Looking Ahead- Conferences!
Since I noticed Patrick has spilled the beans [just before the second question], I might as well cover this topic while I wait for my dinner to bake [I eschew microwave ovens these days- just seems better to let it cook the old-fashioned- if early-to-mid-twentieth century is old-fashioned- way].
I've been through some of my belongings of late and put a few items up on the corkboard in my office- pictures of me from the last several decades, ads from bands I played with in the 70's and 80's, and so on [along with my Master Chief calendar and pictures of my daughter and InuYasha]. Two of the recent additions are from my first time around at Microsoft. One of them, which I showed off recently at a WDF team meeting related to this article's topic, is what I believe was my original Microsoft card key- a much different technology from those in use today, which are basically proximity read- I believe this was a magnetic stripe like a credit card [but can't be sure, because that part of the back of it is gone]. I think the big surprise for most was that 19 years ago, I had no facial hair and very short hair [almost no gray then, either]. Weighed a lot less, too, and still had two working eyes [even if they were near-sighted].
The other [finally getting to my point] is a speaker's badge for "Microsoft Windows NT Device Driver Developer's Conference". That was from 1992 [I wouldn't know for sure except that it turns out I still had the conference material with the dates on it], and it was the real "first DDC". I was the last speaker on the final day- the track was about Win32 printing [and this was the very first release of Windows NT and the first 32-bit OS Microsoft released], and I was speaking about testing and logoing printer drivers- that was my first time hearing about WHQL, by the way- when I was preparing the talk and they asked me to add some slides related to it.
Of course, my prized possession is the "Ship-It" award for OS/2 3.1 [which of course didn't exist as a Microsoft product- it was a typo, but I snuck mine out before the manual update processes in use then could correct it], but that just made this paragraph irrelevant and disruptive of the flow. I'm like that...
DDC- what a long, strange trip it's been
The Driver Developer's Conference is an intensive high-level conference with some NDA-type restrictions [I'm no lawyer- it appears these aren't as strict as the MVP summit, but who am I to judge or care?]. It will be held on the Microsoft campus later this month. The meeting I am alluding to was our team reviewing one of the presentations I will be participating in [and I've been slide-smithing ever since]. In one session, Ilias and I will be discussing the WDF coinstallers. Ilias will discuss the whys and hows, while I will finish up by telling you what you can do when things go wrong. In the other technical session, I, Shyamal and Wei will tell you about how we test the frameworks, including things we do that can translate into your own test problems.
There will be some Ask The Experts sessions, and I know WDF will be there, but I don't think the final lineup for that's been determined. I can live with it myself, either way...
As for the rest of the conference, well--- one of the more attractive nuisances of the past several days is that all the presentations go on a single sharepoint site, so I've been previewing a few that interested me. Lots of good stuff- device installation, DSF [my favorite non-WDF tool], new technologies all across the space, etc. I also see the world of printer testing tools is in great hands [probably better ones than mine ever were!].
WinHEC- a first time for everything
The Windows Hardware Engineering Conference- well, you can use the link to find out what you need to know. I'll be there too, with somewhat stripped-down versions of both talks [at least, I think that's what's happening]. It's still several weeks away, and there's DDC to get through first. But it will be in LA. Not certain who all else is going, yet, but I know Ilias is, and I can't believe it can be done without the likes of Doron and Peter.
I've been on the mailing list for years, but never gone (I was supposed to go a couple of years back, when it was in Seattle, but had car trouble).
So perhaps I'll meet a few of you there. I'll be the one with all the hair and the wacky left eye [unless I can't pass the airport security checks, or the other passengers find me scary and demand I leave the plane]. Well, I've lived in LA a few times and driven from here to there and back before...
