Its Official, Raise Your Glasses, We’re Gonna Party to Damascus

The MDC is over as soon as it has started. We speakers received the most warm thank you and good bye from the attendees as I have ever had.

I spoke for about 7 hours straight. Four sessions with no breaks since the attendees had so many questions.

I had a blast talking to all of the Egyptians. We talked about Egypt’s bid for FIFA in 2010 (World Cup) and politics et al. Lastly we took a boat cruise and I danced with a Belly Dancer at a real Egyptian wedding.

All of the code from my sessions will be on gotdotnet.com soon.

See you all next year!

The New Virus

There is a new email Virus going around. Don’t blame Microsoft or even the person who created the virus. It has been 5 years since the Melissa virus, if users are still propagating the email viruses, then let’s blame them (us).

More info, I already got about 10 emails from friends saying “test” and stuff like that:

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20040127_22.html

Can I Have Some Hummus Please?

Day 1 of the MDC is under way here in Cairo and Bill Gates’ Keynote went over well, his first time in Egypt and first time speaking in the Middle East. While Bill was talking about reliable computing, there was a power outage, we all got a chuckle.

Visited the Grand Pyramids today as well as did some shopping on my spare time. I have been in the country for over 24 hours now and still have not had any hummus. Maybe some soon…

Alexanderia tomorrow and then 4 sessions back to back to back to back on Tuesday.

The Airtrain to Egypt

I leave tonight for the 2004 MDC in Cairo, Egypt. I am going to take the new Airtrain to JFK airport for the first time.

The Airtrain has been a long time coming. I am not a big fan of the Airtrain, since it does not provide a single-seat ride from JFK to Manhattan like the London’s Heathrow Express does. I have a three seat ride to JFK. So to travel from my house on E86th Street:

6 train to 51^st street

Transfer to E Train to Jamaica

Transfer to Airtrain to American Airlines Terminal

While it will only be $7 total to get to JFK in about an hour, I am a little let down that I have to ride three trains to get there. That said it is better than a $40 taxi ride that is going to be stuck in traffic. And in the past I took the A train to Howard Beach, but that was more like 1.5 hours and a two sear ride for $2.

Getting Ready for the Middle East Developers Conference

On Saturday the 2004 MDC starts in Cairo, Egypt. Bill Gates’ keynote is on Sunday and I deliver four sessions (back to back to back to back) on Tuesday. This will be a test of my stamina, I look at this as “power presenting”. My 4th or 5th time to North Africa in the last 2 years (and second visit to Egypt in the last 11 months) has be very excited, so I am sure I can keep up. Plus the attendees in Africa rock. My sessions are:

• ASP .NET DataGrid Drilldown (this is still a fun session!)
• Introduction to XML Features in Yukon (Shut-up Clemens)
• TSQL Enhancements In Yukon
• Caching with ASP .NET

Except for the datagrid, these are all new sessions, the Cache session should be simple but super duper practical. I will cover custom caching and fragmented caching. We will look ever so briefly at the future, but this session is about how to increasing your site’s speed NOW, not when Whidbey ships.

Other RDs will be in the house besides Mr. Gates:

• Patrick Hynds (Boston)
• Abdelmalek Kemmou (Morocco)
• Goksin Bakir (Turkey)
• Selcuk Uzun (Turkey)
• Hossam Khalifa (Egypt)

Tech*Ed 2004 Sessions

The Tech*Ed 2004 Web Site is up and running (register today!) and sessions are already on-line. I have two sessions up and ready to go:

Create Smart XML-Aware Applications with SQL Server “Yukon”

Efficient and Secure Data Retrieval in Your Middle Tier Using Stored Procedures and ADO.NET

Tech*ED in the US and Europe are the technical events of the year (and social gatherings too). Hope to see you there. Can’t wait to do some surfing in La Jolla.

Scottie Boy Wonder

Uber geek, RD for Portland, and all around great guy, Scott Hanselman, spoke at the NYC .NET Developers User Group last night. He spoke about Web Services and the crowd of about 100 loved every minute of it. Amazing that so many people came to see Scott when it was just about zero degrees last night in New York. Scott was not shutting up about his new Microsoft Watch, which I mocked and then compared to my supercool Casio Film Watch that Kathleen gave me for Christmas that has a databank and world time. Scott was so jealous.

DevDays is here!

Microsoft has announced the dates for DevDays in the US and I will be speaking (keynoting w/ Andrew Brust) in New York City on Feb 23rd and Newark, NJ on March 4th. Register now and save money!