MVP Summit, Day 2
After getting diverted to the bay area for a couple of days, I arrived in Seattle Thursday night at about 8:30. I missed the keynotes by the top brass, but I did arrive in time for the stuff that matters most (to me). Today was filled with technical presentations and sessions with the product teams. It was easily the most productive day of Microsofting that I have had since the first Driver DevCon.
Today's discussions largely focused on driver development and testing best practices. A ton of work has gone into these areas over the last few years, and it's really starting to show. We saw presentations on some old favorites (e.g. PreFAST) and some new things that I can't wait to test (e.g. Driver Test Manager). The theme of the day, and indeed of the last few years, was clearly about improving code quality, reducing bugs, and enhancing security. Microsoft has done a great job executing against those goals, and we as a driver development community stand to benefit considerably. I have way too much to discuss, so I'm going to spread it out over a few days with several posts on the tools we spent so much time discussing.
In the meantime, though, I have just one observation. The party tonight was held at the Experience Music Project Center in downtown Seattle. On the second floor is a small Jimi Hendrix shrine where, if you look closely enough, you'll see the Greatest Guitar God Of All Time playing a $150 imported Stratocaster. And the worst part is, it's strung right handed. Oh well, it's not like he was from Seattle or anything. Oh wait...
Now, somebody get me some more of that Kool Aid that Scoble was serving at the company meeting!