Ahmed Salijee

Being a developer originally from Dirtbin (erm I mean Durban), I'd say its generally too much salt air and humidity which results in being too relaxed and laid back.

Throw out a couple of freebies and they'll come running. ;)

Maybe we are bored with the content. I'm looking for level 400+ and maybe some other 300 in other areas. However, although you may argue that these events are marked at high levels, the last thing that I want to see is an "architectual discussion" when it is actually a slide on how to use a product. Which IMHO, anything with "MSDN" in the title tends to always be like that: a teaching on how to use a product.

In addition, you have to analyze the market. For example: a session on the compact framework? Please be realistic on what the market (South Africa's market) demands. We are struggling to get 3G out of the door and although Pocket PC's have been around for a long time, only the uber geeks have them: not your everyday person.

"Leveraging Office as a Smart Client – featuring IBF and InfoPath"
Again, you are targetting a small group.

Honestly, I would pitch my face just to show some support but at that moment, I might be out of town in Lesotho.

I agree with Justin on this...

Many of the 300+ sessions are really basic. I was just commenting at work today how much the advanced stuff is lacking. Even buying books has become a joke. Everything is geared at newbies and mid-level devs. There ain't much for the more advanced guys. I find a lot of these sessions start off well, but they eventually just degenerate into some bloke reading code to a group of people. I could easily sit at home and do that myself (about a million times faster too).

In all fairness... the advanced stuff would target a small group, and that would leave you in the same position as now. I find there's no real direction to helping developers progress. Each session is independent and not always related to the next. In my honest opinion... if a dev goes to level 300 sessions now and is still going to level 300 sessions in 3-5 months, they aren't progressing.

You definitely have a very difficult job here, because there are a lot of developers that are happy being average. I'm fortunately not one of them. I need to learn something new all the time. My biggest stimulation is the challenges I give myself and the challenges I get from work.

The audience that is targetted is usually pretty small. Durban does have a smaller dev community (from my experiences), but the devs that are here often find the sessions (including TechEd) too basic. Maybe something more advanced would be useful. How about a decent session on threading and asynchronous operations? I'm sure many people don't understand that and they really should!

I don't want this to come across badly. I think you guys are making a good effort. I think Durban will always be a challenge though. Best of luck!

One more thing... I think the sessions are often focused on products rather than technologies, e.g.

"Leveraging Office as a Smart Client - featuring IBF and InfoPath" (there's about 8 products in the title alone)

"WSE and BizTalk" (BizTalk)

"Visual Studio 2005" (why not focus on .NET 2.0?)

I'm really not criticising here... I'm trying to be constructive. So please don't take this the wrong way. Less product focus and more technology focus would be very good.

Yes, I agree with Stuart that focussing on advanced subjects should, by right, limit the audience. However, with the independent Patterns and Practices sessions going on, we are having a good turn out for informal discussions. I think there were three of them opposite to our table, two of my co-workers at the head of the table and about five guys to my left and Scott on the other head of the table. That brings us to 11 of us at an informal gathering.

As I mentioned many times at the sessions that I have attended, what I think what will work well is to build a production like small project over a course of four months. That way, we can involve the high end developers guiding the other developers on how to make desions on creating the application. The only thing that is required is moderation on a certain subject such... SOA through remoting, web services and so forth. I find and think that informal sessions with some moderation always have a great atmosphere and I feel that is what Ayal manage to achieve with his audience. It is essentially getting the audience involved instead of spoon feeding them.

"As I mentioned many times at the sessions that I have attended, what I think what will work well is to build a production like small project over a course of four months"

I meant to say: over the course of four to six sessions. Not months. :-S

Don't forget things like Midmar Mile, Comrades, Duzi, Beaches and South Westers also have an impact on the reception you get in Durban!

Durbanites are generally a bunch of apathetic people - when you think of, for eg:- the support we give sports and music events etc.
I also agree with Justin; something like "Leveraging Office as a Smart Client" etc really isn't suited to Durban....so firstly, its more that MS need to choose wisely in terms of what events to run here. Its made trickier by the fact that, as Stuart said, you also need to run the event at the correct level.
But yes Ahmed, the market is much smaller. I went to part 2 of the MSDN event the other day (SOA and BizTalk 2004) and there were 6 of us...compared to 250 in Jhb. That does say something!

Maybe the ratio of contractors to salaried is higher in durban so us guys who are hourly paid can't afford to go and see general interest stuff, we can only go to stuff that is directly applicable to our work. I think you should take a look at the relative success of Ayal's sessions and find out why it was well attended, even though it was technically heavey and dry. I think it is because we could walk out of there and implement it right away.

Thanks for the comments. They are appreciated. I might ping you guys offline to take this further. We do try and balance our sessions in terms of levels, future vs current, niche vs broad etc etc. I for example would disagree that .NET Compact Framework only applies to ubergeeks since we have many people looking at using these devices in business contexts (eg a service technician using a WinCE/PocketPC device to determine his schedule). Remember that a few years an Intro to ASP.NET was probably general interest but today it is a different story. So lots of balancing acts :-)

In the same vein many customers ask us how to get more value from Office and how they can integrate their LOB system with Word and Excel. There are obviously some perception issues on MSDN Essentials etc

So -- if these sessions did not come to Durban, would you guys be really upset?
Also -- do what degree to you think the things you raised apply to the general audience. That is -- do you think all developers think in the same way or is it just 10% or 20% ?
PS - I have spoken to Ayal and we have looked at why these are popular. Part of it is Saturday and part of it is that 1 or 2 companies are really interested in this space (and hence send many people from their company). So we need to start looking at a more horses for courses approach rather than a generic one. In previous years we use to find that if did not do something in Durban (or Cape Town) that we did in Johannesburg that we would gets lots of negative feedback.

"if these sessions did not come to Durban, would you guys be really upset?"

If it was a popular topic on the sessions, yes, we would be upset. However, with these two sessions that are coming up in March, I wouldn't mind if you skipped us with those topics and did something a little different.

Give me a moment to think about the other question. There's so much to say over there... just selecting which will be more homing than the other.

I know of many .NET developers in KZN many of whom I see missing from these sessions. I think there really is not as much scope to release developers here than there is in other regions (specualtion). Certainly places like CTN and JHB have many more developers and certainly the big corporates (who are more likely to release developers for the day) are predominanently based in those 2 locations. We would be a little upset if you skipped us altogether and we would hope for some updating and input as it would help us as a corporate transition (when we make the move).