Kristian Kristensen’s Blog

I’ve just exited the General Session today with Eric Rudder and Steven Sinofsky. It was great! They announced Windows Workflow Foundation, the Expression suite (Acryllic, Sparkle, and ??) which wil help Designers and Developers to work together. Rudder announced that all PDC Attenddes will get a free copy of SQL Server 2005 when it gets released.

Steven Sinofsky presented some of the new features in Office 12, especially with Sharepoint Services and the integration between it and Office applications. A very cool new thing is that InfoPath has been expanded and is now used as the basis for all form input in Office System. It even includes a web based renderer, so you can fill out your forms in a browser (any browser actually, Firefox works aswell). They also announced that all PDC Attendees will get an invite to the Office 12 Beta 1 program, which should be relased in a couple of months.

This conference is truly a Swag Conference! You get all sorts of stuff. My suitcase is definitely gonna be packed when I fly home! Good thing I didn’t fill it up with stuff from back home.

Now I’m at COM200, about communitcation platform futures and presents.

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It’s been pretty hectic the last couple of days, so I haven’t had the time to do a write up of what has happenedl. Since I’m now sitting in the PDC shutlle bus on my way for the second day of the conference, I might aswell write.

Yesterday I got up and went to Starbucks for a coffee and a bagel, took the shuttle to the conference at 7.00PM. Traffic is pretty horrible here, so I took a while to get there. Got some nice seats for the keynote, right in the middle not so far fro mthe state. The keynote was long – very long, it started at 8.40PM and lasted until noon. The keynote sarted with Bill Gates doing a usual speech about the amazing opportunities in software industry and how long we’ve come since Microsoft started in the mid 70ties. In his segment there was also a pretty cool video of him and the guy from Napoleon Dynamite in which Bill Gates finds himseslf bvack in collge. AFter Gates, a VP from the Information Worker division came and presented Office 12. It looks very impressive! New UI and whatnot. There should be shome screenshots of it on the INternet by no.w. This was folllwed by a presentation by Jim Allchin about Windows Visat. They talked about the 4 pillars in Vista and demoed an app using RSS and Avalon. This app ran on a normal PC, a Tablet PC, and a mobile device – the image JasJar. AFter this he announced that for limited supply the attendees could buy this device – the imate JasJar – for $149!!! You sjould see the geeks reach for their laptops and try to get online, to order one on CommNet the conference administration webpage – I did too of course. However, there wasn’t WiFi in the room. Quite quickly people began to wander off, and outside everybody was sitting with their laptops trying to order a device. Kim and I sat for a while, but couldn’t resist, so we wandered off aswell. The link on CommNet didn’t work, however! So that sucked. We went back and forth between the hall and outside, trying to order, but no go. At last we found a stationary PC, logged on to commnet, and alas there was the working link! So I ordered one.. and got one! Set the pick-up date for Wednesday at 11 – 11.30PM.
In the end Anders Hejlsberg came on stage and introduced the new stuff in C# 3.0. Don Box and Chris Anderson came along and developed some Avalon and Indigo App, They were joined by Scott Guthriee who presented the new Atlas framework – AJAX on ASP.NET.

Went to get lunch, which was an okay meal. And after that I explored the Expo area, which meant that I got a butt-load of swag! I’ve must have around 10-15 tshirts, caps, and stuff. Great! However not so great when you have to carry it all. Throughout the day I managed to pick-up so much that I was totally busted from carrying it. Eventhough I bring a back-pack to the conference, it quickly filled up.

After the swag tour, I went to see the ending of a Lunch session called “Putting a Conference in a Pocket”. Went to see “How to write a Dynamic Language compiler for the CLR in an hour”. That was okay, eventhough they more or less assummed that you didn’t now much about compiler construction. After that I went to “.NET Compact Framework 2.0: Optimizing for Performance”, that wasn’t very good. It was mainly about working sets, and performance counters. So I bailed and uploaded some pictures instead. My last session was an Avalon session, presented by the program manager of Avalon. He tooks us around the different pieces of Avalon, by building an app. It was okay, although it was mainly focuesd on writing XMl/XAML.
Between some sessions I picked up The Goods™, more on that later.

Jumped on the Shuttle Bus for the hotel, and had an hour before Microsoft Denmark had arranged a Danish Attendee dinner at Hard Rock Cafe in Beverly Center. Was there for an hour or 2, and after that I took a cap to the PDC Influencers Party at White Lotus. More on that later too

Btw. in Jim Allchins keynote he said a funny thing. He said that “the biggest ask MS had for developers was…”. The emphasis on “ask”. Larry Osterman wrote about this strange word and usage some while ago. Just find it funny to actually hear it, and hear it from a guy so far up the food chain.

Well, I’m more or less off to Wednesdays General Session with Eric Rudder and Steven Sinofsky.

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I’m sitting in the main hall now waiting for the keynote with Bill Gates and Jim Allchin to begin. The hall is huge! I left the hotel at 7AM with Kim, and it took approximately 30 minutes to get here. The breakfast is pretty neat, Bagels, Donuts, Croissants, and candy. All accompanied by soft drinks, coffee and water. Great!
The Channel9 dude is walking around getting people pumped up. And everywhere you look there's mobile devices, laptops, cameras, whatever. This truly is the place to be for a geek – at least a Micrsoft one of the kind.

Written at 8.20PM.

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The bus arrived too late at the conference center, so I was pretty sure that I’d miss the DotNetRocks Quiz. However, due to the power outages earlier today, the quiz had been rescheduled to start at 6.30PM. Woohoo!
Carl and Richard goofed around a bit and picked 3 contestatns from the audience to play the 64 bit question. There were 5 prize packs per contestatnt, and the wildest prizes were an iRiver MP3 Ipod killer, and an iMate JAM. I wasn’t picked as a contestant eventhough Richard stood right next to me. He mumbled something about not being able to select Microsoft affiliated guys. He must have got the idea that I was with Microsoft since I was wearing my Microsoft Student Partner polo shirt.
All was not lost however, because after the show, a guy from Microsoft threw 100 PDC t-shirts out for grabs to the audience. I managed to do a high jump, and grabbed the last one. Great My first PDC ’05 swag!

Oh, and I’ve updated the picture gallery. Go check it out.

There are some Bird of a Feather sessions right now, maybe I’ll go check it out, maybe I’ll just go back to the hotel and get a good nights sleep before tomorrow. Tomorrow is the big day, the PDC is starting for real! And is being kicked off with a keynote by Bill Gates and Jim Allchin. It’s gonna be great! Plus I get The Goods™ tomorrow. And the guys from mobileplanet said something about a secret mobile thingy that’s supposed to be revealed at the keynote; can’t wait for that either.

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I’m currently sitting in the PDC Shuttle bus on my way for the conference center for the live recording of DotNetRocks titled “The 64bit Question”. Traffic is horrible! I just hope I make it in time for the start at 6PM.

The power outages I wrote about in my last post proved to be a bit more severe than I first thought. Apparently some electrical dude cut of the wrong cable doing some maintenance, which meant that large areas of LA was out of power for at least 1,5 hours. Areas affected included Downtown, Hollywood, and the Valley. I guess I was pretty lucky to have returned to my hotel from Downtown before the outages started!
I don’t know the exact details since I only saw some of it on TV, and I don’t have Internet at my hotel room.

Earlier today – after my Downtown trip – I went of with Kim for some light shopping; I ended up buying a pair of shoes and some socks in a very big shoe store called a Shoe Warehouse.

Written at 5.40PM local time.

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Today I started out with the hotels breakfast buffet, which was short of nothing! After that I hopped on the Metro and headed for Union Station. It’s the Train Station of Los Angeles, and is built like an old spanish building. Took the red line back to Civic Center, and walked through Downtown LA and the financial district towards the Convention Center. I think I saw the bank that is used in the movie Heat with Robert de Niro and Al Pacino. When I get back I’ll see the movie again, and hopefully find out if I was right.
My tour ended at the Convention Center where I took the PDC Shuttle Bus back to the hotel. I took a picture of a Windows Vista™ branded bus; it’ll be in the gallery.

Right now I’m watching some television, and relaxing a bit. A minute ago the power in the hotel disappeared. Everything just shot down. Luckily they have some kind of backup system, because the power got back on within 10-15 seconds.
Thinking about taking the Metro up to Universal City, which is an area with shops and stuff. Tonight there will be a live recording of DotNetRocks at the conference (it’s between 6 and 7PM). The show is called “The 64bit Question”, and is a quiz show of some sort. After that there’s Birds of a Feather.

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I’m back at the hotel now.
Kim Harding Christensen from EOS and I met up in the morning and took the PDC shuttle from the hotel to the conference center. Here we got registered and picked up the attendee bag.
The PDC Shuttle Service is a set of busses that drives continously between the official PDC hotels and the conference. You just hop on the right bus and it drives you in the desired direction. Pretty neat! Plus you get the benefit of being picked up or dropped off right on curbside. Included in our welcome package was also a LA Metro pass, so you can use the Metro for free all week.

The convention center is huge! It took some pictures from it both outside and inside. Even got some of the big banner on the cylindar thingy. Great
Inside you get registrered, and in a hall downstairs the Material Distribution Center is placed. This is where you pick up The Goods ™, the bag, and complimentary T-Shirt. On the 1st floor the Big Room© is located. This is (as the name suggests) a big ass room, with Hands-On Labs, Bean Bag louunges, Track areas, Expo Hall, Merchandise Store, and Lunch. I took a quick look at some Vista PCs, and bought a Tumbler (a thermo cup) with the PDC ’05 logo engraved.
Went to the conventions centers Starbucks, bought a cup of coffee, and got online with the WiFi network that covers the entire convention area. That way I’ll be ready on Tuesday when the main conference starts. Here I also met Beat Schwegler, who is with Microsoft EMEA HQ, and who’s a friend of Kim Harding.

After conference registration Kim and I returned to the hotel to drop off the Attendee bag. This year its a sholder bag with room for a laptop (John Moody writes about it). It was full of advertisements, guides, and maps, aswell as a little styrofoam Channel9 guy. The Goods ™ won’t be handed out till after the keynote on Tuesday, so checking that out will have to wait.
At the hotel our plan was to grab some lunch, and take it from there. Fortunately Henrik WH (the Danish Academic Developer Evangelist) had SMS’ed me, saying that he and some of the other danish attendees were assembled at Hooters across Graumans Chinese Theatre. So off we went. The football season started a couple of days ago so Hooters was filled with NFL fans roaring for their team. The guys were seated on the 2nd floor, were it was filled with Steelers fans. Man, they made a noise!!! I got a chicken sandwich thingy, but it wasn’t very good, too fat and mushy for me. Some of the guys went off to Universal City to catch a movie, and I went back to my room.

I’m not at 100%, been a bit sick before I took off, and the flight didn’t make my throat any less soare. So I’m chillin’ with some Mountain Dew (a soda), Halls throat drops, and NFL Sunday. I have 3 or 4 TV channels showing NFL; right now I’m watching Dallas vs. San Diego with a tie score. I’m debating with myself whether or not I should go catch the Metro and go see something…

Tonight there will be a Danish attendee dinner at an Italien restaurant nearby. That’ll be fun.

Written at 2.30PM local time.

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In a previous post I wrote about the trip to LA, and promised to post-post some more stuff when I located my notes. Well that time is now.

The reason we were late out of Amsterdam was that someone had “forgot” that we needed to go through a security check before boarding, and since they hadn’t sealed of the waiting hall 3 – 400 was assembled there and had to get out before the security check could start. Brilliant! That took a while. In Schiphol they were pretty uptight about laptops in your bag so you had to remove it and run it through the scanner seperately. Guess how many geeks on the EMEA @ PDC flight brought laptops? All of them off course! So it took like forever to get through.
On top of that I got the full treatment by the security officers. He frisked me, and checked my shoes. After that they went through my bag meticously, before I could board. I feel kind of bad for the security guy though, because the air port was pretty hot, which meant that I probably didn’t smell like roses

On the EMEA @ PDC plane from Amsterdam to LA there was all kinds of geeks. Apparently some of them had a pretty hard time understanding that a near 12 hour flight does not go well with drinking tons of alcohol. So some of the passengers got pretty drunk and acted idiotically. It was almost like being in a tour bus filled with Norwegian dudes… (if you’re Danish you’ll know what that means!).
Anyway, the flight was pretty eventless. The food was okay, and there was enough supplies (Coke), so it was cool. The weather was good over Greenland, so I got some pictures of that. The plane was not as modern as the ones I flew with in March for our study trip, so there wasn’t a monitor per person, instead they showed movies on screens distributed in the ceiling in the plane. They showed 3 movies: Meet the Fockers, some movie with Goldie Hawn, and Wimbledon. I saw the first and the last, and they were pretty okay. I didn’t catch much sleep on the flight; guess I wasn’t tired enough. Just before landing in LAX we flew over San Joaquin Valley in California, and at that time the sky was clear so we could see something. It was pretty special, just a very long valley with totally flat landscape surrounded by mountain chains. When I get back I’ll find out what they are doing in that valley, because from the sky it looked like there was some farming fields and very dispered buildage. There’s some pictures of it in the gallery.

When we landed in LAX, we were driven to the main building for the US Customs and Border Protection checks. I got trough smootly, picked up my suitcase, and headed for the main hall. Here signs directed us to the transfer bus with took us to the hotel. Before boarding the bus you could pick up water and soft drinks. Nice!

After check-in at the hotel, there was a welcome reception at the hotel in the pool area. Mexican food was served along with drinks, beer, and soda, and a DJ played some Lounge music. Stayed there for a couple of hours, took a quick walk through the Hollywood Highland Park center, which is connected to the Renaissance Hotel, and returned to my room. Slept okay despite of the timezone differences.

Written at 3PM local time.

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I’ve arrived at the PDC in Los Angeles. We arrived yesterday with the speciel EMEA @ PDC plane. The ride over here went nice, and mostly without a hitch. Only problem was that we were an hour late out of Amsterdam and therefore arrived in LA at 3PM local time.

I left Aalborg at 06.30PM for Billund, and from Billund to Amsterdam. After leaving the plane in Amsterdam I met Kim Harding Christensen from EOS, and we picked up our bags and headed for the EMEA @ PDC checkin. When you arrive in Amsterdam you have to pass through a set of one-way doors to get to your bags. So I went through the first, and expected the next door to open, only it didn’t! So I was locked in! Damn! Kim tried to help, but instead knocked off the alarm, so everything was bells and whistles. However, after that stopped, the door worked again. Strange. Anyway, I got out

I’ve taken some notes for what else happened, so I can remember it, but I left them at the Hotel. I’ll write some more later.
Speaking of the Hotel, its pretty wild! Only problem is that they don’t have complementary Internet Access So I have to freeload of someones connection, or walk to the nearest Star Bucks (2 minutes away).

I’ve created a gallery where I’ll upload pictures I shot thoughout the trip. The gallery is here.

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Tomorrow morning I’m taking the first plane from Aalborg to Billund, so I can get to PDC. From Billund I’ll fly to Amsterdam, where MS EMEA has arranged flight to Los Angeles.

It’s going to be a blast! I’m of course bringing my newly bought digital camera with me, so I can photo document the entire PDC-experience. I’m also planning to so some heavy bloggin’ from the event. Plus upload the pictures to a to-be-announced located gallery.

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