Week ago I had a chance to be at one of the best Ukrainian conferences for the recent time. Awesome conference, awesome presenters, awesome people, awesome uneta plus.

PPhoto by Mike Chaliy

Conference was far from my home in faraway city Kharkiv. I’ve been there once, when delivering MEF talk last year at ITJam2010. Even location kept the same:

Now more on conference itself. It started with keynote from two maybe most known ms guys in Ukraine – Dmitriy Nikonov and Serhiy Baidachni.

I cannot say that keynote was structured and well organized speech, it was more improvising, but having those two guys rescued it. They definitely are not new in field of presenting something, so auditory listened with attention, and all get acquainted with what’s next. Especially I really enjoyed stuff now available in TFS. It is getting matured over time.

Following presentation I attended was about Silverlight and XNA and how they live together in WP7 Mango. It wasn’t deep dive into things in Silverlight or XNA, but I enjoyed observing small UFO flying thought the auditory (background was transmitted from phone camera).

“Every game consists with 3-4 parts at each level. They are load and unload. Between those is while loop that has two calls – update game world and render game world.” – said Alex Golesh*. Now in WP 7.5 we can render both Silverlight and XNA in same application. I found this msdn page well informative.

Sharepoint for internet sites gives good business solution. I was able to see Sharepoint in action. Marat showed how we can start with file->new project and proceed to completed site, designed in sharepoint designer. Also some bits about authorization and authentication in sharepoint, and I felt like I’m guru in sharepoint… NO! I still think it is complex and not clear, but Microsoft actively pushes this product. Personally I think, that even if it is great product, it is not something that you would want to listen at programmers conference.

Lunch. Oh yeah, I really appreciate guys, who organized this event, as I could eat tasty (no really!) food without leaving conference. I guess money I paid for conference has something to do with taste of food, but believe me – it worth to pay more and get normal food.

I also attended presentation on entity framework, which consisted with two parts and was delivered in English by Diego Vega. Man, if you are reading this, you have to know – you rocked! I found this presentation to be best structured and most fulfilled with information on its topic.

Also I’m bit disappointed that I didn’t saw that amazing luster of Dmitriy Kostylev. Everyone who was in section 2 listening to him were literally excited. Ah… sad I missed that hardcore SQL optimization wisdom.

Another thing made this event different – so called “round table”. All of the speakers were gathered at the scene answering questions from auditory. I enjoyed this part as well, but left before the end, as I had train back to home.

Organizers of even asked few times about feedback. They want to hear more about what can be improved in this event, what was great and what wasn’t that much great. Here are few of my subjective thoughts:

1. Lower price a bit. I think more people will attend if price would be something more moderate, but who knows… you tried to balance between number of attendees and price, not me. I was frustrated about showroom not being full.
2. How about more sections, so I can choose if I get overview of sharepoint, tfs, or if I get flood of hardcore wp7 stuff. I just want more clear vision on what I can grasp from one or other presentation, because in some topics I feel myself confident and need advanced level, respectively in some I need introductory level.
3. Personally I would like to see more foreigners, like Diego. I don’t know if it is hard to have them on event, but if you bring someone like Hanselman, I bet I will visit you even I have to pay more and travel longer.
4. I’m not sure it worth complaining but why not Kyiv?

Despite of what I listed above uneta plus really was different sort of event of those I visited ever before because of extremely awesome presenters and great organization. Well done!

* This is how I remembered his words. I don’t promise I didn’t misinterpret something.