Monday, April 21, 2008

Coolest weekend ever.

Ok... the weather sucked - it was snowing here - but otherwise this weekend was awesome. I got to meet a lot of great people, and some real top minds in the field. Who did I meet? Among others - Brad Abrams (.NETfx team, coauthor of framework guidelines book), Jeremy Miller (the StructureMap guy), Glenn Block (P&P guy), Scott Hanselman (goes without introduction), Martin Fowler (the 'Refactoring' book guy), Charlie Poole (the NUnit guy) ... the list goes on (no offense please if I met you and didn't include you in this list).

I had a wonderful lunch conversation with Brad for about 20-30 minutes over lunch. It's amazing to have someone like Brad come sit down next to you, introduce himself, and then share a one-on-one conversation with you. It'd be like Fisher Black coming and sitting down next to an actuary and introducing himself and asking about your work. It's very hard to not feel intimidated in such a situation, but not only was Brad not intimidating, but he's a really genuinely nice guy to talk to. Hopefully I'll have the luck of meeting him again and having more conversations. hehehe... maybe he'll ask me if I want a job someday :) I can dream, right?

All in all, this is the best work-related event I've ever been to, and it's probably the best weekend of my working life thus far. I definitely consider the 30 minutes I spend with Brad to be the best 30 minutes of my career to this point.

If you ever hear of an 'open spaces' event, I highly recommend you jump on the opportunity to attend. Also, if you ever want to go to ALT.NET events, hopefully I'll see you there.