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.

Yet another time, I’m on .net community conference in Lviv again. This time LvivIT. You know what makes me happy about this? It is understanding that such events are happening more and more often and they become more mature in my native city. Presenters are more and more known guys. This also makes me think that we start witnessing something that is more common to big cities in USA, cities that have few or more technology user groups. At least now I know that we are moving in the right direction. Cool.

This event welcomed presenters from other cities of Ukraine. Below I’m going to list some of my and only my thoughts on all of presentations, without mentioning names of presenters.

1. This man simply rocks, he had absolutely another style of presenting. He doesn’t follow any kind of agenda and even doesn’t have presentation. He simply started with throwing two iPads into auditory with his app started on it. Application is game, that scored first place in marketplace for some period of time, thus man simply has up to 20K per day, and he is delivering his story of success to us. Main thing I got from this presentation is that if you want to succeed, you have to work on things you like and don’t compromise with different bulshit surrounding you. He ended presentation with no special attention to the audience, but started finishing soup he brought instead of lunch (in between of what? or doesn’t he have enough time to eat normally?). Everyone expressed much interest in this person and his game. I saw how much he is proud of it, when he had words with interested guys after presentation. This really inspires.

2. Second presentation was about html4 and html5 & further future of HTML and web technologies, so called web 3.0. During this presentation I got what it means when there is person in audience that takes all words of speaker into criticism and then simply gives hard time to presenter. They almost yelled at each other.

3. Believe me or not, but there was presentation on Agile, when guy said nothing about Agile itself, but gave everyone know that it really works. “AGILE! Yes!” He showed example of SorceForge implementing agile and succeeding. Another portion of presentation were results of surveys on if agile really works. From this presentation I’ve learned about another way of presenting material.

4. I’ve also learned, that presenters have to be ready before the presentation, and not show that they are not up to speed with stuff. Even when you joke about preparing some slide hour ago, you have to cover it with your deep knowledge… Or at least it is my personal thought. Ok, maybe that is because I’m experienced in material of topic presented on fourth presentation.

5. “Silverlight is not dead” first words given from him, latest presenter. He talked about features that will be added to Silverlight 5, like multicolumn text, multi-click, XAML extensions, ancestor, elevated trust, and in-browser elevated trust, graphics improvements, multicore usage, vector printing, 3D with XNA. Also presenter showed known slide on future of SL and Windows 8 with green and blue divisions of world :). Personally I liked this presentation because it clearly and honestly listed things coming in SL. I even think that one of the features can be utilized in project I’m working on now.

To summarize, I want to say that this event really was awesome! I enjoyed it very much! Well done, guys, especially Dima and sponsor and of course presenters!