Overall, an excellent conference.  I’m hoping the reputation carries over to next year, and it will be even larger.  Some of the sessions were rather basic if you are already familiar with the subject matter, but that was kind of the point of the conference.  You were supposed to go to things you’re not familiar with.  It’s an interesting concept.  I’m not sure I’m personally the right kind of person for that.  My brain tends to fill up, and things get flushed from the cache, so I might avoid taking a session about Ruby, or AJAX while I’m working on a WinForm application. 

It would be very cool if the sessions could all the sessions could be filmed next year and posted, so that we can go back and watch the sessions that conflicted the first time around.  Of course, that means having someone in each session to do the filming.  I think it could be pulled off, though, as long as the speakers can restrict their movements to a pre-defined "stage" area, so we don’t need a live camera operator.  Set a mini-dv up on a tripod, aim it at the speaker, and change the tape between sessions.  I think it would work.  Perhaps that could be part of the responsibilities of the session Proctor.  Speaking of which, I’ll say it just this once more and then let it rest until next year…

"Proctor?! Damn near killed ‘er"

I could download them to my new Zune (Thanks, Sogeti) as long as Microsoft keeps up with the updates on this one.  The hardware seems solid, and performs very well.  My main source of concern on this product is Microsoft itself.  They’ve gone and created a device that doesn’t follow their own standards.  The Zune is not a "Plays for Sure" device, and won’t talk to Windows Media Player… or anything else for that matter except for the "Zune Player", which appears to be a custom, modified, skinned WMP.  Supposedly this is to support Microsoft’s new equally-custom DRM scheme in which every file you send to the device gets DRM injected into it whether you like it or not.  Then, when you beam the tracks to your friends, they self-destruct after three days.  I can see this for commercial tracks that I download through the Zune store, but get serious here folks.  Are you trying to tell me that I can’t beam a co-worker the latest DotNetRocks without it disappearing in three days???  That’s retarded.  I’m not trying to be offensive here with the use of "retarded".  I’m not just saying it’s stupid.  I’m saying there’s something severely wrong with the thought processes that spawned such a fundamentally flawed idea.  Still, to me it doesn’t matter much, since I can load up whatever I personally want from my own computer and have it last forever, and that’s how I intend to use the thing.

I suppose my only regret about the conference is that I never hit the water park.  The first night it was just too late once I got there.  The second night had an organized social gathering… and then it was too late.  The final day of course I had to get out of the hotel.  Oh well, I don’t want to go frightening the children anyway.  6’2" overweight pasty programmers can scar children for life.