Thanks to D'Arcy Lussier's liveblogging, we have a glimpse as to what gets discussed when Microsoft MVPs all get together to chat.  As you know, I am keenly interested in the Microsoft MVC (as I am using it fairly heavily right now, and on paid projects to boot) and thus was also keenly interested in some of the events going on this week.  What would the development community say about the MVC? What would Microsoft have to say about the MVC?    Apparently the answers are "not too much" and "marketing, marketing, marketing", respectively, given D'Arcy's posts.

The first ominous signs began with this snippet from Day 1:
""We had alot of good discussion, but what I really got out of it was how muddled the message really is around ASP.NET. First we had ASP.NET and all the touted drag and drop goodness...then we had some attempts at guidance and standards...now we're getting MVC, and there's clearly some confusion about how everything fits, and what should be used when. This is something that obviously we have to start talking up within our communities and trying to figure out."

So...there's a Microsoft conference chock full of Microsoft's *hand-picked* community leadership and Microsoft employees.   Out of this large group of people *no one* can figure out where everything fits together? 

Of course, I panicked for naught, because Microsoft was there to straighten this message out later in the day with *brand new* guidance about the MVC.  Just some of the notable quotes included:

"MVC is a car, WebForms is a motorcycle*"
"MVC is just an *alternative*"

I couldn't figure out just where I had heard this before, until I realized that it was actually from every single presentation or screencast Microsoft has pushed out since its announcement!  Is the wholesale regurgitation of blog posts and webcasts the kind of guidance being given to MVPs in need? 

I don't want to be a massive downer about this sort of thing.  For certain the MVP summit is a *fantastic* opportunity for some of the thought leadership in the Microsoft community to come together and hash out some great directions for the future.  Am I wrong for assuming that in this case, the direction seems a little bit less than forward?

* It could be vice versa, I always get them confused because WebForms and MVC are of course SOOOOOOOOOOO ALIKE