Chicago MSDN Developer’s Conference is a wrap. The MSDN Dev Con’s are put on by regional speakers using the same or similar slide decks from PDC. We walked in a little late after breakfast to catch the end of the keynote speaker. Very rarely do you find me watching the keynote. The most interesting bit of information from the keynote was the ability of Windows 7 to natively mount VHDs, basically allowing you to access your Virtual PC files without starting up Virtual PC. Even better you should be able to mount a VHD and then boot your laptop to that VPC.
I sat in on a very interesting session on ASP.Net and JQuery. I wasn’t planning on sitting on this one but decided to try something “new” that I knew nothing about. Turns out that it was a very interesting session. If you have not seen or played with Jquery you should take a look. Basically it extends or uses ASP.Net and Ajax via pluggable JavaScript libraries to give you quick access to the objects in the page and to apply code or behaviors. Saw some interesting demos on this topic.
I jumped into a class on OLSO – Microsoft’s new domain modeling language. It was an interesting view into OSLO but the code is very early in the cycle, probably years away from release. Very interesting but only some early bits to play with for now.
Next I sat in on session on Live Framework and Mesh. I am intrigued by the social opportunities using Mesh but I just can’t figure out where I would use this in a business use case. Seems like all the demos are more items that are for my personal life and not my business life. But then again – when SilverLight was announced, with all it’s rotating graphics glory, I thought the same.
If you missed PDC it probably is worth the time and money to attend the MSDN DevCon in your area. Now it is off to catch the train for the 3 hr trip back home. I picked up a few books at the bookstore so I either will be reading about ASP.Net 3.5 or playing BioShock on the laptop.