PDC is amazing. I'm totally exhausted. You know, the good kind of exhausted that comes from tech adrenaline pushing you to learn more, network more, discover more. I've managed just a little under six hours sleep total over the last three days. No idea how I'm managing to keep going.
My blogging has been and will be light at least through today. Here are some quick hightlights though:
* Office 12 is my #1 favorite item of the conference. The UI changes alone would convince me to upgrade. I expect it'll make my life easier plus enable me to do more.
* New P2P SDKs are cool. I want to check it out first hand though, but maybe, just maybe this will spawn a new round of creative apps. I hope so--especially ad hoc network-based apps. Tools such as these are going to be increasingly important as computers grow more mobile.
* I ran across a guy in a lounge area leaning back in his chair, legs folded handwriting something while in Tablet mode. Yeah, this isn't necessarily a big deal, but I could tell he was an intense Tablet user, so I went over to talk with him. I asked him if he liked his Tablet and used the Tablet mode very much. He said yes and that he used his computer that way about 30% of the time--thought not when he was coding. Ah, one of the many developers I thought--a kindred spirit. We talked about how to make Tablets even better. We talked about what it would be like to code with in Tablet mode. I could tell this guy knew Tablets. Anyway, about 20 minutes into the conversation I finally asked him what he did. Turns out I was talking with Jim Gray from Microsoft's Bay Area Research Group. He looked kind of familiar--I still didn't realize though that I'd seen a video of him on Channel9. Anyway, he gave me some behind the scenes insight into the early days of the Tablet and the decisions about when they decided to take what was originally a research effort and convert it to a full-fledged product. It was a stimulating conversation. Yes, he definitely knows his Tablets.
* At lunch today I met up with someone from the server group that works on data encryption/compression/syncing APIs. We talked about different ways I might be able to leverage them in ShareKMC. More to think about.
* I'm falling in love with the little Tablets like the new Fujitsu Lifebook P1500 and the Motion LS800. I've seen a couple people using the small Motions. They seem to do quite well with them. By the way, someone had a Fujitsu Lifebook P1500--yes the itsy-bitsy one--running Vista with Glass. They said it was just a proof of concept thing, but wow was it impressive.
* I've seen so much Vista here at PDC, that when I go back to my XP system, it's looking old. I need to get Vista going on a Tablet or desktop. It's really time as a developer to seriously start transitioning. No, Vista isn't all there yet, but it's getting real.
Tags: PDC05