Despite the fact that I got off to a miserable start (walking along the Charles, rain soaked and a bit lost) today was a blast.
I got to hear Rockford Lhotka (of CSLA fame) along with Anthony Handley describe their recent experiences with WPF. This was cool because they've been working on the same kind of project as Rob and I. It was very affirming. I mean, it's kinda of like meeting a rock star and realizing that he's practicing the same guitar riffs you are. :-)
We also attended a great session on casual game development in Silverlight by Andy Beaulieu. Andy demonstrated how to build a simple game using Visual Studio and Blend. I think that's pretty impressive for one session. I recommend checking out the examples on his site if you are interesting in Silverlight, even if that interest is unrelated to game development.
We also caught up with fellow Floridian, Bill Reiss. Bill is an XNA MVP, who recently ported a popular physics engine from XNA to Silverlight. He has a ton of XNA tutorials on his site. I'm looking forward to pouring over some of his content.
Finally, I want to put in a good word for the guys at eRain (I forgot to ask them their names!) They were genuinely friendly, and it really excites me to see a company like that being successful. I'm looking forward to seeing ZAM3D and Standout!
All in all, I can't say that I learned much, but I really enjoyed meeting all these techies and sharing their passion. I was a little reluctant to post, because I don't want to seem like I'm dropping names to be cool. In the end, I decided to mention all the people that left an impression on me through out the day, not because I want to be cool, but because they are cool and it's both good and fun to get a chance to meet them.