As I’ve blogged before, I’m taking a pass on PDC this year. Simply put: It’s not in my budget this year. I wouldn’t mind going, but…there’s only so much room on my credit cards and right now my medical bills are taking precedence.
However, not going has not stopped me from thinking about what I’d like to do if I actually went to PDC. Here’s my top 10 list (in no particular order) that details some of the sessions I’d like to attend, people I’d like to talk with, or activities I’d like to participate in:
1. Attend: Windows 7: Developing Multi-touch Applications, presented by Reed Townsend, Anson Tsao. The description: “In Windows 7, innovative touch and gesture support will enable more direct and natural interaction in your applications. This session highlights the new multi-touch gesture APIs and explains how you can leverage them in your applications.” Why do I want to attend this session? Over the last six months or so I’ve been dabbling behind the scenes with multi-touch. Nothing to show yet and nothing I can share outside of saying that there are some very clever thngs you can do with multi-touch to provide some very condensed user interactions. Think in terms of touch actions that are on par with keyboard hot-key combinations. The issue here is going to be around standardization though and discoverability, so I’m quite curious to see where Microsoft sees multi-touch going in terms of its implementation.
2. Attend: Developing for Microsoft Surface, by Brad Carpenter, Robert Levy. Description: “This session introduces the newly available Microsoft Surface SDK. Hear about the unique attributes of Microsoft Surface computing, dive into vision-based object recognition and core controls like ScatterView, and learn how the Surface SDK aligns with the multi-touch developer roadmap for Windows 7 and WPF. Additionally, learn how you can become a part of the expanding partner ecosystem for Microsoft Surface and leverage your existing investments in WPF and Visual Studio to build engaging end user applications. Attendees of this session will receive access to the Microsoft Surface SDK.” Why attend? Although I’m probably never going to own a Surface system, I’m absolutely convinced that we’re on the cusp of a convergence here in terms of user interactions standards on multi-touch notebooks, desktops, smartboards, and Surface-like devices. I’m very curious to see what Microsoft is providing here for developers. Is it very device focused? Or is there a broader strategy going on here. My fingers are crossed for the latter.
3. Attend one or more Live Mesh sessions. I’m a strong believer in the power and simplicity of the Mesh concept and as such I’d like to see what techniques Microsoft has up its sleeves. Right now my top two Mesh sessions I’d like to attend are: “Live Services: Notifications, Awareness, and Communications,” and “Live Services: The Future of the Device Mesh.”
4. Attend a foundation session on Cloud Computing. Sometimes I’m not too sure where Microsoft is going with a technology and cloud computing is one of them. Attending an overview session on Cloud Services would help me see the big picture here.
5. Talk with WPF team members. Many times when I attend an event like PDC, I get a lot out of talking with people outside of sessions. This year I’d really like to bump into someone at Microsoft that works on or knows a lot about the document services (such as, flow document, page document) classes in WPF. I’m talking deep knowledge here. I want to share with them how I’d like to see these classes augmented a bit and whether they have some tricks or approaches that I might use to get around some limitations in them as I create my electronic workbooks.
6. Talk with Windows 7/WPF font team members. I want to get into deep details about the font capablities provided in Windows and WPF. If WPF/XAML/etc are to be used in electronic books–particularly in education–we need math capabilities built in and standard. Yes, anyone can create their own tech here as I have, but some kind of Windows standard will go a long ways to making Windows and WPF first tier choices for developers when it comes to developing apps and content for learning–a growing area of Tablets and technology.
7. Check out the MSR demoes. I can’t help but dream about and explore new ideas and I absolutely love seeing what other people are doing. It’s inspiring.
8. Count Tablets. Yeah, this is a goofy hobby, but I can’t help it. I like getting a sense of how many people are using Tablet PCs–particularly at a Microsoft event.
9. Check out the Hands On Lab. Although spending time in the HOL can eat up a fair amount of time, there’s almost always at least one lab that gets me thinking. I never can predict what it’ll be, but I’m always glad I checked it out.
10. Meet random people. Every time I’ve gone to a conference I’ve walked away meeting at least one person I never would have met otherwise that gives me something to think about. Sometimes it’s when I’m taking a break sitting on a couch, sometimes sitting next to a person on a shuttle, sometimes bumping into someone in the elevator, sometimes while eating a meal. Many times these random conversations can be the most rewarding because they are so unexpected–particularly in terms of the value I get out of them.
Oh, I guess there’s a #11 too: I’m eager to see who’s exhibiting what in the expo area. It’s a quick way of accessing where the market currently is.
While I’m at it, there are two sessions I’m very disappointed not to see in the PDC’s list of new Windows 7 features being discussed: 1) Something around supporting webcams and vision processing and 2) Talk of more ink or ink recognition capabilities for Tablets.
PDC will be the first time we really get a look at what is new for Windows 7 and I was hoping that I’d see these two tech items somewhere.
As to #1, the issue is that webcams are becoming more and more standard on PCs–particularly notebooks. Unfortunately, up to this point Windows hasn’t offered much in terms of taking advantage of these built in cameras. Intel probably has the best library up to this point, called OpenCV. Microsoft needs something along these lines. Personally, I’d go even further pushing camera technologies, but I’d be satisfied with a little something at PDC to at least get the ball rolling. A good start would be a built in virtual camera driver for Windows. If not that, I’d take a WPF library hardware accelerated for processing and analyzing images.
In terms of #2, well, what can I say? What about more shape recognition? Or a componentized TIP with a correction UI that programmers can reuse?