Met last night for our “every once in a while” Midwest rock star dinner. A couple fo the Des Moines guys made it down, so that was cool. The place was Omaha Prime (thanks Jeff), and it was good stuff. Even better was getting to see everyone face to face for a sit down. The topics covered always vary from the MS technology talks to competing technology to just general crap. A few things that stick out the next day are:
1) Javier brought up an idea of creating a local project forum for the user groups. This would be group project for a non-profit organization that would allow UG members to gain new .NET skills and work on a complete dev cycle. Now, I helped lead a similar effort a couple years back called Non-Profit Ways with David and Jason. Managing the team was hell and getting things completed was even tougher, but having the local spin on things might work. It's definitely a more plausible scenario than ours was.
2) What will Longhorn offer developers? There was lengthy discussion around what types of things Longhorn hopes to offer developers, as developers are key decision influencers within the typical corporate organization. With MS giving up all the goods early, what will be left for incentive? It will definitely be interesting to see it played out. It was agreed that Longhorn is geared more toward the consumer, and IT professionals on the business end, but the question still remains..why will we upgrade?
3) What is with media center? I agree that media center is a great product RIGHT NOW. What happens when every offshore hardware manufacturer can produce a Tivo for 25$? I think the media center product is going to end up getting MS in a hardware game with the rest of the market and history tells us that is a bad idea. In two to five years, every Walmart will be sporting 30$ Tivos and media players, complete with temporary storage readers and several ins and outs. Why is MS pushing this. Why are they not exploiting the XBox Live end of consumer products. Gamers are everywhere between the ages of 5 to 50 and that's only going to increase on the tail end. Sony tried integrating a “media center” into the Playstation and failed..in Japan! This is a nation where Sony can make anything they want and sell millions of dollars worth of product. It's obvious their approach was off. People don't want integrated hardware, without the community/sharing/were all connected capabilities. Xbox Live is a ace in hole as I see it. It's something Sony does not have, and will have a difficult time mimicking. If I am bill gates, I put my money in Xbox and make it my flagship consumer division. Maybe that's why I don't run Microsoft. :) P.S. Portable media player is a joke, check out the PSP, that is the future of handheld media. Unless Media Center is expected to go OEM in all kinds of 3rd party “Home Media Centers“ for cheap, I don't see it..
4) One of the main issues with getting large corporations to move to a .NET environment is the cost. Big companies are still in the thinking that if .NET is so cheap, how can it be equal. In a world where managers will buy anything that will cushion them for another 1 1/2 years of “managing implementation“, inevitably leading to a “I managed a million dollar implementation“ bullet point on a resume, it's hard to sell them on fast, simple, solutions. It's funny because all .NET developers share this story in some shape or form. It's like it's funny, but sad at the same time. It's sad that companies don't realize they are being ripped off my middle managers recommending overly complex hardware/software. I always take the standpoint when selling .NET to clients that building a team of developers is much cheaper on the MS side of things. Sure, a good architect is going to cost you some cash on either side of the fence, and rightly so. But I can train a team of wet developers into a fully functional coding unit at less expense and far quicker than Java.
5) The man show rocked when it was young. It reminds me of other shows that started off as killer 30 minute bundles of joy and turned into crap. It's sad really that this inevitable cycle is unavoidable. Favorite Episode: Jimmy and Adam having women sign a petition to end Women's Suffrage. Classic.
Anyway, that's the recap. We also talked about HDC 2005 and are thinking much bigger this year planning on about 500 attendees. More details to come as things shake out.