First, Brian Jepson's notes (
day 1
and
day
2) rocked. The sessions were of the same top notch
quality as the
previous
devcon. Here are some parting thoughts:
- My keynote: this is the first time I every remember
running short on time - I nearly always finish early.
- Glen Daniels didn't say anything I haven't heard before.
;-)
- Peter Drayton captured the subtle concepts of REST
superbly
- Steve Lougran's presentation was just as good the second
time. I particularly liked the things he could tell us now
that he couldn't tell us the first time.
- Noah's presentation was very educational. I had
thought that schema was more deterministic.
- Scott Seely's was perhaps my favorite session. To see a
Microsoft employee demonstrate Axis alongside .Net did my heart
good. I disagreed with some of it, but that's what
makes topics like this interesting.
- This was the first time I've ever seen Don Box talk on a
subject where he didn't have all the answers. The role of
types in loosely coupled systems is a favorite topic of mine.
I'll probably have more to say on this in a bit.
- Yasser is probably destined to become my new best friend.
Had I known what he was going to say, I would have streamlined my
keynote considerably.
- The Mindreef duo shared a wealth of immediately
practical advice. If you ever consider deploying a web
service based solution with components from more than one vendor,
these are the guys to talk to.
My favorite part was the "Ask the speakers" Q&A in the
middle. One thought for future conferences: schedule a
few point/counter point sessions where opposing views are
explored. Peter's presentation on REST to a SOAP crowd
came close. For example, it would have been fun to see Yasser
and Clemens discuss on whether XML should be a primary focus
or an implementation detail.