Microsoft DevDays 2006

These couple of days I went to Microsoft DevDays 2006. The topics of the lectures I attended were pretty interesting - Windows Vista, .NET 3.0 (WCF, WPF, WWF), Software Factories, MSF 4, VSTS for Testers.

• Windows Vista is pretty exciting, offering a lot of improvements in many areas (well, and some potential annoyances, too).
  
• VSTS for Testers was an interesting lecture for me, since the project I am currently working on, offers similar functionality. My team even attended a QA seminar last week to get a better feel of the problems of automating testing and the tools available.
  
• MSF 4 looks interesting, too, especially the Agile part. I think that the practices are more important than the tools, but good tools can definitely help (although VSTS is a bit awkward on demos).
• WCF, WPF, WWF - all these things are pretty exciting and definitely have potential. I especially liked the lecture discussing building www.msbgregistration.com using these latest technologies. It was probably the best talk, since it covered a real world example with new technologies and inspired a good Q&A session.

Overall the event was nice, though there were a few organizational aspects that were not very well thought of. I guess I would go the next year, too. And I will definietly go back to Arena cinema, where the conference was held, having two movie tickets to spend :)