June 16th  - Code Generation 2009

I was in the first round of breakout speakers at Code Generation 2009. It was fabulous to be in the company of  so many people that knew so much about Code Generation and DSL. I gave the conference the slide deck for this. If you were there and don’t find them, send me email. I’d really like to see the Code Generation folks put on a conference in the US, hopefully late 2010. If you’re interested, let me know via email.

June 19th  - Cambridge

I spoke to the Cambridge .NET User Group on Refactoring with Generics. Many people in the audience knew a good deal of the material, so I could go very fast, even having time for the overloads section I’ve generally cut out in the interest of time. Thanks everyone for coming!

[[ Slides for Refactoring with Generics ]]

June 22nd – Edinburgh

I had a great weekend with friends in Dunbar, Scotland. The sea, the day, the cliffs, the food, the rocks, the conversation, all grand. It is a delight when lives grown and remain parallel. Edinburgh is perhaps my favorite city on the planet. The 3D nature of Old Town is a delight and the day after the talk I climbed Holyrood Hill/Arthur’s Seat on a spectacular sunny day as well as wandering miles in both Old and New Town. I gave my “Rethinking Object Oreintation” talk. This is a talk that is still rapidly evolving and different every time I give it. This time it wound up without enough return to focus.

[[Slides for Rethinking Object Orientation ]]

June 23rd – Glasgow

My son joined me for this part of the vacation (he was supposed to join me leaving Cambridge, but his life intervened). I surprised him by finding him on the train instead of in the station at Glasgow. We found some nice Tapas, having been warned that my usual plan of getting a meal with beers after the talk might not work well in Glasgow. I spoke on MEF, which is a challenging topic, but folks seemed to really get it. It’s great getting the message out.

[[ Slides for MEF and MAF: Your Application in Pieces ]]

June 24th – Dublin

We took an early flight to Dublin where I spoke both at MIX Essentials and the Dublin user group allowing me to cover both Silverlight architecture and WPF. The Silverlight talk was a challenge because I realized an hour before the talk that I had killed Silverlight in my 2010 installation, and converted my relevant demos to 2010. I dropped back to some older demos, but it left a few cases of “the code does xxx, um, no it doesn’t, does it.” I didn’t get to see much of Dublin, but my son found St. Stephens green and I thoroughly enjoyed walking a few minutes there on our way to and from a quick dinner. Thanks to Martha Rotter for all her help arranging the Ireland leg of the trip.

[[ Slides for The Challenge of Silverlight Architectures ]]
[[ Slides for WPF: Beyond the Bling ]]

June 25th – Cork

We took a train down to Cork where Joe Gill picked us up and took us to Blarney Castle. Being the scientific type, I, of course, kissed the Blarney Stone to see if it improves my speaking. Joe was patient waiting for us because between the line at the castle and us unable to resist the gardens and Close we took several hours. If you ever visit the castle, be sure to leave time for the grounds: at least the Fern Garden and Rock Close. Before our train out the next day, we also made it to Café Paradiso. My son is vegetarian, so a gourmet vegetarian restaurant was wonderful. I covered .NET 4.0 Language and IDE Features. It was the first time I’ve given that talk on the beta, and it was great not to crash a single time in a talk I designed and timed around CTP crashes/lockups.

[[Slides for .NET 4.0 Language and IDE Features ]]

June 26-28th  - Holiday

While it deserves a full post on my personal blog, several people gave us advice for our weekend, which was completely unscheduled until a few hours before we left on Friday morning. Aideen in the Cork Tourist Office was fabulous and booked us into Channel View Guest House in Baltimore, and Whitethorn Lodge in Skibbereen, with appropriate bus schedules. We spent a half day on Cape Clear Island and all in all had a fabulous trip to Southwest Cork.

June 29th – Bristol

This was the only repeated talk on the trip, and I wasn’t altogether happy with how it went in Edinburgh. So rather than touring Bristol or Bath, or visiting Wales, I stayed in my room and worked on the talk. I’m happy with it now, although not altogether with how the timing/content balance went in Bristol (yes, I’m always critiquing and working on my talks).  I’m not so happy that I missed on seeing this part of England, but I guess that just means I need to go back.

[[ Updated slides for Rethinking Object Orientation ]]

June 30th - Onward to home

I probably won’t schedule eight talks for a vacation again, but I had a great deal of fun and saw places I probably would have missed. I spent the last day in London, again finding a hotel at the last minute. I was dismayed that there is not a Tourist Info in Paddington Station, and at this point I was carrying a rather heavy spare bag because my son was using me as porter to carry home for him. But the nice man in the train information office pointed me to a private booking company a few feet from Paddington which found a lovely hotel for me on Sussex Gardens a block from the station. I had the first bad experience on a bus tour, the traffic was so bad, we seemingly went nowhere, so I ditched the bus near Parliament and grabbed a boat tour, and then took the London Eye and walked a few miles, including seeing Buckingham Palace and walking through Kensington Gardens.