14 September 2005

PDC So Far

Visiting the PDC this week and heartily enjoying myself.  Met up with old friends, hanging out with new ones.  There have been several great presentations.  Most humorously the video with Bill Gates & Napolean Dynamite.  Most excellently the presentation on Office "12" running on Windows Vista.  When they presented the amazing conditional formatting techniques I almost peed myself.  The most impactful , most transformational new technology is the SQL Service Broker, it will totally rock and I'm already deeply and passionately in love with it.

A presentation I've just sat through was on Microsoft's planning for the RFID space.  The new API's they are coming out with, the provider model, and the backend integration points are very hot.  This will definitely be a technology to keep an eye on in the coming months.

Of course I picked up lots of shirts, widgets, and assorted vendor crap, but the biggest thing I was looking forward to is that each attendee will get a copy of SQL Server 2005 when it ships.  What a coup!  This was on top of the GBs of DVDs of other bits already available.  My knees get weak when I think about all the cool stuff I'm going to get to play with once I get back to the real world.

No comments :