Softwaremaker - PDC2005_LA

PDC 2005: Keynotes and Captions

William Tay — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 03:06:39 GMT

This is hilarious. The closed captioning on Bill Gates keynotes, which was also broadcast over the internet, had some real funny inconsistencies that can make Jay Leno's Headlines any time. Instead of writing down what I saw, fellow Microsoft Regional Director, Benjamin Mitchell has documented it well here. I took the liberty to quote him on this funny paragraph.

Funny things that came up on the closed captions on the video screen as Bill spoke:

'Intel a mir a cash mode' - 'IntelliMirror cache mode'
'Things like our asses are driving up to do this' (RSS)
Sin yer jistic (synergistic)
Overall I was incredible impressed that the subtitles kept pace and did such an accurate job.

PDC 2005 - Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) Session: Distributed Atomic Transaction: Wishful Thinking ?

William Tay — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 22:26:44 GMT

I just moderated at wonderful BOF session at 2100 hours last night. As expected, the turnout was not that great since it is really an advanced topic and because of the lack of carity and lack of implementation evidence, that is why I brought up the idea in the first place.

However, the handful of people who showed up including a couple of guys wearing the blue-shirts really engaged in a lively discussion thrashing out the merits and cons of WS-AtomicTransactions VS those of WS-BusinessActivity.

It was really a good thing and I gathered a lot from what the floor threw up and I am sure the rest of the floor gained as much as well.

Oh yeah --- I finally got the chance to meet up with Mr Brains-and-Brawn, Casey Chestnut who showed up during my session. I also managed to get a glimpse of the piece of application that got Casey his ticket to PDC. All I can say is that, you are unreal, Casey. Awesome and excellent piece of work with the TablePC and DirectX.

PDC 2005 Keynote: Reflections from a long distance traveller

William Tay — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 21:52:41 GMT

I was asked to write a small article piece for Commnet @ PDC 2005 about what I thought of Bill Gates's keynote. I wrote it. They published it. 10,000++ attendees can read it. You can view the pdf of it here.

Lugging my way to LA - I have been to Hollywood and made an appearance in a movie video !

William Tay — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 04:36:48 GMT

I finally made the long trip to PDC 2005 but it wasn't without its events.

1) Bad Bad Bad, oh did I mention Bad turbulence from Narita to Los Angeles. Quite a lot of people puked and my face was green pretty much for the whole journey

2) LAPD and the Airport Police were called onto the plane right upon its arrival to remove a suspicious character on the plane. Everyone has to remain seated 30 mins even after the plane docked. I noticed this man just walking up and down the aisle of the aircraft during the entire journey. I dont know if he was drunk or something. This effect caused a connected delay in everything including getting our luggage from the luggage claim conveyor belt.

3) Got caught in massive jams throughout the city because of this. Everyone thought it was a terrorist attack.

I attended a side-meeting in the Convention Center and met up with fellow peers and folks. I was given a glimpse of what Bill Gates will unveil tomorrow - Day 1 of the PDC 2005 event. So keep your eyes glued to this spot for that.

Oh, BTW: Now I can say that I have been to Hollywood and made it as screen-part of a LA-produced video movie ... and I didnt even have to take off my clothes to do it What am I talking about ? Stay tuned during the week of Nov 7 for more of when that movie video will be shown and what it is all about.

Reputation precedes itself

William Tay — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 08:01:54 GMT

Taken from the "Lets Go" Guide-Book Series for Los Angeles, California:

"Downtown, an uneasy truce exists prevails between the bustling financiers and the street population, but visitors should be cautious - the area is especially unsafe after business hours and on weekends."

"Cheap accommodations in Los Angeles are often unsafe ... Downtown has public transportation connections, but is unsafe after dark. Even those with cars should choose lodgings close to their interests to keep car-bound time to a minimum."

"Once the sun sets, those on foot, especially outside west LA and off well-lit main drags, should exercise caution, particularly when alone. Plan your pedestrian routes very carefully - it is worth a detour to avoid passing through heavily crime-ridden areas. If you hitchhike, you will probably die. It is exceptionally dangerous, not to mention illegal. Do not even consider it."

Nuff said.

So, what is the big announcement in PDC 2005 ?

William Tay — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 00:23:07 GMT

Everyone I meet that knows about PDC 2005 is asking me this question ... and I have no idea. This is the first time in a long time I will be attending a major conference as an attendee and I am super-excited about the absence of the pressures of presenting.

I have no idea what will be announced in PDC although I expect it to rival that was announced in the same event 2 years back. I even thought WinFS was a major announcement that could have made PDC 2005 headlines. Apparently not --- It was released and made public a couple of weeks back so this new IUnknown is even bigger, I guess...

Robert Scoble (Chief Blog Officer at MSFT Corp) has prepared us to be amazed at what will be unveiled in PDC 2005 next week via the Channel 9 thread. Stay tuned and subscribe to this blog or other PDC-related blogs here.

On another note: One thing that escaped a lot of people with the recent tussle between the 2 tech giants that I have posted here, is that Christian Lindholm (a key whiz at Nokia) has joined Yahoo!. Via Scoble's blog here, he seems to think that Yahoo! is the dark horse to watch out for in the future of social software engineering, which by the way Google and Microsoft are trying so hard to own or is it control ? a big piece of the pie in recent times.

The key ? Maps. Nothing but Maps --- which reminds me I have to invest in a nice piece of GPRS hardware / software soon. Hopefully with the mass release of Windows Mobile 5 by the hardware vendors.

PDC 2005: My topic for BOF is voted in as one of the official 7 sessions.

William Tay — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 14:29:09 GMT

With further regards to this, I have just received principle approval from INETA (who is the chair of the Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions in PDC 2005) that my session: Distributed Atomic Transactions - Wishful Thinking? is voted in as one of the 7 BOF Sessions in PDC 2005.

This is good news indeed. The date and time is listed as: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 at 2100 hours (9:00 PM)

I really hope I dont get a serious case of the jet-lag (hence, I better heed these tips) when I reach LA across thousands of miles and multiple time-zones that will prevent me from moderating a good session.

Hope to see you there soon.

Another guy I need to meet in Los Angeles

William Tay — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 05:23:44 GMT

It is sure great to know that Casey has used his brains instead of his brawn to win a ticket to PDC 2005. This dude is one who constantly churns out amazing stuff.

Besides his contributions to putting WS-Security Specifications on the .NET Compact Framework via cfWse2, he is actively going into Artifical Intelligence, Tablet Speech Technologies, DirectX Programming and other stuff that mere mortals like me wouldnt even go near.

On top of that, he has the sense to get his priorities right by promising to take PDC Booth Babe pictures on his blog and creating a category for it. Now, you cannot ask for a better geek.

Since this is my first PDC as well, I am just as interested to catch those booth babes in PDC and I will be sure to post them here as well. One of the interesting comments on Casey's blog has me ROTFL and I take the liberty to re-produce it here:

"Past experience has taught me that anything MSFT has better booth babes than just about any open source convention. The diference is that at open source conventions many times the booths are staffed by the ones writing the technology and at MSFT ones it's just some babe hired by a corporation to put tits on a product.(cont.)

And of course I'm with the rest of the guys - Mmmmmmmm Boothbabes....*drool*"

I hope to be able to catch you there, Mr Brains and Brawn.

ATE Sessions in PDC 2005, Los Angeles

William Tay — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 00:00:20 GMT

Besides the BOF which I may be moderating, I am also involved in the Ask-The-Experts (ATE) sessions in PDC 2005. This time around, I will be placed in the APAC regional table, where I hope I can meet up with a lot of customers or like-minded people from my region and hopefully answer some questions based on my expertise with issues with regards to Web Services (SOAP), Security-Interoperability, Indigo (or I prefer to call it the ServiceModel, not WCF) and the likes.

So, you are from APAC and are going to be at the PDC, I hope to see you at my table.

More on WS Transaction Framework

William Tay — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 01:56:50 GMT

On the back of this, from Paul Fallon's space here, Max Feingold has a real good summary on Whats New with WS-AT, WS-BA and WS-C.

Should make for some good reading on my looooooooong flight to LAX via the Pacific Route.

PDC2005: My topic is selected for BOF

William Tay — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 21:55:23 GMT

My topic submission has been approved for a "Birds of a Feather" discussion in PDC 2005.

Topic: Distributed Atomic Transactions - Wishful Thinking?

Discussion Synopsis:
Web Services, via SOAP, is the preferred choice of doing wide-reaching distributed communications today. However, one of the few factors that has hindered its adoption in the enterprise today is its lack of ability to handle transactions between remote un-trusted (independent) boundaries. There are two schools of thought today with regards to transactions --- The Atomic Way or The Compensating Way which pretty much takes out the atomicity of ACID. Indigo supports WS-AT via Microsoft DTC. Will this be widely adopted in the enterprise collaboration space? Or are we living in Fool's Paradise?
--- William Tay, Softwaremaker.NET

This topic of discussion is something I have not been able to get much of during the Indigo Ascends and TechED Asia I have done and I am hoping to get much more off the original deep thinkers out there (Hey, Jim --- Will you be there?)

If you are interested in attending this discussion, please vote for it here.

Quick Brief:
A “Birds of a Feather” session is a one-hour open, moderated discussion on a topic of interest to the Microsoft PDC05 conference attendees.

The Birds of a Feather sessions at the Microsoft PDC05 are chaired by INETA (International .NET Association), the premier .NET developer user group associations.

Each Birds of a Feather session is an opportunity for attendees to continue the technical conversation of the conference, meet with others that have common geographical or industry interests and exchange ideas on a variety of topics. Birds of a Feather sessions are conducted during the evening on Monday (September 12), Tuesday (September 13) and Thursday (September 15). The sessions are located in the overflow rooms at the PDC.

Hollywood, Here I come ...

William Tay — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 07:25:22 GMT

My MSN status says: Hollywood Bound ... which I am.

I just spoke to some Microsofties in Redmond and they say that no matter what --- you must NOT miss any of Anders Hejlsberg's sessions.

It is not as easy as slotting them in, there are way more than 200 sessions and I have already booked what I could slot in my already-packed schedule. I dont even think I have more than 20 sessions in the 4 days I am there.

But it looks like I have to make some room for Anders in this:

The .NET Language Integrated Query Framework: An Overview
Speaker(s): Anders Hejlsberg
Session Level(s): 300
Session Type(s): Breakout
Track(s): Tools & Languages

Modern applications operate on data in several different forms: Relational tables, XML documents, and in-memory objects. Each of these domains can have profound differences in semantics, data types, and capabilities, and much of the complexity in today's applications is the result of these mismatches. The future "Orcas" release of Visual Studio aims to unify the programming models through integrated query capabilities in C# and Visual Basic, a strongly typed data access framework, and an innovative API for manipulating and querying XML. This session introduces each of these areas and walks through how they are related.

It will also be a good time to catch up with some of the folks I have been working and in touch with at this event. If not, I would have to catch them in Redmond where I'll be there at the end of September.

These should be fun times and I am trying to pack as much travelling as I can before I become grounded in November.