Post QCon 2009 London – does Microsoft smell?

Last week I spoke at QCon London on Entity Framework. QCon 2009 was a very good event but I personally felt last years was a little more fun, a little more controversial, a little more edgy. However it was still a great event – except for one thing.

QCon (and I’m pointing at my fellow speakers here) has an odd way of ignoring the existence of Microsoft when it comes to doing cool stuff. An attendee to QCon might easily leave thinking Microsoft had nothing to offer at all for web developers, cloud developers, mobile developers, ria developers etc. Which is plainly wrong. I’m not trying to say speakers need to plug the Microsoft offerings – but when they real off lists of “key players in this space”, a little mention of Microsoft at the end wouldn’t hurt – would it? We do have good stuff. We do create stuff. We do innovate. Check out http://live.visitmix.com if you doubt me.

In contrast, I did hear a few cheap digs about Microsoft. Oh well – they say all publicity is good publicity.

I feel better now. And for the record – in my session on our new ORM, I listed 7 that were not from Microsoft :-)

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Thursday, March 19, 2009 5:06 PM

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# re: Post QCon 2009 London – does Microsoft smell?

The sad thing is that a sizable section of the community still ignores or berates Microsoft (usually with that oh-so-clever-and-hilarious "M$" nickname) despite the fact that they haven't actually *tried* any of the dev or design offerings since VB6, ASP and FrontPage. It often annoys me, but I console myself by writing beautiful code in C# 3.0, and putting together amazing-looking UX with XAML, WPF and Silverlight 2.

Eventually these people will come around, because more and more often when they ask "wow, how did they do *that*?", the answer will be "Microsoft something".

Left by Mark Rendle at 3/20/2009 9:05 AM

# re: Post QCon 2009 London – does Microsoft smell?

Hi Eric,

I'll leave aside for a bit my InfoQ hat (disclaimer: I am an InfoQ co-founder and the company architect) and I'll tell you that while being an old Java chap, this year one of the most appreciated sessions for me was the Windows Azure. I've been sitting there for 2 hours and then chatted with Beat Schwegler for another 2 hours, so for me the Microsoft track had his own buzz.
I'd say that next time maybe you guys (and I'm referring here to the presenters in the .NET tracks and the track hosts) should probably try to 'advertise' a bit more this track.
We all know that for a long while there have been a perceived crevasse between MS products and 'the others', but I strongly believe that InfoQ and QCon have been doing a great job in trying to be objective and closing (not minding :-) ) the gap.

cheers,

./alex
--
Alexandru Popescu
InfoQ CTO / Co-founder
Senior Software Eng.

Left by Alex Popescu at 3/20/2009 11:40 AM

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# re: Post QCon 2009 London – does Microsoft smell?
The sad thing is that a sizable section of the community still ignores or berates Microsoft (usually with that oh-so-clever-and-hilarious "M$" nickname) despite the fact that they haven't actually *tried* any of the dev or design offerings since VB6, ASP and FrontPage. It often annoys me, but I console myself by writing beautiful code in C# 3.0, and putting together amazing-looking UX with XAML, WPF and Silverlight 2.

Eventually these people will come around, because more and more often when they ask "wow, how did they do *that*?", the answer will be "Microsoft something".

Left by Mark Rendle at 3/20/2009 9:05 AM
# re: Post QCon 2009 London – does Microsoft smell?
Hi Eric,

I'll leave aside for a bit my InfoQ hat (disclaimer: I am an InfoQ co-founder and the company architect) and I'll tell you that while being an old Java chap, this year one of the most appreciated sessions for me was the Windows Azure. I've been sitting there for 2 hours and then chatted with Beat Schwegler for another 2 hours, so for me the Microsoft track had his own buzz.
I'd say that next time maybe you guys (and I'm referring here to the presenters in the .NET tracks and the track hosts) should probably try to 'advertise' a bit more this track.
We all know that for a long while there have been a perceived crevasse between MS products and 'the others', but I strongly believe that InfoQ and QCon have been doing a great job in trying to be objective and closing (not minding :-) ) the gap.

cheers,

./alex
--
Alexandru Popescu
InfoQ CTO / Co-founder
Senior Software Eng.

Left by Alex Popescu at 3/20/2009 11:40 AM