Monday, June 30, 2003 5:38 PM Shawn A. Van Ness

Back from Japan...

Just got back from a week-long training gig in Tokyo...  Our newly developed class on Developing Tablet PC applications in C# has finally started to mature -- it's good stuff.

http://tabletpctraining.com/

But delivering it to an audience that, for the most part, doesn't speak English (I had a team of interpreters helping me out) and who are using Japanese VS 7.0 on Japanese XP... whoa.  What an experience!  Those interpreters were amazing.  Truly talented souls...  I'm sure they're underpaid.

As for me?  I don't speak a word of Japanese.  Kanjii is like Greek... err, actually, Greek is much more familiar to me.  But as it happens, almost all of the keyboard shortcuts are the same on Japanese XP/VS, as in English!  And those of you who know me, know how I work -- I don't do anything, without I memorize a keyboard shortcut.

So.  Jet-lag notwithstanding, I was up all night before the first day of class, back-converting all our labs' project files from VS 7.1 to 7.0.  Decompiling our helper components with ILDasm v1.1, hacking all the refs back from 1.0.5000 to 1.0.3300, then rebuiding with ILAsm v1.0.  Damn, do I love .NET...!

And speaking of underpaid interpreters...  I'm floored by the sheer cost of this trip!  Some places in Tokyo want ¥2,000 for a cup of coffee.  That's, like, US$20.00!!!  And not a latte, mind you -- just a brewed cup of coffee.  (I was afraid to ask for a refill.)

And economists covering the Japanese markets have the nerve to complain about deflation... umm...?!?!

Comments

# re: Back from Japan...

Tuesday, July 01, 2003 12:19 AM by Blair Stephenson

Yep, Japan is a interesting place. I've been there about 4 times with work. Wait to you go outside Tokyo.
It's totally different again. I really liked Tokyo. It has signs in English and there are other foreign people about. But outside Tokyo you get far less English signs (try finding a stop on the bullit train) and you feel you are being stared at all the time. (It could of just been me of course).

# re: Back from Japan...

Wednesday, July 02, 2003 9:08 PM by Datagrid Girl

Wow, Tablet PC training--how cool! When/where are these courses offered in North America?

Marcie

# re: Back from Japan...

Thursday, July 03, 2003 11:01 PM by Shawn A. Van Ness

We've just starting promoting this class to the public at large... so far, we've only given it on-site, either to largish corporations doing in-house tablet dev, or largish consulting groups like Accenture, and BearingPoint.

Actually, my gig in Japan was open enrollment, but the attendees were mostly shepherded in by some folks in the MS Japan office.

We're a small crew, at Leszynski Group, and would ideally like to team up with another training organization -- someone with more classroom infrastructure -- before trying to schedule classes for the public at large.

In the meantime, if you know of a modest-sized group of developers that might be interested in learning the finer points of Tablet development, the person to contact is Bernie Day (bernied@leszynski.com).

-S