The tradition listed above leads into three *other* annual traditions that are not quite as exciting, that being:

• Justice tries to let John down easy over the course of a 90 minute conversation
• Justice tells John that crying isn't something that a man does
• John tells Justice he's not crying, abruptly says he has to leave, and then hangs up

To be open about this, while I am a fan of the TechDays core concept (that being an inexpensive conference for Canadian developers) I have not traditionally been a fan of the TechDays execution.  In particular (and I want to be clear this is just me, your opinion might be different and thus *wrong*):

• I'm not a big fan of regurgitated presentation content - the presentations at TechDays were (are?) essentially presentations done previously by another presenter, with slides and code already provided/approved by Microsoft.  I'm a little bit more independently minded than this so I don't leap at the chance like others do to essentially be a Microsoft spokesmodel.  In a case like this, I just feel used for my looks and I get enough of that on a daily basis without having to feel like it while presenting at a major conference.
• I've felt the content of TechDays has been less than stellar.  I'm a big "fundamentals" guy, and TechDays hasn't traditionally focused on any sort of development fundamentals. It's been more focused on specific Microsoft technology demos.  I hasten to add that this is completely within Microsoft's right and totally makes sense.  Microsoft is first and foremost a business and this is a good place to promote itself!  However, I'm a little less excited about "let's look at another spinning animal demo" vs. "let's teach common design patterns" or even "let's actually show developers how to use half of the relevant Application Blocks in a legitimate application that isn't a Northwind demo".  I know that there are people at Microsoft who think that a "deep dive" into the Work Item functionality of Team Foundation Server counts as developer fundamentals but I like to think we all know better.

I say this stuff because the reality is that TechDays has a reach far beyond the audience that reads technical blogs like MSDN Canada.  Sure, it's nice to pop out a bunch of posts on your blog talking about developer fundamentals or linking to a book or two, but let's get real - you're just preaching to the same audience that already knows about those concepts in the first place.  Many of the people coming to TechDays could care less about reading an online book and in some cases could care less about reading.  This is a prime situation to expose them to some of these concepts and get them hooked on things like this.

This brings me to the main point of this post.

Last week, Joey de Villa (Microsoft DE for *Eastern* Canada) posted a quick linkdump/regurgitated poster set about SOLID principles.  Now, I don't know about you (and believe it or not, this might not be the first time I've tragically misread something) but when I read a post that has a massive linkdump pertaining to SOLID and then follows up with,

Will there be a presentation on SOLID at TechDays?
"Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe"

this actually says to *me* that

1. You're not planning on having a presentation on SOLID at TechDays
2. You are providing this linkdump to people because marketing has told you "we don't think that topic specifically promotes MS products" and thus you think this post makes up for not having presentations on developer fundamentals at TechDays.  I don't think it does but I could see how you might think things are A-OK. 

So, I'm going to lay down the gauntlet for you guys:

If I'm wrong and you are having SOLID as part of your conference, this is a serious mistake on my part.  To make up for it I will volunteer to do a presentation on SOLID at TechDays in Vancouver since you are serious about having this at TechDays. I'll even use your regurgitated content.  My only condition is that I'm not wearing some ridiculous Microsoft get-up when I'm there, I have a phenomenally well-dressed reputation to maintain.  If Microsoft is actually getting serious about developer fundamentals at TechDays, I'll do what I can to support you.

However, if it turns out that I read this correctly in the first place and your post was just a way to "get out" of doing SOLID at TechDays, do me a favor and don't call me next year begging for my help to legitimize TechDays' place in the industry.

Perhaps this wasn't the place to air this, but given the choice between talking behind your backs in E-mails or passive-aggressively sniping about it on Twitter, I chose this option because
a) I'm not a 15 year old girl
b) I have a set of functioning testes.   

The question is...DO YOU!?!

The ball is in your court gentlemen (no pun intended)!!