Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

randy — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:38:31 GMT

Gulp... "FULL CONFERENCE REGISTRATION $2395 USD" + airfare + hotel + eating

As much as I would dearly love to see/hear a Charles Petzold session, I think I might better afford a copy of "The Annotated Turing"

Any hope of publishing PDC sessions with all this nifty new WPF/Silverlight/LiveMesh etc technology? Maybe MS could gain a bit of good will for its media technology by using it for publishing live PDC sessions. I think MIX2008 did a great job of publishing important sessions.

If MS Labs gets really busy, I'm very willing to use a bit of my savings to buy a video zune for watching PDC sessions published in that new DeepZoom MultiScaleVideo :-)

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

Alan Cobb — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:32:43 GMT

I think Randy makes some good points.

IMHO it is well-past time for a live fully virtual major conference. If you can live-stream a huge event like the Olympics, doing the same for the PDC should be easy.

Is MS going to buy some carbon-credits to compensate for all the jet-fuel burned to _physically_ move bodies to the conference ;-)?

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

mswanson — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:40:21 GMT

Great post, Tim! The Charles Petzold talk should be fantastic.

@randy: This is the same group that delivers the MIX events, and you can be sure that we'll have an improved way of delivering recorded sessions (unfortunately, not pre-cons). For MIX08, we averaged under 12 hours to turn around and publish each session. Of course, there's nothing that can replace being at the event, but this is the next best thing.

@Alan: We've thought about doing a "live" virtual event. Turns out, because of our international audience and time zone differences, streaming live isn't always the best option. The feedback has been: if we can turn aroud the videos quickly and make them available (like we will), the content will still be fresh...and it can be watched at thier convenience. Plus, not everyone can block time during their work day/night to catch the sessions they'd like to see.

Also, related to being green at PDC2008: http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson/archive/2008/05/12/being-green-at-pdc2008.aspx

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

Sven — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:32:21 GMT

Don't think I'm not a fan of Petzold's (I am !) but

I think you (and Jeff Atwood) are giving the wrong Charles credit for putting the ' h in hWnd'. That's Hungarian notation and it was Charles Simonyi who introduced it at Microsoft, way back in the eighties.

</nitpicking>

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

Alan Cobb — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:16:15 GMT

Hi Mike (mswanson),

Regarding a hypothetical live broadcasting of the PDC: Seems like there are a lot of parallels with the Olympics. If it makes sense there, it should make sense for the PDC. The Olympics deal is supposed to offer both live and recorded delivery of the content. Both are important. The Olympics viewers are world-wide in all 24 time zones. Some people will go out of there way to get up early or late to see their favorite events live. Personally if I had to get up at 5AM to see a cool presentation live, I likely would do it, especially if I could watch it at home via broadband. Then I'd watch the recorded version again later.

The "liveness" of the event is part of what draws people to the event itself. It adds to the overall marketing appeal and buzz. On Sunday I watched the live video of the mars landing. Cool.

One of the pitches for the Olympics project is supposed to be the "social-networking" aspects of the special custom Silverlight video viewer. That might work well for a conference like the PDC too.

Alan Cobb

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

tims — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:28:31 GMT

Hi Sven, you're completely right - it was Simonyi who gets the credit (or blame, depending on your perspective!) for Hungarian notation as a coding convention.

What I presume Jeff meant (and certainly the way I took it) was that Charles' role was so pivotal in educating the world about Win32 USER / GDI programming that he is inextricably linked with the technology - in the same way as someone might say that Andy Warhol is synonymous with pop art.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify.

Tim

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

mswanson — Sat, 31 May 2008 04:37:31 GMT

@Alan: Thanks for articulating your thoughts about live broadcasts. It might help if I share some other factors. While PDC is definitely an exciting event, we don't break world records or have tense competitive moments that demand real-time viewing. Our big moments are generally in the keynote sessions when we announce new products and technologies, and we do stream all keynotes live (and record them). As you can probably guess, streaming live is an expensive proposition, and bandwidth in and out of convention centers can also be challenging. Because we do have a budget for the event, we have to make decisions about what we prioritize, and to-date, we've chosen to prioritize live keynotes and recorded sessions (with quick turnaround). I'd like to hear more about the importance of "live," though, if you think it'd be more important than recorded. Thanks for the thoughtful discussion.

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

randy george — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:20:32 GMT

I vote for recorded (live is not necessary for me anyway) I'm generally more interested in the sessions than the keynotes. Keynote buzz gets picked up in the blog world pretty much and seems to focus on market issues rather than tech details. On the other hand session presentations are much more useful for learning a new technology.

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

Alan Cobb — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:05:44 GMT

Mike,

Regarding the exploit-ability of "liveness": Another content delivery system MS has a lot invested in, is the "events / web-casts" site. Although the web-casts are recorded and available after the events, there is a lot of emphasis placed on the initial "live" delivery of the presentations. Hence _they_ must see some value in "liveness". One thing that allows is questions from the remote audience. Can you imagine a college without live lectures, only recorded ones?

Perhaps you could turn (some of) the PDC sessions into live webcasts, including taking remote audience questions at the same time as questions from local physical attendees. A first step might be to have a custom Silverlight player for the keynotes, which are already streamed live. The player would let the worldwide audience type in questions like the existing MS "events / web-casts" system. (Let me know if you want me to write such a SL app for you ;).

Alan Cobb

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

mswanson — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:30:55 GMT

Thanks, guys. Don't get me wrong...there's definite value in "live," and we recognize that. But when we have to choose between the two options for sessions (live or recorded), recording seems to come out ahead in the vote. In the future, I can easily see conferences becoming more virtual, and live Q&A done over the internet would make perfect sense.

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

tq — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:39:47 GMT

My humble suggestion:

Forget conferences, talks, blogging and hype.

Heck, lock yourselves in and finish the job, finish the API and features and rewrite it in something that executes faster than poor CLR JIT.

WPF needs some serious performance work beyond 3.5 SP1, 2, 3 and 5.

It is not succeeding at all and will not until people can find it snappy, with great control support, with capability to handle heavy graphics load.

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

colinizer — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:25:16 GMT

Re: Charles' book "Applications = Code + Markup".

I've read it, and I'd have to say it's very details but it's pretty much entirely without illustration/screenshots, so you really need your head in gear to read it. It's kind of like the Lord of the Rings. It focuses first on doing things with code.

If you want the lighter Hobbit with nice Hollywood CGI, go for Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed by Adam Nathan. This one is more XAML based first.

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

colinizer — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:33:19 GMT

Re: Virtual conference.

"there's nothing that can replace being at the event", but does that really matter for most people, when it was possible to see more mix content remotely than someone who attended and then wastes time travelling. The benefit of physical attendance is a physical meetup with MS workers and then there's no guarantee. Let's not forget the partying of course...

I'm sure it's possible to improve on the 12-hour pipeline., but I believe people will break their sleeping habbits to see a good keynote - I would.

Virtual PDC will be interesting but a real 'crime' would occur if it becomes chargeable (though virtual Mix08 was free) - if so, it would weaken the differentiation of being their in person.

re: Why You Want To Book Your PDC2008 Ticket NOW...

colinizer — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:47:35 GMT

P.S. One great reason for attending PDC may be if you are interested in working for Microsoft, preferably working remotely of course. For the right job offer, I'd go ;-)

P.P.S. My spelling has gone to pot in the previously comments.