Gert Drapers on Yukon
This was an event outside the PDC and I had an invite for the same. I had also registered earlier for this via the SSWUG web-site. The session was held by Gert Drapers, a member of the SQL Server development team and an architect. Gert is known to have developed the SQL Query Analyzer and other areas of SQL Server. The place where this was held was near my hotel and I was able to walk over to the place. One interesting meeting that I had was with the LA .NET users group head and some of its members. I was able to relate very well with this group, since I'm a member of the Bangalore (India) .NET group too and it was interesting to share some experiences.
The session started with a core introduction to Yukon and I was begining to feel whether I made a mistake of coming over, since I've already worked with Yukon. But, as the session progressed it actually became interesting as Gert delved into some interesting areas of Yukon and its enhancements. Some of the cool features that we discussed were the new XML capabilities, T-SQL enhancements and .NET programming. When I was initially working with Yukon, I was forced to code most of the .NET procedures the hard way, but with Whidbhey, things become a lot simpler, since the shell is already there for you and you just need to fill out the pieces.
Overall, the session was a very good experience and the pizza's were good too!! I finally returned to my hotel at around 10PM and crashed to wake up for the next day at PDC.