October 2003 - Posts
The Bloggers Bof Session has already been heavily covered, but what I think what is missing is all the cool sub-topics that happened beneath the RSS versus Atom discussion. Jason Nadal documented the discussion on the need for standarization of meta-data so that aggregation can get smarter, and is a bit of a complex discussion, where one can get lost. But what we are really talking about is building a Tivo-like system for Blogging. That will require 2 major updates to the blogging world, a standard metadata for describing the categorization of blog content, and smart clients that can use the metadata. Tivo has an advantage over blogging because they already have an industry that categorizes their data. But I think with a little help we can get this done it a reasonable timeframe.
DonXML
I just want to say that there is a real sense of community among the bloggers at the PDC. It is somewhere between a community and a family. I've talked with so many bloggers and readers of blogs, and feel like these are people I graduated high school with, and haven't seen for 10 years. There are great conversations going on, and because we know where a lot of us are coming from, the ramp up time to a productive conversation is seconds instead of hours. A lot of us are suffering from info overload, not due to the sessions, but from the discussions between the sessions. If you are missing out on this, or are really digging it at the PDC, I'd highly recommend hitting the next Sells-a-thon (aka XMLDevCon).
DonXML
Anyone that has not learned declarative programming definitely need to learn this stuff soon. It is not an easy jump to make from the procedural programming. XSLT is a great language to learn to help move to declarative programming, but so are things like LISP and SMIL. Longhorn uses declarative programming all over the platform. But don’t worry you can still use procedural programming. And the cool thing, either way you code, it renders down to the same bits.
DonXML
Adobe had a really cool demo in the General Session on how to produce XAML with an After Effects plugin. Why is this cool. Because a graphics artist can develop using their tools, and the coder can code the event handlers. Division of labor, and easy to put the pieces back together. Very Very cool. I’ve been working on stuff like this with SVG for a couple years, but it was a tuff hack at best. This is so much cleaner. I’ve been working with the guys from Adobe on Illustrator and SVG, and have been pushing those teams of this stuff, but never knew there were others within Adobe that were doing the same.
DonXML
Saturday night was a blast. Got to hang with ScottW, Jason Nadal, Jason Beres, Jeff Julian and others. Got to meet a ton of people. The Wilshire is the place to hang afterhours. Sunday is being spent hooking up with others at Commnet. BOF sessions tonight. I'll fill you in as I can.
DonXML
For those of you that have been asking, yes the Monday night blogger outing is still on. There is no official backing or sponsors, so it is up to us for transportation to and from the Viper Room. What I’m suggesting is that people meet at their hotel lobbies at 10:00PM and grab a cab to the Viper Room. This way you will know who to share a cab with on the return trip. If you are staying at a non-PDC hotel, or just want to travel in a bigger group, you can meet up with those of us staying at the Wilshire Grand at 10:00PM.
UPDATE: Since the blogging BOF Session is 10:00PM Monday night, we can all leave for the Viper Room after that event. I went to check the BOF sessions before I posted this, but the site was down (at least it was for me).
If you can’t (or don’t want to) go Monday night, I believe that there will also be a blogger event at the PDC Party in Universal Studios. Check with Scoble for details.
OK, how do you know who I am? Odds are, if you see me, you’ll know it is me. But if you must, here is a recent picture.
DonXML
Does anyone know what the system requirements are for the PDC build of Longhorn? I have a dual PII workstation that I was going to use as my Longhorn machine, but I don't know if dual processors will be supported with this build of Longhorn. BTW, this dual processor machine, although it uses PIIs, really rocks with WinXP, so I don't think horsepower will be an issue, but dual processors might be.
If it doesn't support dual processor machines, then I'll have to buy a refurb thru Dell refurbs (I typically buy refurbs, they tend to be cheaper, but not always).
DonXML
I have a couple tips for those of you going to the PDC:
- End of Daylight Savings Time – Sunday October, 26th 2:00 AM. If you are traveling into LA and are changing time zones, please remember that Daylight Savings Time officially ends Sunday morning (effectively Saturday night). So if you are flying in on Saturday, remember to change you watches to PDT, and then to PST before you retire for the night.
- LA Transit Strike – LA Buses and trains are not running due to a transit strike. I’d expect finding a cab may be a little harder than usual.
DonXML
I'd just like to send a shout out to Jeff Sandquist for the great PDC blogging shirt, and to John Daus of Microsoft's East Region Developer Evangelism Team for the MSDN “Crew” t-shirt.
Anyone else from MS that has some clothes to give away, feel free to email me. There are at least 2 more days that I don't have a shirt for. And if I get more than 2, I could always change shirts during the day. Combine the free shirts with the stuff I've bought from MicrosoftGear.Net and I'm a walking billboard for MS. For some reason the MicrosoftGear site is down. Maybe I haven't bought enough from them lately.
DonXML
Please remember, I’m picking sessions that, in my opinion, warrant some more exposure. There are lots of other sessions that I really like, but since I’ve seen them discussed on other blogs, I purposely avoided talking about them. If I don’t mention your favorite session, it doesn’t mean I don’t like it, I’m just trying to spread the love.
Visual Studio "Whidbey": New IDE Features for XML and Data Access
Track: Tools and Languages Code: TLS340
Room: Room 511ABC Time Slot: Mon, October 27 1:30 PM-2:45 PM
Speakers: Paul Yuknewicz
Visual Studio .NET and ADO.NET introduced the next generation of data access programming, which natively supports multi-tier architecture and unifies data with XML. Learn how Visual Studio "Whidbey" leverages existing ADO.NET and XML investments, and enables developers to perform data access tasks in drastically fewer steps and fewer lines of code. Explore creating data access components complete with custom validation logic, consuming data from databases and the middle tier, and rapid integration of data with Windows Forms. Learn about the new XML editor that enables enhanced validation against XSD and DTD schema, XSLT debugging, and more.
I saw an early version of this at the XmlDevCon, and it went over really well. Although SVG support via SharpVectors will not be a part of this, it still should be a great product. Plus there seems to be a lot more to this session than just the new XML editor. Unfortunately the session is competing with 2 others that I want to go to, “Avalon” Introducing the Next Generation of Windows Presentation Services, and Building InfoPath Solutions using Managed Code.
DonXML
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