As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, I was able to attend the Wintellect Devscovery conference in Atlanta. The three day event included presentations from Wintellect Speakers John Robbins, Jeff Prosise, Jeffrey Richter, Peter DeBetta, and Jason Clark. The content covered a broad range of topics including ASP.Net, Web Services, Custom HTTP Handlers, .Net Security, threading, ADO.Net, TSQL, and one the most informative session I've been in, a double length back to back feature on .Net Debugging by John Robbins.
John Robbins, author of "Debugging Applications for Microsoft .Net and Microsoft Windows" led us through a series of examples demonstrating the power of debugging tools and how they can be effectively used. This session alone is worth the price of admission! I highly recommend his book if you do anything with .Net code.
One of the other highlights was a "Think Ink: Programming on the Tablet PC" session which I unfortunately missed part of due to some "issues" at work. It was great to see the Tablet PC given some exposure at an event like this. John had some great developer information and enthusiasm about the potential of the platform. John mentioned the Infinotes ink control from Agilix which adds journal style note taking capabilities to your application. Very cool and they even have a free download of their current beta. Definitely worth checking out.
On the note of Tablet PC's, one of the more entertaining aspects of the conference was watching Jeffrey Richter make use of Ink on his new Tablet PC during power point presentations. Let's just say that Mr. Richter has taking slide markups to a whole new level!
All in all, a great event. I could not believe how many times I heard somebody in the audience say, "wow, that info alone pays for this conference". With it being a smaller conference, there was also amazing access to the speakers who made themselves completely available for any questions throughout the entire event. If there's a Devscovery near you, go check it out!