My DevDays 2009 stared of on a bad note. Got stuck in the never-ending Johannesburg traffic. With the continual roadwork's, the lanes in most areas have been reduced to two, sometimes one, lane. Coming from Alberton in the south I decided to take the N1 north, or concrete highway. Bad choice.  There was an accident near Gordon road, which slowed traffic down to a halt. You can imagine, everyone now trying to squeeze through one lane. Then there was some other hiccup just before William Nicol off ramp.

Needless to say I was a bit late for the opening Key Note address. My disappointment started at the front desk where all the bags and notes and stuff were finished. I have got to wonder about this. We were all required to register weren’t we. So surely Microsoft and the organisers knew how many people were going to attend. Just add about 10% to the total, for the odd gate crasher, and you should have enough.

I did not get to see the whole key note address. But what I did see, gave me mixed emotions. Some of the stuff demonstrated we, or at least I, already knew about. In fact most of the demonstrations that I saw, were about Silverlight and WPF. Which we saw last year. The only difference is that we saw different ways to use and apply the technology. So yes, it gave us some ideas as to how to perhaps create exciting applications, by being inspired by what others have done.

I mainly stuck with track 1. Once again, we were demonstrated the basics of WPF and Silverlight. Which I can understand would benefit those who have never seen it before, but it is in no way brand new technology. Silverlight and WPF have been out for a while. Yes we got to see some ways on how to skin, style or templatise some things. We once again were introduced to XAML, and Expression Blend. But surely we could have seen some of the new stuff in Expression Blend 3. Maybe the presenters could have talked about the new things happening in Silverlight 3.

DevDays would not be DevDays if we never had the odd crash and Blue Screen. I believe, but never attended, that the XNA presentation, that it went really bad. Laptop and Studio  crashes were the flavour of the day. I know that you cannot foretell what might happen in the future when planning an event. But you just have to wonder, how often these guys practiced their routine. If it was me, I would have done it on a clean PC if I even thought it might give problem. Then practice, until I am blue in the face, and knew my routine inside out. Avoiding any possible areas that might cause a crash. But then again, who knows, this might indeed happen to me when I do a presentation. Sure hope not.

Swag. Well what can I say. Once again a bit of missed emotions. Seems that last year the presenters gave out more prizes, than this year. I mean I walked away with a bag full of swag last year. This year, I was happy to leave with a complementary Microsoft pen. Although there was that training prize of about R50 000. Which I thought was a really cool prize, but never knew about it until the end. Perhaps it was advertised in the beginning of the opening key note address, because I never got to hear about it throughout the conference. Apparently one had to fill out some forms in order to be enter the draw. I never heard about it so I never entered. Sad. For me and the advertisers. I would think that if you were putting up a R50 000 prize, you would want to get as much exposure as possible.

The closing key note was not that bad. We saw some new stuff being implemented in Visual Studio 2010. Which is very exciting. But once again, a lot was focused on Visual Studio 2010 Team system suit. Which I would never be able to afford, or even need. Some of the new IDE enhancements that were shown are already present, and more, in the current 2008 versions with the help of third party addins like Devexpress. Yes its great that some of this technology is being embedded in the core product, but its nothing new. To me its just a copy of what others have already achieved. Give us something new.

I was quite impressed with the advances in unit testing. But once again, we were demonstrated that from Team System suite, and get the impression that this functionality will not be in either the standard edition nor the professional edition. Although I have been known to be wrong on occasion.

Anyway, I believe that the event could have been better. For me, it was an up and down affair. Similar to a roller coaster. You come away feeling somewhat excited, but at the same time get that feeling of Déjà-vu. When I got home I was not too overwhelmed with the urge to suddenly start programming. Yes I did get something out of it, but not what I had expected.

What was your experience with DevDays 2009. Did you leave excited, or deflated? Share your thoughts.