It is unbelievable but true. Next week we are hopefully getting together with a lot of developers for MEDC 2007, Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded Developer Conference. The slide decks are done, most of the demo’s are working so the only thing remaining is getting that last demo to work and for the rest practice, practice, practice to deliver the best presentation yet. I still have a few challenges to solve. For starters, my presentation about asynchronous programming techniques for the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 contains 5 demos and around 30 slides. With my habit of live coding on stage and talking for at least 2 or 3 minutes per slide and a presentation slot of only 75 minutes this is going to be a packed session. Perhaps I have to skip some of the content if I am running over time during rehearsals but hopefully that is not necessary. The other alternative is to limit the amount of live coding and making use of a couple of code snippets to speed up the demos. Both of these alternatives don’t sound attractive to me right now, maybe I will just speak fast. The topic itself is very cool. It covers a lot of multithreading stuff. Hopefully attendees will leave the room with a better understanding of multithreading and ways to create better performing applications, well, at least from a user perspective. I have four days left to rehearse and pack my bags, because Friday I will already leave for the USA to at least get used to the 9 hours of time difference. Timing is sort of bad though. Microsoft has just released Visual Studio Orcas Beta 1, and I really need to play a bit with this next version of Visual Studio as well to finalize my Tech Ed talk on remote performance tools for the .NET Compact Framework. Finally I also need to create a slide deck for an upcoming MSDN Webcast on the Device Emulator 2.0. All in all this is going to be a busy week. It really helps to have a long flight from Amsterdam to Los Angeles on Friday. At least for the time my laptop batteries last I can work a little more. All in all, my excitement is increasing, after all, MEDC is a very cool conference and glancing at the content, this might very well turn into the best MEDC ever. I hope many of you will make it to Las Vegas and that we have a chance to meet in person. Oh, I just looked up the schedule. My situation is actually not that bad. My MEDC presentation is on Wednesday May 2^nd at 3.45 PM, meaning there are a few more days for rehearsal once I am in Las Vegas. Instead of spending money at casinos I guess I will be locked in my hotel room, getting those final preparations done.