I can’t even believe that I am writing this down. I love to speak at conferences, but after traveling back and forth between Europe and the USA and working in the mean time for the past 8 weeks or so I am really getting tired. The best proof of this is a friendly reminder I got last Thursday that my slides for MEDC Europe were due by Friday. At that time I was missing the deck for one of the three talks I am giving at MEDC Europe. Since I had no time creating the presentation until the weekend this was another weekend with me typing at a keyboard and staring at a computer screen. Last weekend was wasted by flying back from Tech*Ed Orlando to Holland, immediately followed by teaching a Windows Embedded CE 6.0 class during the week, so there was literally no time to create that slide deck until the weekend. It is 11.15 PM on Sunday night and the deck was done a few hours ago. For the first time I have the feeling that I will be so glad when MEDC Europe is done. We are visiting Berlin one week from now for MEDC Europe, where I will give a whopping three presentations, one hands-on-lab and be part of a panel discussion as well around developing for Windows Mobile devices. However I am feeling tired and sort of done with conferences. Of course I’ll assure you that you don’t even notice that when you attend my sessions at MEDC Europe. It is just that there are too many conferences during the first half of each year and this year I have presented more sessions than ever. Actually, with that a dream became true for me. There is only one more step to take. It would be so cool to start a professional career, just teaching folks how to develop Windows Mobile applications and how to create Windows Embedded CE 6.0 solutions. I would love to have my own regular webcast show, let’s say each week, covering one cool topic per week around these technologies. With that and international conferences I am speaking at, that should give enough work to spent 40+ hours a week or so. Unfortunately I am not an ex president of the United States, making tens of thousands of dollars for one little presentation. I am just a software developer and Windows Embedded Evangelist who loves to teach. Since I like this so much I’ll try to keep up with new technology to be able to inform you about it. At the same time I am glad that the conference season for the first half of 2007 is about to end for me. After the summer break things look a little easier with only two conferences scheduled so far, one in Holland, one in the USA. However, towards the end of 2007 we are expecting the new version of Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2008. This new version of the most popular development environment brings some cool and exciting features for Smart Device Developers. We will finally be able to write unit tests for our projects, we have some great new performance tools and of course we will support LINQ, a subset of WCF and we will have a brand new version of the .NET Compact Framework, version 3.5. Hopefully we are able to schedule a number of MSDN Webcasts around Visual Studio 2008 later this year, just to keep me busy and to keep you better informed. I got an interesting question during the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 class I taught last week. Whenever I am talking about the .NET Compact Framework I am changing my story. Instead of they (meaning Microsoft) I am talking about we. I guess I feel so close to the .NET Compact Framework that it almost feels that I am part of the team creating and evangelizing it. I know, wishful thinking at this moment, but I would feel totally at home, being part of either the .NET Compact Framework team or the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 team, helping to evangelize these cool technologies. So even though I am a little tired right now, it will not stop me continuing to inform you about great Microsoft technologies for Embedded and Mobile developers. Also, I am looking forward to meet many, many developers at MEDC Europe who are experienced or brand new to Windows Embedded and / or Windows Mobile technologies. Hopefully we get the chance to meet 1-on-1, next week on June 25 and June 26 in Berlin, Germany.    

Maarten Struys