Together with 2 other guys from Communited i've visited the DevDays in Amsterdam. Every year it's a great party with a whole bunch of Microsofters together in one big building!
This year i attented 4 sessions and saw the keynote presented by our .NET guru Scott. The keynote was about Silverlight, Silverlight and Silverlight. Scott did some demowork showing of the capabilities of this new and exciting product from Microsoft.
The other sessions i attended where:
Session 1: Reflection and custom attributes by Francesco Balena
- This session was all about using reflection and in where it can be used! Reflection isn't widly used in software but Francesco showed in what situations it can be very handy.
Session 2: Applied LINQ by Alex Thissen
- Alex showed us how to use LINQ in common day scenario's. I already used some (beta) LINQ but his session refreshed my knowledge a little more and showed me some nice examples on how to apply LINQ.
Session 3: Practical Team Foundation Server by Marcel de Vries
- At Communited whe are using TFS for about a year now i and whas curious if we missed something! Well this session was a nice confirmation that we are in the right direction on using TFS in our company. We implemented a custom work-item that suits our company needs on information we need to complete work, lately we created some custom Analysis Server reports with Reporting Service to help our planning get a better overview on outstanding work. The most recent thing we did was integrating Microsoft Project in our TFS project. The hours we write on workitems are now easy accesible in MSProject and can be planned by our planner. Next thing is to integrate Sharepoint 2007 and CRM.
Session 4: REMIX: SEO by Pete LePage
- As the last DevDays session round wasn't very interesting for myself i attended a ReMIX session by Pete LePage on Search Engine Optimisation. At Communited we are always searching for beter ways to get our site's indexed beter and ranked higher. Lately we build some tools to examen our sites to see if the standards are followed and the SEO rules apply to them. This session by Pete was also a confirmation that we are doing the right things.
And last but not least i saw my friends again, Dennis, Patrick and don't forget our own dutch guru Wim Pool! Dennis joined Class-A a while ago and Patrick went to Concepts2Go. Now if only Patrick can convince his new employer that TFS isn't that expensive and is a great tool to manage work !:-)