Last Saturday I attended DDD8, my third DDD event but my first as a helper. Once again it was held in Building 3 of the Microsoft UK campus at the Thames Valley Park in Reading and SQL Bits again provided two free buses to transport people from the railway station to the event and back again afterwards.

Due to my immanent move (on the Monday!) I opted to travel to and from Reading on the Saturday. This was not my preferred option as I’d much rather of travelled down on Friday and back on Sunday, as this would have enabled me to enjoy the full spread of pre and post event social activities. However, a welcome side effect was that despite a 0500 start I was still a lot fresher than a few of the other delegates.

My journey down from Huntingdon went well and I met up with Gary Short and Rachel Hawley on the bus. As with previous events Microsoft supplied free breakfast rolls, tea and coffee, for everyone once they’d received their badges, although as I’d snacked on a bacon baguette while travelling (by train) I passed on the rolls. During this time I received my official DDD8 shirt, which identified me as a helper/ gofer/ speakers general dogsbody…

As a helper we’d been asked to supply our preferred routes through the sessions, I was allocated my first choices as were all the other helpers I believe. My first session of the day was in Memphis, with Barry Carr for ‘Contractual Obligations: Getting up and running with Code Contracts’, it was here that Barry and I learnt about using the Windows + P shortcut (in Windows 7) to switch projection modes. The audience and I also learnt quickly not to accept the offer of swag from Barry after he tried to maim someone with a Devexpress USB stick! Maybe we were all lucky it wasn’t one of the Rubik’s cubes! An interesting session, which was an improvement on the Prism version I saw a few years ago at a North East Scotland .NET User Group session, although I still can’t see myself using them anytime.

Session two, saw me travel downstairs to Chicago 2 for ‘Commercial Software Development – Writing Software Is Easy, Not Going Bust Is The Hard Bit’ with Liam Westley, a look at some of the problems faced by software development companies and possibly more importantly some suggestions on how to avoid or limit their effects. Even though I don’t own or even work for a software development company, many of the tips were still relevant.

For the third session I was in Everest for ‘An Introduction to Mono’ with Toby Henderson. This was the second time I’d seen Toby deliver this presentation (the first was at DDD7) and I was curious to see what had changed, without a doubt the biggest change was Toby himself, he appeared far more confident in both delivering his session and answering questions from the floor. A perfect example of someone who has developed their speaker skills via the DDD events, I now look forward to seeing Toby with a new session, maybe a more advanced Mono session?

All too soon it was lunchtime and  a mild panic, as for a couple of seconds I thought that I’d missed out on a free lunch, but thankfully I managed to track down a vegetarian lunch, with cheese and tomato sandwiches, result! I then retired upstairs where I met a few of the speakers including Jon Skeet, so no Grok talks for me at this DDD.

After lunch I was back in Chicago 2 for ‘Not Everything is an Object’ with Gary Short, a thought provoking session, which proved too much for Colin Mackay who left partway through for a lie down! I should say that while I enjoyed the session, it probably had a tad too much history and not quite enough code…

I finished off the day in Chicago 1  for ‘A developer’s guide to encryption’ with Barry Dorrans, a great session which overran, due to the inclusion of a series of humorous videos that were definitely not included by Barry, but they were a fitting send off to a DDD stalwart! Interestingly (at least to me) I’d been introduced to some of the encryption techniques mentioned by Barry during my M362 studies last year, albeit implemented with Java. That said the information about which encryption techniques are no longer considered safe is definitely useful.

After I’d returned to Reading I met up with a few of the others (Gary Short, Barry Carr, Rachel Hawley, Andy Gibson and Rob xxx) and enjoyed some fine food and a lively discussion about Objects, although I can’t remember if the person or red wine bottle had the pour method, however, the wine was good! Once we’d finished in the restaurant we headed back to the IBIS bar for a couple of drinks, but all too soon it was time for me to head back to the station for my train home.

All in all an excellent day, but then again what would you expect from a day filled with technology and friends?