After an interesting two months or so, the first half of this year, and especially the first half of the conference season is history. Two weeks ago I wrote that I probably would feel happy when MEDC Europe was over, but right now it does not feel like that anymore. In fact, I feel almost sad that it will be a while until I have another chance to speak in public again. The last two months were busy, continuously meeting deadlines to deliver slide decks and sample code in time, but I would not have wanted to miss these months for any price. At the beginning of May, we started with MEDC in Las Vegas. Even though I only had one session there, MEDC Vegas was a blast! Las Vegas has always been great for me as a speaker. Not as a gambler though, this city ripped me off $5 within 30 seconds. This year I gave my best attended session ever with over 150 people in the room to listen to a talk about .NET Compact Framework Asynchronous Programming Techniques. During the session I sort of promised this already, but hopefully next year I will be back with a similar session, but also with a level 400 session with the following working title: “Advanced asynchronous programming techniques”, where we forget about the “Hello World” sort of introduction, but really dig deep into asynchronous programming. After MEDC in Las Vegas, my next stop was Tech*Ed in Orlando. I had the privilege of talking about our Diagnostic Tools that ship with the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2 and the brand new tools that will become available with the release of Visual Studio 2008. Just as a side note. I got this question also at a recent Windows Embedded CE 6.0 training which I taught. Whenever I am speaking about “our” products I guess I am simply carried away. I so much feel part of both the Windows Mobile, the Visual Studio for Devices and the Windows CE team that I simply identify myself with them. Of course they created all these great tools and I am just a simple user and spectator on the side lines, at least for the time being. Unfortunately, not too many attendees found our Mobile Track at Tech*Ed, hopefully next year we don’t have seats enough in the room, meaning we become very popular at Tech*Ed as Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile developers.

Last stop during the first half of this year for me was MEDC Europe, where I caught up with the folks who travelled around the world twice for the world-wide MEDC tour. During MEDC Europe I had five sessions, including one instructor led lab and one panel discussion. The breakout sessions were a lot of fun. I started off with a talk around Device Emulator 2.0 and 3.0. From the feedback I got, interestingly enough, many folks were not aware of all the features we ship with Device Emulator 2.0. The session on Building Windows Mobile Applications that Seamlessly Run on Any Device was really packed. I had people standing in the room for 75 minutes. Thank goodness all demo’s worked out great and, after talking to a number of attendees I think that we really made a point with this session. Thanks a lot Jim, for allowing me to use your original material from MEDC Las Vegas. I guess, next year we should prepare another session around this theme, probably more advanced and probably combining a lot of the technologies introduced in this session. Hey, it would be great to turn this into a full day pre or post conference session. As a matter of facts, I have started writing an article around this theme that will do exactly that. Right now, I am thinking about creating a sample application and accompanying documentation. The application should run on all currently supported Windows Mobile Devices with only one single code base, it should be adaptive to additional hardware and it should utilize the device and the screen resolution / orientation of the target device as much as possible. I am not yet sure where this article will be published. It might be something to get published on MSDN, but if nowhere else, I will surely publish it on DotNETForDevices. My last breakout session was about Windows Live Services on Windows Mobile Devices. Looking at the number of attendees, and also looking at the great questions these folks asked, and their interest in making use of Windows Live on Devices, it looks like we have something serious in our hands here. My talk was inspired on the talk that Neil Roodyn gave at MEDC in Las Vegas, but also on the Webcast series my good friend Jim Wilson and I did in January of this year. Honestly, I feel we have something at our fingertips, talking about Windows Live Services on Windows Mobile Devices. I am even wondering if I shouldn’t fly back to Redmond as soon as possible to talk to the Windows Live team about the huge potential we have in hands here. I simply hope they realize this as well; otherwise I guess another Trans-Atlantic flight is needed before my summer vacation in August. MEDC Europe was a great conference. The scale of the conference is not as large as MEDC USA, but it was very, very cool to meet a lot of attendees and have the chance to talk one on one. Particularly cool was the fact that a number of people wanted to meet me to learn more about the voice behind a number of MSDN Webcasts.

So even thought the first half of this year is history now, I have some warm feelings and great memories about the conferences I just described. Right now things are sort of slowing down, although I have tons of work at my company, PTS Software, meeting lots of our great professionals in the upcoming weeks. Also, I have one more webcast scheduled before my summer vacation. And of course I already should start working on preparations for conferences during the fall of 2007. As it looks right now I will at least be speaking at the Dutch Software Developer Conference in September. For sure I will be back in Las Vegas in November for Mobile Connections. Unfortunately Tech*Ed Europe is held at the same time. Since I already agreed to give four sessions at Mobile Connections right now I am hoping that Tech*Ed Europe will be moved one week (earlier or later) since I would love to be part of that conference as well. Otherwise, the only alternative would be to book me for a Tech*Ed Europe session on November 9, in the afternoon, since Mobile Connections only runs until November 8^th. I guess I need to stop now, since it feels that I am mistakenly thinking I am a rock star (well, George called me that once). Unfortunately George moved on, but I am sure we will keep MSDN Webcast alive and kicking. Let me just finish with wishing Georgeo all the best in his new job.

Just on a personal note George, I feel priviliged and happy that I met you in person during PDC 2005 when we did a live Webcast at PDC on Windows Mobile 5.0 Managed API's. I wish you the best of luck in your new job and hopefully we will meet again some day.