Preparing for a whole day post conference session at the Mobile Connections conference in Las Vegas turns out to be a lot of work. I know pretty much what I want to tell during the session about creating Windows Mobile Line-of-Business applications. The challenge will be to show lots of code and have smooth running demonstrations. My original goal was to create a full blown application from scratch, do a lot of live coding and explain everything while coding. Even though my target system is a small device, a Pocket PC, it is possible to create extremely powerful and large applications for such devices. Therefore it will be impossible to write all code for the application live for an audience. So now I am selecting the most interesting parts and at least write code for those parts live on stage. It still seems that there is a lot of code to be shown, and with that to be entered. Of course nobody is really interested in seeing me typing and making typo’s. Last week I already wrote about using code snippets in order to limit the amount of typing. This still seems the way to go. However, with twelve different demonstrations during the day I need a consistent system to pick the right snippet at the right time. I guess the only way to get that right is practicing, practicing and probably more practicing. There are still 10 days to practice and I am starting to feel like an athlete or so. Before an important race or an important match, quite often athletes or sports teams visit a special training camp. It feels like I am doing exactly the same thing this week. Completely separated from friends and family I am living for a week in a hotel in Bellevue, Washington. One of the main goals is to just practice the post conference session until it is right. In between I will need to practice a few times for the other two presentations I am giving at Mobile Connections as well. When you take a look at a map of the Pacific Northwest you will see where problems will start though. I am way to close to Redmond and with that to Microsoft. And of course I am trying to squeeze in as much meetings as possible with people at Microsoft as well. So preparations for Mobile Connections will probably largely take place during the night. However, there is absolutely no reason to complain. Being in this area inspires me tremendously. Having the chance to talk to the people that create Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows Live and lots of other cool products gets me excited. In other words, this is going to be a fantastic week. Even though it is colder and wetter here in the Seattle area, especially when I compare it to sunny and hot Phoenix.