I just completed my first iteration on a project I was injected into at work. What makes this project interesting is the approach to software development as well as the technology makeup. Many developers wonder what its like to switch from traditional methods and adopt something like TDD or OSS tools like nHibernate, Rhino Mocks, Castle Project, etc. I wanted to share some thoughts and what my experiences have been after completing my first iteration in exactly that type of environment.
TDD – Different, yes…Valuable, absolutely.
My first experience to TDD has been a career altering experience. After this project, I can say absolutely that not doing test driven development would be difficult. With that said, I wasn’t doing TDD this first iteration…more like TAD: Test AFTER Development.
I always looked at what I was going to write from a pure implementation point of view…here’s what its supposed to do, so let’s get going building it. But with a test-first approach the tables are turned: here’s what its supposed to do, so let’s build the scaffolding that will validate what it is we’re going to write. This is a big paradigm shift for many developers, and even on our team I feel that there’s some sentiment of resistance…or maybe just wrestling with understanding the value of writing many lines of test code compared to the actual production code. For any team trying something new, I think this is normal.
Development Tools = Learning Curve
I think I would encourage people wanting to do TDD to actually take a test-after approach for the first iteration, or for any spikes available before the actual project begins. One key reason is to get accustomed to the tools available and how they work.
We’re using nUnit for our testing which is a unit testing framework with plug-ins to VS.NET. I’ve been exposed to nUnit before, but this is the first project where it played such a major role. It didn’t take much to learn the basic features, but it was through the process of the iteration that I discovered other aspects like the Syntax Helpers to make your assert statements more readable.
Going hand-in-hand with nUnit is Rhino Mocks. Oren’s popular mocking framework allows you to create mock objects for your tests that you have control over. So instead of having to new up an Employee object and ensure that it has certain values set, which may require actually executing code, you use a mock object instead that you have control over dictating how it acts and responds. It took me a while to get my head around some of the concepts and how it uses what it does, but once there you realize how easy it can be to robustly test your code.
Re-Sharper is a productivity product for VS.NET that isn’t directly required to do TDD, but should be a requirement for any C# development project. Re-Sharper provides improved code maintenance functionality that you would otherwise be relying on a developers skill with copy and paste to perform. It also provides extensive search capabilities which makes finding things in your project very easy. The downside of re-sharper: OMG, so…many…shortcuts! I’m constantly amazed at how devs I work with will just fire off “Oh, just do ctrl-alt-F6 to do that” when asked how to do something in re-sharper, or to offer how to make a task easier with re-sharper. Once you use it enough, I’m sure the shortcuts get ingrained in your head…but for newbies to the product, it can seem daunting.
While I mention that there’s a learning curve, that shouldn’t be seen as a negative thing. Velocity is an important concept when dealing with changing your development practices: there will be pain up front, but as devs get more experienced and comfortable their productivity will increase. Also, there are Microsoft tools in this same space. Team System has a Test version of VS.NET, and also (I assume) has unit testing features baked into the Dev version of VS.NET. There are also other mocking frameworks than just Rhino Mocks, and I’d be surprised if some of the Re-Sharper features didn’t make it into VS.NET 2010. Still, these tools are solid, accepted, and have a developer community supporting them. Solid choices.
The Importance of Trust
I did a blog post around trust a while back, and those concepts are definitely proven true on this project. Our team has dev leads and technical architects, but the focus isn’t on who does what. The focus is on the project success and on helping make each other better. It’s an infectious environment that encourages discussion, debate, and disagreement (without being disagreeable mind you) while still holding to our values of keeping our commitments and delivering quality. The environment of trust, especially when a project tries to tackle so much new methodology and so much new technology, is critical to the projects success. You don’t want defensive people on your project, you don’t want those that are unable to compromise or consider other people’s views, and you don’t want those that are known to not work well on a team. Teamwork is key in a project like this, and I’m very fortunate to be surrounded with the people we have.
This is getting long, so I’m going to stop it here. I didn’t mention nHibernate or Castle Windsor in this post because those are more architectural aspects…while they do have technical implications, they aren’t the same as the tools I mentioned above. I’ll do another post on that topic. For now, hope this helped and let me know your thoughts and feedback.
D
I upgraded my HP laptop with Win 7 RC, but ever since I’ve run into issues with my wireless and LAN devices. I could connect to my network, but not to the internet. I’d get “limited connectivity” messages and nothing seemed to fix it. It was really weird too, because I’d get internet for a few seconds and then *poof* it would be gone, but then when restarting I’d never get internet…there was never a solid pattern to the behaviour.
Others were discovering this issue as well, as one thread on the TechNet forums shows. People there were suggesting everything from removing your pc from the home group to downloading specific drivers. Luckily, one of the solutions suggested did work for me.
What I did was go to the properties of my wifi and LAN devices, navigating to the Driver tab. Once there I selected Update Driver and Search Automatically For Driver. The driver was updated and my issues have disappeared!
Now as I’m typing this, my machine is downloading a tonne of updates that include new drivers. My guess is that in one of the recent Windows Updates I downloaded newer drivers for my devices which enable them to work properly. For those that haven’t ever been able to get an internet connection, I’m not sure what to tell you. But consider trying the steps I mentioned above, especially if you’ve been fighting with this for a while.
D
This Wednesday isn’t just Canada Day, its also the start of the 2009 CFL season!
This year there are four rule changes that look to make the game more entertaining for us fans:
After a safety, kickoffs happen from the 25 yard line, not the 35 yard line.
For many teams, it makes more sense to just give up the 2 points if they’re backed up to their endzone and are facing a punting situation. The idea being that they’d rather save the field position and give up the 2 points. By moving the ball back 10 yards, this is supposed to encourage teams to punt rather than take the safety in those situations.
Wildcats are Go!
This year teams will be able to utilize the wildcat formation. Normally QB’s are required to be under centre or behind centre, but this rule change removes that.
Pointing out bad ref’s earns you more opportunities to do so.
So let’s say that you, as a coach, spend both of your challenges and are successful in both. Under a new rule, you’ll now be rewarded with a third challenge for pointing out how futile the referees are!
No scrimmage option after a field goal.
Previously, after a team kicked a field goal, their opponents had the option of receiving the kick off or scrimmaging from their 35 yard line. No more! Fans wanted more kick returns, so in 2009 the option to scrimmage has been removed. Now after a field goal, the scoring team *must* kick off to their opponents.
I’m looking forward to seeing how these rule changes impact the on-field product. Can’t wait for Wednesday!
D
Ah Summer…that time of the year that we all dread as geeks. In the dark and cold of winter we can hide our pasty white skin and our diverse body portionings under layers of clothing. But Summer…summer is when we must come out into the light, like Golem being pulled into the sunlight by Sam and Frodo.
Well, this summer my *twin* Daniel Nerenberg and I are going to try and offer some encouragement by leading the charge out of our collective basements writing code and into the light of day! Yes, this is the Summer of Sexiness, and it begins *today*!
Daniel and I are going to begin our summer metamorphosis, aiming to get ourselves fit, fabulous, and muay caliente by PDC! We have our own internal bet going on (oddly, that the winner gets dinner paid for by the loser…because y’know, having food as a prize just made sense in a fitness competition ;) ), but at the end of this I think both of us (and our significant others) will be the *real* winners…as will all of you for having two more amazingly sculpted visions of hawtness to gaze upon at technology events.
So this post also stands as my first official weigh in. Here’s the starting stats:
Weight: 285 lbs
Waist: 42”
You can see Daniel’s starting stats here. Game on!
D
*Warning: While I don’t give away spoilers, I do mention aspects of the movie that may give away certain aspects of the plot…but its nothing you couldn’t gleam from either the trailers or by reading Robert Ebert’s review. Just sayin’…
*
I have just come from two and a half hours of visual adrenaline being thrust into my brain through my eyes, and yes the experience *was* as sexy as I just made it sound!
I went in to Transformers 2 with very low expectations. For one, I wasn’t a huge fan of the first one. I understand that movies need to sometimes do a retelling, but I felt that certain aspects of the first broke with cannon…like how the Cybertronians just scan a vehicle and can transform into it, instead of the original story of the Arc designing them specifically for a certain mechanism. Like, seriously, how do you bring in the Dinobots in this retelling? Did they just *scan* a Triceretops?
Ok…I’m getting off topic here…let me bring it back to my point: low expectations. Especially after reading Roger Ebert’s scathing review of the movie. I read his review and thought “Oh no, this is going to be a gong show.” Luckily, its just that Roger Ebert is OLD and NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE for this movie. Roger Ebert should never, EVER review a movie like this again. After seeing the movie, I’ve decided his review is the equivalent of an old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.
So let’s talk about the movie. This is absolutely a 4/5 show. The action sequences are fantastic…and there really isn’t a lot of screen time that *isn’t* an action sequence. Yes, some of the scenes are a bit weird but you have to remember that this is a movie franchise that doesn’t take itself too seriously. So in addition to the big transforming robot aliens, Shia LaBeouf’s mom *may* end up eating pot-laced brownies; GO WITH IT!
You also need to look past the humanesque aspects of some of the robot characters. Yes, it doesn’t make sense that the “twins” talk like two members of the Weyans family…and yes, the “doctor” robot acting like the doctor is a little silly…and yes the toy truck robot that eventually humps Meagan Fox’s leg like a dog is a whole lotta WTF…but for whatever reason it all worked, mainly (again) because this isn’t *meant* to be a serious movie…although at the same time, its not a parody either.
There was some interesting borrowings from other movies, like Total Recall, Terminator 3, and Baywatch (Meagan Fox running in the desert in slow motion…get my drift?). Whether intentional as a tip of the hat or just borrowed ideas, nothing really felt all that out of place here.
Now, I did only give this 4/5, so what about that missing star? Well, for me there were two things that made me roll my eyes and also made me feel like the roller coaster ride ended too soon (even after 2.5 hours).
Many will comment on this being an extended advertisement for auto manufacturers. Oh no, not at all. This was an extended advertisement for THE US ARMY/NAVY/AIRFORCE! I get it…this is an American movie, but COME ON! Decepticons attack all over the world, and each time its the American military that swoops in to save the day? Did they come up with some new agreement with China to allow this to happen? And seriously, the Transformers should be pissed that there was almost as much face time for the USA forces as there was for the robots themselves. Throw in a military element, but more robo-transforming, less camos and machine guns.
The second item was the ending. While I won’t give away the ending, I felt it was a little anticlimactic. I wanted a big fight at the end, but what we got was meh…not bad, but just not spectacular. See the movie, tell me if you feel the same way.
So go and enjoy…unless you’re old like Roger Ebert…then DON’T go to this movie, its not for you.
D
The Adobe UG here in Winnipeg has an event tomorrow night (Thursday, June 25th). From their website (which you should visit to RSVP to):
Flash Catalyst/Flash Builder Demos
Date and Time: June 25, 2009 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Address:
Red River College
160 Princess Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Speakers: Darren Osadchuk
Agenda:
Adobe recently made beta versions of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder publicly available on Adobe Labs. Come out and see these exciting new tools in action and learn how they integrate with CS4 to speed Rich Internet Application development! See product feature demos, and learn how the new Flex framework powers both Flash Catalyst and Flex Builder to speed the development and testing of rich Internet applications and content.
We'll be meeting in our usual location, room P417, Red River College, Princess Street Campus, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 25. This meeting will also include our software raffle for the first half of 2009 - if you've attended previous meetings this year you'll have a chance to win some great Adobe software!
I went to update a webservice reference in a web app and was greeted with a strange and somewhat disconcerting message…
The components required to enumerate web references are not installed on this computer. Please re-install Visual Studio.
Luckily, I didn’t have to reinstall Visual Studio as was suggested. Instead I just did what Joshua Morgan suggested on the MSDN forums:
I ran:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe /resetskippkgs" and it worked for me.
And that’s also what fixed my probs too. Hope this helps someone.
(Btw, in case its not clear, you run it from a command line)
D
Dylan Smith from Anvil Digital will be presenting Tuesday night (June 23rd) on VS.NET 2010!
Do you ever deal with bugs that you can’t reproduce? Do you use a lot of manual testing? You won’t want to miss this chance to see how the new features in Visual Studio Team System 2010 Tester Edition can help your team.
VSTS Architecture edition has also been undergoing a drastic change, replacing what was a mostly lackluster feature set with some phenomenally useful tools. See how the new Architecture Explorer can help you navigate and understand large codebases. The new diagramming features make it simple to auto-generate diagrams to communicate your application architecture to others.
Even seemingly simple code editor improvements make the experience of doing TDD in Visual Studio much smoother. Come join us and learn about some of the new features in VSTS 2010 and how you can use them to benefit your team.
The event starts at 5:30 in the 17th floor conference room of the Richardson Building at Portage and Main. You can get more detailed directions and register for the event here.
D
I had quite the eye-opening series of discussions at a recent conference about how women are treated in our industry. Discussions ranged from how geek guys overstep boundaries to what levels of modesty women in tech should exude.
The discussion of women in technology has been ongoing for many years. Major conferences host WIT (Women in Technology) shindigs where people get together to build Lego together and burn bras (oddly enough, I’m only kidding about the bra burning…still don’t get the Lego thing…). The value of women in technology is an important discussion, but is not the point of this post.
No, this post I want to talk to my male geek readers. Now boys, it goes without saying that our brood is one that lacks certain social graces…particularly with the ladies. One of the reasons The Big Bang Theory is funny is because of how true it is. Unfortunately, that’s the cutesy version of events.
The non-cutesy version involves stories about creeper guys at conferences following female attendees to their hotel rooms, sending rude messages, or (this one floored me) requesting help with a technical problem as a ruse to spend one on one time alone.
Of course this just isn’t relegated to the Milton’s of our industry. Oh no…the exuberant douchebags of our industry are just as guilty although their tactics tend to be more in-your-face.
So in the spirit of the recent movie “He’s Just Not That Into You”, here are some tips for my male brethren.
Rule 1 – Just because you both use the same technology, it doesn’t mean you’re soulmates.
So you find a girl who’s into the same tech you are. Great. You’ve probably met hundreds of other *guys* who use the same technology, but you probably didn’t assume bromances were a given in those situations did you?
Now this common ground is definitely a great opportunity to open discussions, but remember that in most scenarios (ug event, conference, code camp, IM or Twitter) you’re talking at a work-related-level. You’re not at a bar asking if it hurt when she fell from Heaven; you’re in a room with uncomfortable chairs and a projector asking how to properly implement an IoC container. She’s not there looking for love Romeo.
Rule 2 – Just because she talks to you doesn’t mean she wants to have your babies…or dress up in a Princess Leia gold bikini.
Geek guys are used to talking to other geek guys, but girls are a totally different thing. It’s true that a good chunk of us working in IT grew up not going on a lot of dates, or being all that popular with the ladies (I didn’t wear jeans until grade 10, I speak from experience). So I can understand that we may get a thrill from a girl, especially one who understands the inner workings of the CLR or can rattle off Re-Sharper shortcuts from memory, when we actually talk to them.
But let’s chalk this up to what it really is: novelty. Girls, particularly those considered attractive, aren’t supposed to *be* geeky. So when one comes by, its like a perfect hormonal storm…kinda like if Sarah Michelle Gellar really *was* into vampire lore (sorry to burst your bubble guys). You may have a great conversation with a gal, but guys that is not an invitation to start stalking her in person, on IM, on Twitter, via Facebook, blogs, etc.
It’s like showing up at Scott Hanselman’s house for dinner just because he responded to a comment you left on his blog or because you had your picture taken with him…
*
Not appropriate.
Rule 3 – Contrary to how you may feel, acting like a jackass will *not* help you make the situation better.
Ok, so you messed up. You ignored rules 1 and 2 and now have been informed in no uncertain terms that you’re creeping her out, she’s not interested, and she never will be interested. Misunderstandings happen, and you obviously misunderstood. So your next course of action should be:
a) Rant about what a slut she is on your blog or twitter
b) Make sure to sit in the front row of any event she’s presenting at and glare
c) Be even more overt in your advances, ignoring the brush off
d) Create a Silverlight montage showing how she blew up your heart and devoured your soul.
If you answered a, b, c, or d, you are an idiot, a douchebag, need medical help, or possibly all three. The correct answer here is WALK AWAY.
Maybe your pride got hurt…realize that its *your pride and ego* and not your actual feelings. Your heart didn’t break from any of this because there wasn’t any relationship happening in which a heart could break from. Lashing out in anger just makes you look sad, pathetic, and unbalanced. As well, acting like a cocky ladies man causes the same sort of reaction as well.
And OMG, DO NOT try to apologize or explain after the fact. If a lady has made it clear she doesn’t want anything to do with you, that means NO CONTACT…AT ALL…EVER. Learn from the experience and walk away…and geeze man, re-read rules 1 and 2!
Final Thoughts…
We live in a time where we have unprecedented access to other people. We can view their information on Facebook, follow their thoughts and activities on Twitter, read their opinions on blogs, etc. We also have those that choose to live in the realm of celebrity status, offering access to themselves as their main product (yes iJustine, I’m looking at you). And for whatever reason, we feel that the rules governing these mediums or interactions apply to everyone we meet…but they don’t. Privacy and respect are still values that each of us holds as a right, and one that we shouldn’t take for granted in others. Fantasy lives in a fantasy world guys…and we all live in reality.
Well…all of us except Access Developers…
Let’s get that Twitter maintenance done ASAP boys!
D
No, I didn’t mean “Three and four”. Saying “Days Three and Four” would suggest there was some amount of time in between that consisted of sleeping that would serve to separate the two days. I mentioned in my last post that the adventure would continue and so it did!
Thursday had me lined up for two talks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I slept in on this day, letting myself get up at 8:00 to do last minute tweaks to the presentation. 4.5 hours sleep is a treat at DevTeach.
After the conference concluded a group of us headed to Gastown for dinner. Blythe from SQL PASS and her roommate joined us as well…as did some guy in a green shirt (actually part of a different table, but he fits in well).
Oren was quite happy with the color of his blue drink.
After dinner we made our way back to the hotel to regroup and plan for the rest of the night. On our way, we stopped to admire local tourist attractions like this steam-powered clock in Gastown:
(You should have seen the people waiting for the top of the hour when the clock “whistles”…they didn’t seem impressed)
So sitting in the Yew, we hatched the next phase of the evening: We’d head to a nightclub recommended by someone. So off we went, probably about 8 blocks or so. When we got to the bar, our group decided that maybe this just wasn’t the right social atmosphere for us.
So we headed to Granville and eventually found ourselves in line at The Roxy. Now I don’t know what type of reputation The Roxy has in Vancouver, but I thought it was a pretty kewl bar/dance/rock club. They had canned music playing, but also featured a live band that played a wide range of songs and genres. We shut the place down and left there at 3AM. Our group walked/stumbled down the block to the same pizzeria that we hit the night before. In one of the only pics I took that night, I realized how amazing my hair still was at 3 AM and had to take a pic of it. Don’t get too distracted by the awkward streaks on the mirror (how did I *not* notice that?!)…
So after leaving the ‘zaria we hoofed it back to the hotel, our night of socializing over…or WAS IT?!
Somewhere along the way it was brought up that one of our party members had upgraded to a suite, and so we made the decision to go hang out in his room for a bit. We hung out until about 5AM or so, watching as the Vancouver skyline slowly got brighter. At that point, a subset of our group decided to hit up Denny’s for breakfast. By the time we all returned to the hotel it was 7AM.
I was going to stick around for Alt.NET, but I was honestly too burnt out from the week and the thought of coming home late Sunday and to work first thing Monday just did not seem appealing. So I flew home Friday afternoon.
And so concludes another amazingly successful DevTeach conference. From what I hear, Alt.NET is going great and there are even more stories surfacing from Friday (what *did* Oren get tattooed on his arm?)
D
The epicness continues…
Dev Teach Day 1
So on Tuesday, it was the *official* start of the DevTeach conference. Good times had by all. My first talk went pretty well I think, and I caught Shawn’s excellent MVVM talk. That night was the speaker dinner at a local Thai restaurant. After that I was talked into heading down to scout out a dance club with a group of friends. We never did dance, but we did learn that
1. I forgot how awesome Centurions and Visionaries were.
2. If you want to go dancing but don’t bring your ID with you, it could end up being the deciding factor (no, it wasn’t me).
3. 2 slices of pizza and a drink from a late night pizzaria for $5 > any other pizza in the world
It ended up being a late night though…got back and into bed easily after 2AM…maybe closer to 3AM. I was like “Boy, I’m not going to be staying out late again like that anytime soon.” And then DevTeach Day 2 happened.
Dev Teach Day 2
I had the biggest of my four presentations on Wednesday, and I think it went really good…at least from the conversations and the feedback I got. After a group of us went for dinner to Fuel which is the *unbelievable*. Awesome food, unbelievable service, and a great venue. If you're in Vancouver or planning to visit, definitely check it out.
Afterwards a subset of our group continued on to Checkers where it was karaoke night! Below is the video evidence of that time…
Yag chanelling the Monkeys…
G. Andrew Duthie got a taste of what’s to come at our Billy Idol showdown at next year’s MVP summit…
And Dave Laribee and I shut the place down with our rousing version of Like a Virgin…
From Checkers we walked a number of blocks until we found a small dance club that was still open. Hung out there for a bit, and then left. Unfortunately Greg lost his shoes at the club. Some nice guys offered to help, but in the end Greg thought it best of he just walked to the hotel in barefeet. We grabbed some shwarma from a late night…uh…shwarma house, and then walked back to the hotel. Time in bed, 3:30 AM.
And tonight…the adventure…continues!
D
If the first day of DevTeach is any indication I’m going to be a wreck by the end of the week thanks to a lack of sleep and copious amounts of double quarter pounders with cheese at late night feedings.
Flew in yesterday morning pretty early and got to the hotel at like 9ish. Luckily they had a room available and got me into my room.
Four Seasons FTW!
After meeting up with the usual suspects for breakfast (Donald, Rob, Gary, and my Winnipeg compadre Dylan) and some hang time, we headed to Microsoft’s offices for the UG leaders summit. Good times had by all, and a big thanks to MS for sponsoring both the summit and also the free conference registrations that UG leads get for attending.
UG Summit FTW!
After the summit, it was time for dinner. We went to this place in Vancouver called the Sandbar. Menu is really small and a mish-mash of seafood, asian, and american (so snapper, potstickers, and burgers were all on the menu). The food wasn’t bad, but it was fashion over substance. I was *hungry* and this place just didn’t cut it, and it was pretty expensive for what you did get. Maybe this is just a prairie boy in the West Coast or something.
Dinner FAIL!
Then it was off to some lounge over by the waterfront. Great times had by all, and we event created a new shot in honour of Donald’s Liver. Oren knocked off a couple of colors off his Rainbow of Booze tour he’s doing this week at DevTeach.
Lounge FTW!
Back to the hotel where we hung out in the lounge there before being told that the elevators were being shut down at 1 AM. WTF?! What hotel does that? Odd… I was still starving so me, Will, Dylan, and Adam headed over to McDonalds for some late night eats.
Nom Nom Double Quarter Pounder FTW!
As we got back to the hotel though, we noticed something: the lights were out in the lobby, except for the emergency lights. The elevators *were* working though, and a doorman let us up. But the power had been turned off to the *entire building* for maintenance! I got to my room…no lights…but there was a note and a flashlight on the desk explaining the whole thing.
So yes, I took a piss by flashlight in the Four Seasons. I can’t call this a fail because it really wasn’t *that* bad and its a good story, so I end this post with a
Four Seasons WTF?!
D
This week brings us two conference events in North America: DevTeach and VS Live. Did you choose VS Live for your conference selection this year? If you did, I’m about to share some information that may cause you to re-think your conference decision for next year.
Now a disclaimer: I’ve been attending DevTeach for a number of years, and speaking at the last two (as well as this one coming up), so yes I am biased. However, this will be a Michael Moore-esque post: I’ll give you facts, then add witty banter influenced by my opinion. I’m comparing the main three-day conference offering, not any of the pre or post conference offerings by either conference.
So let’s begin the June Conference Smackdown!
Sessions and Tracks
At first glance VS Live might seem like the winner here, sporting 9 tracks compared to DevTeach’s 8. The difference is that each of the VSLive tracks occur only *once* over the three days. That’s right: if you want ASP.NET or Silverlight topics, you better be there on Day 1. DevTeach on the other hand holds the same 8 tracks throughout the three days. This gives more freedom for attendees to see a broad range of presentations instead of forcing them to schedule topics on individual days.
DevTeach slaughters VSLive in number of sessions over the three days: 119 to 43.
Winner: DevTeach
Speakers
Now I’m not talking about quality of speakers here. Both conferences rank high on who they have presenting, without question. However there’s a huge discrepancy in the number of speakers, which also translates into the number of opportunities attendees have to converse with and ask questions of the experts.
VSLive has 27 speakers while DevTeach has a whopping 58! While its true that some speakers are only going to be available on the day they’re speaking (Michael Stiefel for example is actually speaking at both conferences: VSLive Mon/Tue and DevTeach Wed/Thurs), DevTeach still offers more experts in more track areas over its three days.
Winner: DevTeach
Conference Cost
I’m going to be comparing straight dollars here. I have no idea if VSLive offers any incentives, but DevTeach provides free admission if you’re a user group leader in Canada and also offers a ‘Buy 2 registrations, get 1 free’ deal for anyone. But regardless of that, let’s compare costs to attend.
VSLive charges $1495 USD for its three day conference, with an early bird price of $1295 up until May 22. Their hotel deal with the Venetian is $119 USD a night.
DevTeach charges $1037 USD for its three day conference, with a tiered early bird registration scheme that offers $787.67 USD before March 31st, $871 USD to March 31st, and $954 USD to April 30th. Conference hotel is $225 CDN a night.
So if you paid for three nights and the earliest early-bird pricing, here’s the breakdown:
VSLive - $1652 USD
DevTeach - $1463 USD (Actually less…I just used the Canadian rate for the hotel)
DevTeach, with more speakers and more sessions, is just under $200 cheaper!
Winner – DevTeach
Now, there are a few things that can factor into your decision. DevTeach is in Vancouver Canada, and with the new border requirements ensuring that you have proper identification for crossing back into the US (if that’s your home country) is a requirement. Also airfare may be more or less expensive depending where you live. You won’t be able to fly LA to Vancouver for as cheap as the SouthWest run from LA to Vegas for instance. And of course there’s the allure of Vegas itself which many cities would have trouble competing against.
But a conference is really only as good as the content presented, the opportunities for attendees, and the knowledge transfer that happens. DevTeach wins on all fronts:
- Number of tracks and sessions offered
- Number of speakers
- Raw cost to attend the conference
Next year DevTeach 2010 will happen in June at Toronto Canada. If you went to VSLive this year, I hope you have a good time. But if you’re planning on hitting one conference in the Spring of 2010 make sure to put DevTeach on your short list and compare the value that it provides to the competitors.
D
We had a great time last night hosting our first ever Geek Dinner at the King’s Head Pub! Phil Mok from Protegra presented on his recent work with the Microsoft MVC framework and we all enjoyed some good food and drinks.
Thanks to all that came out, and thanks to Wrox and Phil Haack for hooking us up with some MVC books to give away!
