MVP Summit 2008 and CODoDN 2008 wrap-up

I've fully returned to Eastern Daylight Time and gotten caught up on sleep, so now I can write a blog post and actually make some sense.

MVP Summit

Although I have now received the MVP award three times (2006, 2007, 2008), this year is the first time I have made it out to Redmond for the MVP Summit. And wow, very glad that I did attend!   In sum, MVP Summit 2008 rocked!

Sure, being briefed by the product teams on future directions was great, but even better was the great conversations between MVPs and with the product teams. At times, the discussion was heated very passionate, but only because we care so very much about these products and technologies.

It was great to see people I hadn't seen in a while, like Drew Robbins, Ginny Caughey, Bill Ryan, Rob Miles, Alex Feinman, Darren Shaffer, Amit Chopra, and, of course, my MVP Lead Mike Fosmire. It was also great to meet some people for the first time like Alberto Silva, CJ Craft, Loke Uei Tan, Rob Tiffany, Peter Nowak, Nick Randolph, Richard Jones, Jim Wilson, Steve Lasker, and Mike Saffitz.  (and I'm certain my aged memory has forgotten someone - apologies).

CODoDN

After spending the better part of the week under information overload at the MVP Summit, I hopped the red-eye home Thursday night.  Friday was a bit of a blur as I didn't get much sleep on the flight home. Saturday started bright and early as I headed up to Wilmington, OH for the Central Ohio Day of .NET 2008. Walking in the door, I ran into some friends from a past life (Keith, MikeL, Ben) and then I saw Joe Fiorini who was talking to Sarah and introduced me to her. 

Later, I ran into some folks I hadn't seen in a while like Jason, Josh, Joe, Justin, Jay, and Jim (ok, I ran into Jim and Jason at the MVP Summit, so it hadn't been that long).  I also got to meet a number of people from the region I have been Twittering with like Leon, Michael, Michael, James, Carey, Dan, Dan, and Amanda (F# it!).   I also got to meet two developer evangelists for Heartland district: Jennifer Marsman and Jeff Blankenburg.  And, of course, I couldn't forget to mention seeing Brian at both the MVP Summit and CODoDN.

Oh, and I gave two talks, too.  If you attended either my Microsoft Sync Framework or Windows Mobile development in VS2008 talk, I'd like to hear from you. Either click the contact link on my blog to email me or leave an anonymous comment (I won't publish it).  Was it good? Did it suck? Was the speaker bad but the content good?  Whatever your thoughts, let me know!  Thank you!

And last but not least, Mike deserves a lot of credit and praise for a well-organized and well-run event.

Check out Andy Erickson's video clip, too.