels
• WPF/E, ASP.Net 2.0 and Ajax : These will have integrate more in the future.

Also what we have seen at this moment about WPF/E is only a fraction of what it really becomes in the future.  The final release will be even better than its competitor "Adobe Flash".  Also the name will be changed.  Jeff couldn't told us more at this moment, but he said to keep an eye on the product especially when Mix '07 starts.  A lot of things will be announced then.  We can only say that Jeff was very excited about the new things.

After this session there was a closing keynote "Kudzu". It was a funny session, where he told us about typical items everyone has already came across.

Afterwards I went home, tired, but with a lot of new knowledge.
About the knowledge, I‘ve also bought 2 books. The first one is "Framework Design Guidelines" written by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams and the second book is "LINQ for Visual C# 2005" by Fabio Claudio Ferracchiati.

My colleague Gill has taken a few pictures. You can find them here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gillcleeren/sets/72157600035030532/.

Also on the n-technologies site, you can find several pictures :
http://www.n-technologies.be/Events/MicrosoftDevITProDays2007/tabid/84/Default.aspx