TulsaTechFest 2006 Rocked – And there was an Irish Pub!

The TulsaTechFest was an amazing event. Over 62 presenters, 119 hours of content, 20 simultaneous session to choose from, 1 day! Giovanni was there taking pictures; Carl Franklin and crew were there to record a DotNetRocks! episode (Ok, Richard Campbell was there with bells on… it’s not fair that he gets rolled in to “and crew” – but I like saying crew :); Shaun Walker was on hand (as well as a host of other members from the DNN core team) to discuss DotNetNuke, Ron Jacobs was there to discuss .NET Architectures, the food was excellent (Burgers and Fries, Subway, Pizza – all for free!). The guys from the Tulsa Developers group did an outstanding job raising sponsor support, organizing speakers, and keeping everything moving along smoothly. It was like Tulsa’s personal TechEd (only free, and you could actually find some of the amazing speakers and have 1:1 conversations with them… this was too cool!)

I liked Erik’s comment:

“This event was free but let me tell you that it sure didn’t seem like it. The content, speakers, and setup was as professional as any conference/training I’ve been to. The OSU-Tulsa classrooms, the main auditorium, free wi-fi, and lunch wa all great and all of the volunteers and sponsors were wonderful. All-in-all it was a great event and I plan on attending more like this in the future.” http://blog.eriklane.com/archive/2006/10/16/4013.aspx

I spoke at two sessions, Developing Next Generation Windows Applications (an Overview of .NET 3.0) and Creating Amazing Web Applications in an Insanely Short Amount of Time (an introduction to Atlas – now called Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX). Both sessions went well; I always enjoying talking to developer about practical ways to improve on the user experience. I heard Ron Jacobs compare UX to the “last mile” of design. Much in the same way that broad band connectivity has compares dial up to the expensive “last mile” – It’s relatively easy to connect cities with fiber optic and high speed pipes, but the critical piece has always been that last mile to the users. In application design the “last mile” is the space between the screen and the application user. Anyways, I thought that was a good comparison.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, in that case here is a billion word description of the weekend.

Here are a couple of other highlights:

• Arnie’s Bar – one of the best Irish Pubs that I have ever been to. They made Friday night and Saturday night a lot of fun!
• Cair de na Gael – the Irish band that played at the pub. They were excellent. Seriously, you should go buy their CD right now. 🙂
• Giovanni’s Comments
• Erik Lane’s Blog Comments
• Ed and Ed’s Comments
• Joe from the Atlas team
• Chris’ Comments
• James “Mr. DotNet”
• Luc “VB Guru”

Like a lot of people, I’m looking forward to next year!