Made it back to Colorado today, and finally got some time to post a little more about the Dev Summit. Unfortunately we scheduled out flight home at 1:00pm, and could not hit the closing session, so I hope to read other peoples thoughts on that.

Overall, it was a great conference. One thing that I think went over really well was the choice to focus the sessions on 9.2. As with last year, the chance to meet with so many of the ESRI team members and other developers to discuss various development strategies is incredibly valuable. Even with twice the number of attendees, it is certainly the event of the year for ESRI developers.

There are only two suggestions I’d make for next year:

Session Scheduling
Session scheduling is always really difficult, but many of the “Deep Dive” sessions were slotted at the same time. I can see this organization working for people following “tracks”, but I work with  pretty much the entire product line, and there were many sessions that I wanted to attend that I could not. At least the slide decks will be put up on EDN.

Down Time
The sessions were stacked up all day long, with tons of great content, but there were other things going on at the same time – Meet the Teams, Tech Talks, blogging, trying out what you just heard, and just talking with people.

I’d like to see the Dev Summit extended by at least a day – with more repeat sessions on the deep dive topics. This would make the decision to skip a session to meet the team a little easier – you would have a chance to hit a repeat the next day.

.NET SIG Presentation
Thanks to Art Haddad for giving me the opportunity to talk at this meeting. From the feedback I got after the talk, and postings on other sites, it sounds like people enjoyed it. As promised, I’ve uploaded the presentation. If you have any questions about the presentation, use the Contact link at the top of the page.

Download Powerpoint (includes notes)

Thanks to the entire team at ESRI who put these conferences together and make them the great events the are. See you all at the User Conference!