David Gardiner - MVP Summit

Microsoft MVP Summit 2024

2024-03-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Redmond for the 2024 Microsoft MVP Summit! I was last here in 2019 and was all booked to return in 2020, but something significant happened around that time that you might be aware of. The event pivoted to virtual in 2020, but since last year has resumed allowing in-person attendance too. I was a virtual participant last year, but this year I've made the big trip over the pond.

I flew to Seattle via Sydney and San Francisco. It is a long way to come, and I didn't sleep very much (hard to get comfortable, plus we had quite a bit of turbulence), though I did end up in a row all to myself (so at least I could stretch out a bit!)

Narelle kindly lent me her Sony WH1000XM4 noise-cancelling headphones for the trip, and they were brilliant. Air travel can be quite noisy, and they did a great job reducing the background noise and were comfortable to wear for extended periods. Do not fear, I will return them when I get home though!

One hiccup on the trip apparently happened while I was recharging my phone at the San Francisco airport while waiting for my connecting flight. The boarding gate opened and I grabbed my phone and charger and jumped in line. It was only later after I'd landed in Seattle and unpacked at the hotel that I discovered that my US to Australian power adapter was missing. It must still be sitting in that power point back in the San Francisco airport lounge. I put a call for help out to my fellow MVPs and not only got offers of spare adapters (huge thanks to Aussie MVP Benjamin Elias), but also some suggestions as to where I might buy a replacement (The Container Store at Bellevue had this adapter, though it is quite a bit more expensive than the $AU6.50 you'd pay for one from Bunnings). Lesson learned: Next time I travel, I'll pack some spare adapters!

I'm staying at The Residence Inn Seattle Bellevue. It's really close to the Microsoft campus at Redmond (a nice walk for me when weather permits, and Seattle does have a reputation for inclement weather). Rather than a big multistory hotel, the rooms here are in one of 15 cute houses. Your space is self-contained with cooking facilities included. In previous years I stayed in downtown Bellevue (right near all the shops and services), but I like the change.

Today (Monday) there were some pre-summit sessions on AI (they weren't under NDA so I can tell you that!), but tomorrow the summit proper begins and by default, all content will be private.

I'm looking forward to learning a heap, catching up with MVP friends and making new connections.

A big thanks to SixPivot for supporting my attendance at the MVP Summit this year.

I'll start the homeward journey on Friday evening. As nice as it is to be here, it will be good to get home again too.

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COVID-19

2020-03-18T14:00:00.000+10:30

Wow, that escalated fast. In the space of just a few weeks:

The MVP Summit trip to Seattle and Redmond was cancelled (and replaced with a virtual conference).
My daughter's school long anticipated school trip to Spain has been cancelled/deferred.
Massive government interventions.
People are dying.
Many people (particularly those in service industries) are (or soon will be) doing it really tough.
Our family is increasing our social distance as much as possible.
I'm planning to run the next few months of ADNUG as online virtual meetings.
I'm now working from home for the forseeable future. I appreciate that my job allows me to do that - not everyone has that option.

To avoid being cooped up in the house the entire day, the last couple of mornings before starting work I've gone for a short walk around the neighbourhood with my other daughter. It emulates my walk to the bus stop. Hopefully we can make it a regular thing.

Apparently my legs are a bit longer than hers, so a short break on a seat in the park along the way is required :-)

This is going to be a very disruptive time. Things aren't too bad (yet) where I live, but the stories from overseas are quite scary. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones.

March update

2020-03-06T15:00:00.000+10:30

January and February have come and gone, and March is now well underway. Autumn seems to have definitely hit Adelaide, though I wonder if there might still be some warmer weather around before Winter arrives? Time will tell.

Out of the ordinary

This year was the first in a long time that we didn't take part in the Tour Down Under community ride. The route wasn't particularly inspiring this year, so we gave it a miss. Hopefully 2021 will be better and the Gardiner boys will be back in lycra, raring to go!
I was all booked to fly over to Seattle/Redmond to attend Microsoft's annual MVP Summit, but it was announced this week that it has been cancelled, and an online/virtual event will be run in its place. Thank Coronavirus for making this one of many large events that have been impacted. So, I'm staying in Adelaide instead of cramming myself into an international economy seat for 24 hours (plus the return flight home). As I said on Twitter, it is disappointing but I think Microsoft made the right call considering the circumstances.

Also interesting to read about Microsoft asking their Redmond-based employees to work from home (if possible) for the rest of March.

ADNUG

The Adelaide .NET User Group is back for 2020. There's been huge interest in next week's meeting, which is great to see. I'm hoping to fill out the speaker schedule for the next few months. Do get in touch if you'd like to present to the group (and that can be in-person, or remote via Skype/Teams).

If I have one wish for the group, it's that I could find someone(s) to share the organising with. It would be good to have some load balancing (or at least a fail-over cluster!) Related to that, we've actually launched the ADNUG 2020 Member Survey. Please share your thoughts (and be in the running for a $100 book voucher).

I must say it's been really great to have Simon and Kristine from Encode Management on-board as both sponsors and supporters - and I know they're also working with other meetups in Adelaide too. It would be easy (and I think it has happened in the past) that sponsors just give some money, or might just pop their head in, but the folks from Encode are regular attendees and are often one of the last to leave after helping pack up. That sincerity and encouragement count for a lot in my book. And speaking of books, it's Encode that are putting up the aforementioned book voucher. Awesome!

DDD Adelaide 2020

I caught up with Andrew this week to kick of planning for DDD Adelaide 2020, with our traditional 'DDDumplings' lunch meeting. We should really get Dumpling King on board as a major sponsor :-)

MVP Summit 2016

2016-11-13T22:46:00.001+10:30

I’ve just returned from my second Microsoft MVP Summit held in Bellevue and Redmond, Washington (just outside Seattle). I had an awesome time!

I flew over on Saturday going via Brisbane and Vancouver. It was drizzly in Seattle when I arrived (not uncommon I know), but not so wet that I couldn’t spend a bit of time walking around downtown, getting a few souvenirs for the family and generally trying to stay awake as long as I could with the plan to try and go to sleep at right time. That wasn’t easy!

I’d stayed in Seattle the first night, but the summit was over at Bellevue and at Microsoft’s Redmond campus, so I caught the bus up there on Sunday.

I stayed at the Bellevue Hyatt, which was very nice (and convenient as that was also where registration and some of the off-campus events were being held).

Sunday afternoon there were some optional “pre-event” workshops that I attended.

Monday through Wednesday, I attended technical sessions hosted by the various Microsoft Product Teams at Redmond Campus. These started at 8am, so I was up bright and early to grab breakfast and jump on the shuttle buses to get from Bellevue to Redmond in time.

One unexpected surprise was to be one of a handful of MVPs to receive a special token of appreciation for contributing to open source projects connected to the .NET Foundation.

I believe some of the technical sessions were recorded with the intention that where they don’t cover NDA content they’ll be published to Channel 9. Also, you should watch out for the Microsoft Connect() event happening this week.

Thursday was a bit different. Still an 8am start, but for my area (Visual Studio and Development Technologies), Jeff Fritz (who had been coordinating the previous three days) organised a day-long hackathon.

I joined the Visual Studio Extensions group and worked on an extension code analyzer, which can check for common mistakes when creating an extension and offer code fixes. The idea for the analyzer came about after getting some advice on another of my extensions the previous night from Mads Kristensen (Microsoft Web Tooling and Visual Studio Extension author extraordinaire) and Justin Clareburt (expat Aussie and Senior Program Manager for Visual Studio Extensibility). You can see my progress on Github. After a little bit more polish, I hope to publish the analyzer to NuGet (and yes, I even spelled it with a ‘z’ 😀 )

Jeff tweeted about one of the other extensions produced at the hackathon, which integrates with the new Surface Dial. Very cool!

During the MVP Summit hackathon, Nico implemented a Visual Studio extension for the Surface Dial as a debugging tool https://t.co/P2NWS77WWH

— Jeff Fritz (@csharpfritz) November 11, 2016

Another highlight was going down to visit the Microsoft Store in the Bellevue shops and trying out the Surface Studio and having snowball fight with their HTC Vive Virtual Reality headset (photo taken by fellow MVP Alan Burchill).

Thursday night I headed home, arriving back Saturday afternoon. There were some tight connections, but staff at both Vancouver and Brisbane were able to ensure I (and my baggage) made my flights. Phew.

Special thanks to RL Solutions for supporting me attending the summit and especially for my family for allowing me to be away for the week.