when setup isn't just xcopy : pdc

WiX Toolset PDC "Birds Of A Feather" - Tonight 9:00 PM - Fundamentals Lounge "Big Room"

robmen — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 20:27:26 GMT

There have been a number of people that have expressed interest in the WiX toolset the last few days at PDC. I've met a few names that I recognize from the wix-users mailing list and put faces to names. That was very cool. Also very interesting, I've met a lot of new people interested in the WiX toolset that had never heard of it before attending the PDC and seeing the little logo I have up on the whiteboard or working through the Hands-On-Lab.

Anyway, since there seems to be enough interest, let's do an impromptu PDC BOF on the WiX toolset.

WiX BOF

Thursday 2005.09.15 21:00 (nine at night, after Ask the Experts) - 0:00 (midnight)

Fundamentals Lounge in the Big Room

PS: "PDC Day 2" notes to follow later.

PDC 2005, Day 1 - Hurry up, wait, and talk... a lot.

robmen — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:55:01 GMT

Today started out at 6:30 AM with a quick shower and a short bus ride from the hotel to PDC. Then breakfast and a quick spin around the Fundamentals Lounge to make sure everything was still in place. It was. Shortly thereafter it was time to roll over to the big all and watch the BillG and JimAll keynotes. I'm not going to dig into the details for two reasons. First, Scoble is doing a better job linking to people doing a better job describing the keynotes that I'm going to be able to do tonight because... second, I'm pretty tired and don't want to write a ten page blog post right now.

What I want to talk about are all the people that came over to talk. As promised, I've set up camp in the Fundamentals Lounge. In fact, I drew a big red "WiX (Windows Installer XML) Toolset" on the whiteboard by one of the couches and sat down to code for a while. Nothing really happened until Raymond Chen came over and informed Robert, Reid and I that the WiX Hands-On-Lab was not working properly. Reid immediately ran over and I followed shortly after to help debug why things were not working. It turns out everything was fine (a shortcut was missing from the desktop) but there was some confusion around the way the directions were split across pages. Anyway, after the incident and lunch, I retired to the Fundamentals Lounge to work on some WiX code.

Not surprisingly, it wasn't until the PDC sessions were out that people started showing up in the lounge. A few people stopped by after finishing the WiX Hands-On-Lab saying, "This WiX thing is really cool, I'm going to have to see if it will work for my project." A few others like Jerry Dennany and Craig Boland who have been hanging out on the wix-users mailing list for a long while stopped by to just introduce themselves and say, "Hi". It was very cool to put faces to some names.

Throughout the night people would stop by and either say, "Just wanted to let you know that the WiX toolset just works." or "What is the WiX toolset?" To the former, I'd thank them and remind them that there is lots of work planned for the future. For the latter, I'd give the short version of why the WiX toolset exists. A lot of people stopped by and it was great to sit around and talk to each of them. I really dig hanging out with customers getting direct feedback on how things are going and what needs to improve.

The only problem is that I was having so much fun talking to people here that I totally forgot about the Mono meeting tonight. It was 9 PM before I knew it.

Anyway, I expect tomorrow will be much of the same but I'll still be here in the Fundamentals Lounge coding or talking to people about the WiX toolset. Feel free to swing by if you're in the area. I'd love to say, "Hi."

PDC 2005, Day 0 - Travel, prep, and talk...

robmen — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 08:39:26 GMT

This day started off very early at 5:00 AM when Robert showed up at my house to carpool to the airport. Jenny dropped us off and the flight SEA to LAX was uneventful. Always a good thing when flying in airplanes.

After acquiring a minivan (which seem to be popular with the Microsoft PDC crowd from a quick perusal of other blogs here) we drove downtown Los Angeles and checked into the hotel. From there it was a quick walk (less than 30 minutes, approximately 15 blocks) to the PDC where we registered and found some lunch.

As many people noted (for example, Robert here) there was a power outage that took out all the lights in the "Big Hall" (more about how big it is later). Actually, the power outage apparently took out much of the LA area including LAX. Supposedly no plane landings were disrupted by the outage but I'm glad I got in as early as I did. The funniest thing really was when about five minutes after the emergency a voice came over the PA system that said, "We are experiencing a power outage." Yeah, like no kidding, dude (the inner surfer in me is coming out while in CA). <smile/>

Before I continue on with this simple story, I want to comment on the "Big Hall". Some one mentioned over lunch that the "Big Hall" is 20 acres big. 20 acres! I used to live on 20 acres. There were about twenty head of cattle, tons of trees, three ponds, two barns and a house on 20 acres. 20 acres is huge! And here in the PDC's "Big Hall" were banners with corporate logos as far as the eye could see (even up, with the Office and Windows logos overhead). Crazy.

In the end, I'm not sure the "Big Hall" is really 20 acres big but the room is very large.

Anyway, the afternoon was spent setting up the "Fundamentals Lounge" which is right at the entrance to the "Big Hall" and fighting with wireless as I tried to keep up on email. It's kinda' funny but I think I'm going to end up ranking the quality of the various conventions I've been to by their wireless coverage.

OSCON 2004 had great coverage pretty much everywhere. It was also a great convention. Linuxworld 2005 had really crappy wireless coverage and didn't really live up to expectations... although I did get to wear a Stormtrooper outfit. PDC 2005 wireless coverage today was spotty and thus is looking like PDC will be better than Linuxworld and not quite as cool as OSCON. <grin/>

But, we'll have to see how the next four days play out.

At the end of the day, a few of us were just sitting in the "Fundamentals Lounge" (which is where I expect you will be able to find me over the next few days, so swing by and say "Hi!") talking with some guys from the "Department of Commerce's Shoestring Laundry Division" or something like that. They are better known as the Department of Defense (and no I'm not making that up, that's how the guys introduced themselves, it's a "cover story"). Of course, we were discussing installation and deployment and they were lamenting the fact that installation was so hard. To them there were two problems. First, their Installation Team could not keep up with what the application developers were building. Second, they felt like their hands were bound by the tools they were using to create their MSI packages. It pained me to listen to the stories because the pain they are having is exactly what I see when people centralize their install teams.

Of course, I suggested to them that they suggest distributing the setup development to the application developers. They were interested but one of the three suggested that there was a missing "special sauce". So I suggested the three guys check out the 200 level Hands-On-Lab that would walk them through creating a MSI package using the WiX toolset. At least one of the guys there seemed interested so maybe they'll find something useful in the Hands-On-Lab to stream line their installation packaging process.

We'll see what tomorrow has in store.

PDC '05, I'll be there. Will you?

robmen — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:07:00 GMT

Well, it looks official. My features are in and my bugs are under control. I'm going to PDC '05!

No, I'm not a part of the Windows Installer presentation on the last day at the last hour of the PDC. No, there isn't a Birds of a Feather (BOF) session on the WiX toolset. No, I'm not dressing up like an Imperial Stormtrooper.

So what am I doing at PDC'05? Well, I am slated to be part of the Ask the Experts session on Thursday evening. I will also be hanging around, attending shows, and writing WiX code (probably in the "Bean Bag" or "Fundamentals" Lounge... whichever has the best atmosphere).

But the real reason I'm writing this blog entry is that I'm thinking about putting together some ad hoc meetings to talk about the WiX toolset or setup in general. If you're going to PDC and think that would be interesting then drop a comment below. For example, I was thinking it might be easy very easy to create an unscheduled WiX BOF session on Thursday evening after the Ask the Experts session.

I'll post more blog entries (even during the conference) if there are particular gatherings times/points that look fruitful.