Dave Donaldson
Critical thinking in software development
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MSDN Events Fall 2004: Disappointing
Wednesday, October 27 2004
I attended the Fall 2004 MSDN Event series today in Columbus. I must say that I'm wholly disappointed and really expected much more in the session. This post is going to explain my reasoning.
First off, I consider myself an intermediate to advanced .NET developer. Therefore, below is what I expected for each talk and what was actually talked about:
OOP in VB.NET
Expectation: A high-level beginner's presentation about some OO concepts with code to show how you to do it in VB.NET.
Actual Talk: I was basically dead on. It didn't bother me to sit through the talk, but I was kind of hoping to maybe extract a nugget or two that I could use somewhere. Didn't happen. Although, I will give props to the presenter for trying to explain OO refactoring in 15 minutes with a couple demos.
MapPoint Web Services
Expectation: An overview of MapPoint and how to take advantage of some of the web services it provides. I also expected a nice demo.
Actual Talk: Again, I was right on. The only problem is that most of the audience wasn't really into the topic, so the speaker glazed over it very quickly (in about 15 minutes). What he did show looked cool, so I'll probably end up playing with it.
Optimizing ASP.NET 1.1 Application
Expectation: A somewhat advanced discussion about optimization techniques for ASP.NET. I figured I would see some caching techniques, stuff to speed up data access calls, tricks with ViewState, and custom performance counters.
Actual Talk: This was the most disappointing part of the session; very bland and not very informative. There were only 2 things talked about: the ACT tool and creating custom performance counters. Having used ACT since it was codenamed Homer a few years ago, this wasn't too useful for me, although by show of hands most people in the audience hadn't used it. The performance counter stuff was nice as I learned a couple tidbits in creating custom perf counters. However, ACT dominated the talk. ACT is not a tool to optimize ASP.NET apps. It's used to begin identifying possible places in your application where performance might suffer, but that's it. And it's certainly not a replacement for something like LoadRunner. The word caching wasn't even mentioned during this talk. How do you present anything on optimizing ASP.NET apps without a discussion of caching? I consider optimizing the performance of a web application to be a somewhat advanced topic, but this wasn't it. Heck, not a single optimization technique was shown.
ASP.NET 2.0 Membership and Personalization
Expectation: An overview of the new stuff and how/where it helps developers. I also figured to see a cool demo.
Actual Talk: To be honest, I had to leave toward the end of this talk. It was the last talk of the session and I had to go so my wife could get to work (and give me the kids). But what I did see was pretty decent. I haven't played much with the membership and personalization stuff in ASP.NET 2.0 yet, so most of the talk was fairly informative. If a demo was shown, I didn't get to see it.
How to Fix It
OK, so instead of me just complaining, I would like to offer some suggestions for improving these sessions:
- Give each talk in the session a level number. 100 for beginner, 200 for intermediate, 300 for advanced. That way, I know to not show up to the OO in VB.NET talk if I don't want to.
- Give each talk a “depth perception“. Is it an overview, an in-depth talk, or a mix (brief overview followed by in-depth)? I prefer in-depth stuff, so I'd like to know this going in.
- Put the order of the talks from beginner to advanced. I felt it was actually this way today, but wanted to point that out. This way I know I could skip the 2 beginner talks at the start of the session and attend the 2 advanced talks after that.
So all that being said, even though the half-day session was completely free (along with a nice DVD, t-shirt, and complimentary beverage/popcorn), I expected quite a bit more. My take on these events is two-fold: to get some insight into existing technology and to get jazzed about the upcoming versions. I felt this kind of fell flat in both respects.
Now that Rory is a DCC (Developer Community Champion), maybe he'll take this feedback and pass it on.
12 comment(s) so far
Awesome post. Very detailed and informative.
Hey, Dave -
Good feedback.
The team has been talking a lot lately about content, and this is good stuff to hear.
Thanks :)
Dave,
I attended this here in Hampton Roads. The people doing the presenting are some very talented people... maybe too much structure is forced upon these guys? it seems like the talks are so structured that they could be given by anyone with enough development background to answer basic questions about the topics. Geoff Snowman gave the talk I went to, I'm sure he could have done much more with the topics than was on his slides...
Brendan: I have do doubt the presenters know what they are doing, and I kind of felt the same way about our presenter, so I agree with you. But I think the format needs changed somehow or targeted at certain levels, not just everyone. I mean, MSDN could probably do an entire free day on the "OO in VB.NET" talk just for VB6 (or beginners-intermediate) developers.
Microsoft certainly has the content definitions:
http://blogs.msdn.com/gsnowman/articles/122258.aspx
As the owner and co-manager of the MSDN events team (with Paul Murphy, Rory's boss) I would also like to thank you for the great feedback and more importantly the suggestions. I have heard similar comments in the past and agree that giving each session a level could be a benefit to attendees.
The problem that my events marketing team has, is that if I survey 1000 developers and ask them their definition in terms of 100, 200, 300, or 400 level of their skill sets, I would get 1000 incredibly varied answers. Some talented developers under-estimate their skill level while others wildly overestimate their skills. You may ask why this is a problem? The reason is that my team lives and dies on event attendance. Because we do not charge money for the event, and we try as hard as possible to not make it a sales seminar but instead dive as technically as possible, it is critical that we keep lots of people coming to the sessions.
If I (and my team) think something is a level 100 topic, and yet developers who think their skills are better than they really are (and there are a lot of them) look at the subject and decide "I'm a level 300 developer, therefore I will be wasting my time going to a 100 level session." will not show up and I will lose major attendance. Likewise if we think it is a 300 - 400 level session, some people who the session will be great for, will skip it thinking it is over their head.
History has proven that developer’s assessments of their skills are different than our assessment by almost 50%. If this kills our attendance then I can't afford to publish the level in the event demand generation.
The good news is that we are getting much better at delivering these events. The average attendance of our seminars has risen from a monthly average of around 40 to a current average of over 100. Also the customer ratings for our topics have risen significantly in the last 6 months as our content has greatly improved and so has our presenter staff.
I appreciate your comments and the comments of other developers that attend MSDN events. I am kicking around an idea to start a virtual developer steering committee for our MSDN events. We could use a blog to bring in developers who want to help MSDN events become the premiere dev training. They could help us define content, what is on the DVD, webcasts, etc... It would be a great opportunity for real developers to tell us what they need in the way of training and support.
What does everyone think? Would volunteers be interested in helping us create an even better MSDN event? Let me know what you think by posting on this blog or at my blog located at http://weblogs.asp.net/MikeoMSDN/. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks,
Michael O’Neill
Microsoft MSDN Events Manager
Mike - I would definitely volunteer to help create better MSDN events. Feel free to contact me anytime about anything.
Hi
please send me only one copy of your demo dvd fall 2004 , if available to my mail address:
ATIF M ALI
AMWAJ MEDIA CO
P.O.BOX 2898
KHARTOUM 11111
SUDAN
MANY THANKS
Yes! Nice blog for all.
Yes! Nice blog for all.
I would also like to thank you for the great feedback and more importantly the suggestions.
Very good feedback on the events. Good suggestions, we'll also incorporate them in our events.