(due tue the fact that it’s an international event and the talks are in english, this post will be in english too)
Ok, some Key facts first, Unterschleissheim is really really NOT Munich, it is more like in a Far Far away Country and this especially concerns the Dolce. It is a very nice location but i don’t like the fact that i needed more than 20 Minutes to get here from the Trainstation and almost 48 Minutes from Dachau. Maybe i should have taken the Bus. So, this is the part i don’t like, let’s get to the event itself.
There is enough place here for over 200 people, but as far as i heard there are around 170 people here at the Webcamp Munich.
In one word, sweet.
Update:
I forgot to mention one thing, the Attendees and their Spirit.
Except for the Speakers and one of the other Evangelists that was loitering around, i knew no one, which is quite funny, cause normally at WebEvents, i know at least 30-50% of the Folks. Might have something to do with the .net-Environment and my own more PHP-based Origins. Anyway, i liked the second Day, the Hackathon. It has a kind of concentrated Atmosphere and it wasn’t that structured, so that not everyone was running to the foodtables at the same time and you had some more time to talk outside.
I can’t write much about the Talk, because i hadn’t listened the whole time to the two speakers Christian Wenz and Jon Galloway. Why? Because i had some work to do for my Communities. They talked about MVC in asp.net a lot, that’s for sure. And it was, as far as i heard, very interesting and you definitly have to take a look. Because finally there are Alternatives to PHP besides Python, Ruby and Java. The last time i have done something in asp, around seven years ago, i hated it. It needed the IIS and the IIS seven years ago, just sucked.
Now in 2010 it seems like asp.net is finally useful. Christian asked around who knows MVC and there where around 10 people that heard of it (including me). But when he asked who uses it on a regular basis, there was only one hand (again just me) – Chris then quoted me "ah, the PHP guy" – which got him some laughter.
Is the MVC Design Pattern really only known in the PHP-Community? It is so damn usefull guys, really. Learn it
The two Days where organized as a Tutorial/Workshop Combination, where Day 1 was the Tutorial about VisualStudio and asp.net MVC and a Pitch, every Attendee could give, and Day 2 was mostly a Workshop/Hackathon. I missed the pitch at Day 1 and i only attended the first half of Day 2. The reason for this is simple: After three hours of trying to get VisualStudio Express running in my VirtualBox on Windows 7 Enterprise, i succeeded and then gave up. My Webconnection was reeeeeaaally slow, the Hotel DOLCE ones was reeeeaaally crappy too and so i could not get any additional work done in the time which was reeeeally not good.
Fact One:
Tethering with your iPhone is only funny if you have 3G running and not good if you want to download Parts of the .net-Framework!
Fact Two:
If you’re telling everyone that you have a "Highspeed Broadband Connection" in your Conference Rooms and in your Hotel it should not crash when 170 People are dialing into the Wireless. If so, at least have 150 Patchcables (1-2 m) you could hand out to free the Wireless. It is really THAT easy guys.
And Broadband is not a 10 Mbit ADSL. 100 Mbit Cable is more the kind of "Highspeed" i would like to see.
Fact Three:
This is a thing i want to tell the Attendees. If you get three emails called "Attendence Reminder" and there is a large highlighted RED area of text, where it tells you to preinstall some software on your laptop … please at least try to do it before you attend the Event. Otherwise the Workshop Day will delay until everyone has installed everything, which, at least in my expirience, doesn’t work out very well.
Ok back to my review of the Webcamp, it was very nice, i had some very nice conversations, i got to know the guy that wrote: http://unicornify.appspot.com – which is really cool, i had pretty good food and at last i want to thank Microsoft for organizing the Webcamp. They made no mistake and they really have loads of interesting stuff to tell. Hope you have time to attend one of their TechTalks, when they are in your town. Or visit msdn.microsoft.com – the Microsoft Developer Network with interesting Blogs, Webcasts and Tools to download.
