MVP Summit Recap

Url: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

While I haven’t blogged about the MVP summit before, I have decided to mention a couple of things that have happened at the MVP summit. None of this is secret or private Microsoft information and I am not breaking any NDA’s.  These are just some reflections on a week on campus.

• The summit is about connections, not information. I come to the summit more to visit with fellow MVPs, my MVP lead as well as some exposure to the product teams.
• This year’s summit was extraordinarily planned. I think Microsoft wanted to treat us all special, and I think (with few exceptions) they succeeded immeasurably.
• Much of what I saw this week was available in the March 2007 VS Orcas CTP.  It is available as a VPC so I suggest everyone go get it and have a gander.  Now is the time to laud/complain.  Don’t wait until release to find out your favorite feature isn’t working or your most annoying bug wasn’t fixed.
• While LINQ was well demonstrated, don’t forget that Orcas is also about the ADO.NET v.Next (e.g. Entity Framework), XML Literals, language enhancements, better intellisense, and .NET 3.0 designers (WCF and WPF).
• To everyone I met, it was a pleasure and I am apt to have forgotten names and faces by next MVP summit.  For that I apologize.  Father time is indeed catching up with me.