Thank you Montreal and Ted Neward!

Ok, one last DevTeach post and then I will be back to posting about CAB, SCBAT and the new Services BAT drop. I am really amazed that I ended up #1 overall speaker out of about 40+ speakers (almost all tens across the board)! When you do that with legends like Brian Noyes and Ted Neward, it’s really amazing so thanks to everyone. Speaking of Mr. Ted, who has always been one of my idols, we put on an amazing combined presentation today where we combined our two decks. I covered mostly the SOA part and Ted the intro to Indigo. I held my own which was hard! Ted is so great a speaker. Of course, the highlight is when I got to serve as his Slide Monkey and learn the DM method of hitting the key the instant he begins to snap his fingers, not during or after-). I continued on in Part 2 of my SOA talk where I used Greghor Hohpe's MEP patterns and showed implementation in Indigo. I covered Contract-First Development, Versioning, Persistence and Reliable Messaging and more.

Then this evening was a Montreal blowout. 12 or so of us went to one of the best 5 star bistros in Montreal upon Mario Cardinal's advice. Along with Ted, I sat with Kathleen Dollard on one side, Peter DeBetta and the hysterical Scott Bellware on the other. There are some strange pictures floating around, but the interplay between Kathleen and Scott kept me in stitches all night. I couldn't stop laughing! I've gotten to know Kathleen a lot better over the last few days and she truly is a passionate, smart and fun person. We had weird! sorts of traditional food like Pigs Feet - Peter had raw Venison!! If I can remember Robert Hurlbut, Mario, Nicole Calinoiu, Eric Cote, Rick Strahl, Benard Wong, and others were there. We then walked for miles back to the hotel passing through some, err, interesting areas-). For my money, DevTeach is the best conference in the world. You don't have 7,000 numbers and marketing drivel. You have 40+ speakers to ~200 attendees so you get a lot of interaction with developers and fellow speakers. You get real development presentations and code, almost like a code camp.

Update: Going home was a nightmare. It started out well. I was sitting in the airport and Kathleen and Benard strolled up and sat for lunch followed by Rick Strahl. Then Ted came by. After we all parted, I thought I was set to board at 1:30; no delayed in Boston where my connection was. At 2, we walked to the plane and then they made us walk back; delayed until 4. At 4, delay. We flew to Boston where we had to circle for an hour. After finally getting into Boston. my 2nd Philly flight didn't have me existing! I finally got another flight to Philly which was also delayed. I finally got in near 10, for a distance of about 800 miles. Urgh!