Some largely random thoughts on the MSDN event from Monday...

As other people have commented on, the audience was pretty quiet during parts of the presentations.  However, I think that part of this might've been due to the large number of people that came for the entire day (both the Technet and MSDN sessions).  It's not like there was a lot of advertised difference between the two sessions, which is probably why most people came for the whole 9 hours or so (I know this is why my team registered for it).  I'm sure that the lunch debacle (which I won't dwell on, as others have commented on it already) didn't help either - one quick note to the MSDN guys (none of the presenters, this was a separate guy): when you have a large crowd of hungry people who are also lined up to re-register, I don't think the best course is for one of your representatives to be rude to the people in line who are asking what happened to the priority line-up.  This happened to my team and also to several other people - I'm sure it did nothing to improve the mood!  =)

I understand that presenter's relative uneasiness at dealign with a quiet crowd; however, if the crowd is engaged or enthused by what you are showing (for example, the new SQL server monitoring tools and graphs), they will show it on their own - I may be alone, but I dislike a presenter *repeatedly* asking the audience, 'So did you think that was cool or what?"  Why not just flash an applause sign while you're at it? ;)

Both the TechNet and the MSDN events were advertised as featuring "SQL Server 2005, Biztalk 2006, and Visual Studio 2005".  However, the actual 7.5 hours or so worth of presenting broke down more or less like this:

SQL Server 2005: 5 hours
Visual Studio Team System + ASP.NET 2.0: 2 hours
Biztalk 2006: 20 minutes

Now, I know that I was in the minority of attendees as someone who knows and uses Biztalk, but if Microsoft is wondering why there is a slow adoption for Biztalk in general, let's look at how the TechNet and MSDN presenters handled things:

TechNet: Biztalk's Flat File Disassembler shoe-horned into an existing demo involving Sharepoint and SQL...a quick jump into the multiplication functoid without *any* background whatsoever, meaning that maybe 5 people in the audience actually understood what was going on.  This was the extent of the Biztalk talk.

MSDN: 10 minutes into presenting on Biztalk and one of the presenters interrupts and says, "Who here would rather talk about ASP.NET 2.0 and designing a site?".  Now, this wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't have seen *the exact same ASP.NET demo* when Dan Sellers did it at the last .NET event in Edmonton.  Maybe there were people in the audience who got more out of that than I did, but I, for one, had come becasue I was excited to see *all* of Microsoft's new technologies demonstrated and also wanted to see some new things.  Ditto the Smart Client demo, which went on for all of what seemed 10 minutes prior to the event ending.

You might be gathering I'm overly fixated on the Biztalk stuff - and you might be right!  :)  But I guess I had different expectations when attending the event that didn't quite pay off.  That all being said...
Although there was a large focus on SQL Server 2005, I really enjoyed seeing all the new stuff that was packed into it.  We use Oracle where I work, so this wasn't quite job relevant but it was fascinating to see what 5 years of development will do.  I think some of the things I loved the most were the CLR integration, the enhancements to T-SQL, the monitoring stuff (those were some sweet graphs!!  And with relevant drill-down info!!  Awesome!), and most of all, the user interface enhancements were *astounding*.  I actually *wish* I was using it here given all of the features they seem to have built in.  Very nice job here, guys.  However to the Technet guys: XML production is not a new feature that was added in 2005! 

And to Barnaby Jeans:  I know you are enthused, but when your co-presenter is demoing, *please let him finish talking*!

The Team System stuff was excellent...I cannot wait to be trying it out at work on an official basis.  The code coverage analysis was particularly exciting to me, although really the entire Team System component of the presentation was pretty engaging.  And the new source control...YES!!   Finally I can give a different answer as to whether I would rather cut out my eyeball with a rusty knife or attempt to merge changes in VSS.

Likewise, although I had seen it before, I think some of the enhancements made to ASP.NET 2.0 are also neat, although I'm not sure I agree with some of the UI design choices that were made.  For example, why does the Login control have its username and password fields at different lengths by *default*?   I will say that they did a *great* job considering they were apparently doing this part of the show on the fly rather than as part of the scheduled show.  In fact, overall considering the audience and everything, I think the presenters (MSDN presenters and the bald Technet guy in particular) were relatively funny and came off as fairly polished presenters and improvisers.  I certainly wouldn't mind seeing another presentation by them at some point.

Overall, I was really impressed by the technology (and the free stuff), and less impressed by the middle-aged man jumping out to play air guitar at the beginning.  *grin*  But overall, I can only give it a thumbs in the middle for the reasons I described above.  I sincerely hope that the next time the MSDN crew is out we'll have a better time of it.  I also sincerely hope that the guy two rows ahead of me goes to the doctor soon - dude, when the left side of your head is pulsing for 45 minutes like something out an Aliens movie, it means something is not right!!!

One last note on those videos they played midway through the day - okay, fine there is a geek stereotype associated with developers, but is there a reason we can't have some videos that cater to the stunningly handsome and Fonz-like developers that we have on my team?