The MSDN roadshow with Bob Familiar and Chris Bowen came to Burlington two weeks ago, so this post is really really late. Still, I wanted to make sure I blogged how much I enjoyed the show and how much I appreciated Bob and Chris--and Microsoft--for making it happen.
The topics included XML in SQL, What's New from the Patterns and Practices group, Microsoft Silverlight (which was announced only days before the roadshow at Mix07) and Going Deeper with ASP.NET AJAX. There was little new in the Patterns and Practices presentation, maybe it was just me thinking it would have been cool to hear about an RSS Application Block in the works. The sessions on Silverlight and Ajax were very instructive though, and got me all hopped up on the Microsoft sugar.
My wife and I had a date night some days later and while I rarely talk about my geek interests with her, I mentioned over an antipasta salad that I really liked where Microsoft technology was going and that with Silverlight they're going to kick Adobe's butt. The last time we had a conversation in which I was similarly enthusiastic about Microsoft technology was when I told her about COM in 1997.
The point is, the roadshow with Bob and Chris was excellent, and while I hadn't met Bob until that day, Chris Bowen reinforced that fact that he's the nicest guy in New England. He also has become a phenomenal Microsoft Developer Evangelist for us lucky geeks in the Northeast region.