Last I did a “talk” on RavenDb at the Perth Alt.Net beers. I must say I was really stoked at the turn out. Lots of banter, comments, queries, theories and general discussion. I sincerely hope that everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did. I also felt that last night was moving closer to what I hope these events should be. These shouldn’t be one-way dialogue. IMO the presenter is there to just start discussion and then it becomes a group affair, there should be lots of interjecting, lots of crowd participation. Last night there certainly was that and best of all it stay on track, we didn’t veer off into off-topic subjects (much) and I think the night was better for it.

I really do feel lucky to be in the company of some very smart people and i want to thank everyone for letting me bleat on and not give me too much grief for being woefully underprepared.

However I put it out there that the people who are comfortable enough to ask the hard questions (and there were a few), please take the reins, we want to hear from you! I’m a strong believe that you can learn as much about some from the questions they ask as the questions they answer and there were some gems last night.
Please contact Mike (@wolfbyte) or myself if you are thinking you may be interesting is starting a discussion, or even if you want to hear about stuff especially if it is edgy and possibly not suitable for the standard M$ .Net community of practice stream (Mitch wheat is the contact for that if you do have M$ specific stuff however). Any feedback is good. The hardest thing for organisers is trying to figure out what the crowd wants and as we nerds are not the most vocal people, making it even harder to run nerd events.

A further incentive is we now have sponsorship. If you get up and present you get swag, swag you want. I worked out since I have been back in Perth I have received several thousand bucks worth of cool stuff from presenting or attending various .Net events. It’s worthwhile getting involved!

Garry Stewart is up next time (in about 2 weeks) talking about light wieght IDEs, specifically VIm and letting go of our addiction that is Visual Studio.

One big note I also want to make. Take the talks for what they are. The whole under current of Alt.Net is “options”. We need to be aware there are options. We are not saying you must throw away SQL and use RavenDB exclusively or Vi will replace Studio, we just want people to open their minds. If last nights talk got you thinking about how you could get you python web stck talking to cassandra, sweet, most of what we are talking about is concepts, if there is a tool involved, its just there because it facilitates a different way of thinking. Thats all.

See you next time 🙂

Sorry to be a link-poster of late but the Alt.Net OpenSpaces in Redmond has been announced.
http://codebetter.com/blogs/glenn.block/archive/2009/01/02/alt-net-seattle-2009-is-happening.aspx

Unfortunately I will not be going, its just too late notice for me to fly over for 3 days from the other side of the planet.. which sucks because last year was awesome.
If you can make it, GO!
(and film it for me)

Looks like Ian and the lads have done the good deed and set the wheels in motion for London Alt.Net 2.0!

If this is anything like the Seattle open spaces it should be a great affair. The cool thing about open spaces is the attendees make the event. The topics that get covered are dictated by the attendees and presented by the attendees. So if you have any great ideas or queries start thinking about them now.
I also hope the London event is as international as Seattle. Now I cant expect the calibre of personalities, as Seattle is the mother ship, however I would certainly hope to see the big guns from the UK and a much larger European contingency at this one, especially as European travel is sooooo cheap.

Register here asap as once it’s full, that’s it!

Cheers to the lads (and ladettes) last night for the drinks… much nerd was talked and laptops compared!
Look fwd to next one!

here for photos

What I learned:
-TDD is not as simple as it seems. There are many approaches, frameworks, & schools of thought. MBUnit, TypeMock, MoQ need a decent looking at by yours truly and delve a bit deeper into RhinoMock and NSpec.
-There are some real smart in this movement. The Distributed Domain Driven Design session with the likes of Udi, Martin, Greg, Drew and Alan(?) etc. was awesome.
-Understanding other languages helps you understand the benefits and limitations of “your” language that much better. I really need to play more with Ruby, Python, F#… just something… anything!
-Spec# should not be know as Spec# it should just be C#. This, IMO is f*&king ridiculous. These guys are working hard to help us improve the the code at design, compile and runtime… why would we all not want this? IF this can be pushed into the C# 3.5 then just make it part of .Net 4.0…..Anders: Make it so!!!!!
-Hansleman is not only a sharp witted & entertaining guy but is smarter than a lot of his podcasts let on. (Are you dumbing this down for us Scott? 😉 )
-We need to bottle the water in Israel and Austin TX and combine it and include it in your MSDN subscription… they are hubs for smart dudes.
-Everyone was a lot nicer than I expected.. even Bellware (jokes!)… I hope this continues as it was a big nice warm fuzzy environment :).
-Special note goes to Glenn Block from Patterns and Practices. Kudos for jumping in the firing line and being prepared to take flack… even if the products are well before his time. I hope that very open and receptive attitude continue amongst the PnP team 🙂

*Oh.. the tard is me

Well I have arrived pretty late in London after delayed flights and nasty Heathrow.. so going to work is off the cards… sorry John…

I just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone involved in organising the event and a special thank to the people who took the time out to share knowledge with me, debate and talk about the virtues of a diet high in salt sugar fat and volume…
particularly: Ian, Tim, Chris(es), Jarod, Jason, Ray(s), Roy, Scott(s), Udi, Martin, Greg, Dru et al
Thanks for everything hope to see you all in the near(ish) future; keep in touch!

For those that didn’t attend, you missed out. The stuff learned was the stuff you needed to learn. the people you meet are the people you need to meet. This is better than Tech-Ed because you are the … if only we got free stuff… actually we did! Cheers Roy!

End of day one here in Redmond… only 2 hours of actual Alt.net time and already I am well impressed by the amount of knowledge. A fish bowl session started with C# and it running improvments and possible moves into dynamic aspects…. moving into general talks about languages, their place in a project, stack and programmer general arsenal.
Its also nice to see all these uber smart guy being respectful enough to each to let every one and any one have their say… hopefully this last the weekend!
So far have jumped into the edge of some conversations with the architects of the moment Mr Fowler and Mr Dahan… very cool.

am shattered so off to bed.

Well I have arrived in little old Redmond (next to Seattle), the home of M$ ready to see what happens in this alt.net weekend.
Redmond itself is pretty small and quaint. Oh and its raining. Apparently this is not uncommon. No worries, I’ll be inside most of the time any way.