NDC London 2013 – Day 1

KeyNote with Dan North – JackStones: the Journey to Mastery (@tastapod)

Dan’s talk was about how you go about becoming a Master at something and was very insightful, Dan talked about a lot of cool stuff and talked about learning how you learn to become at whatever it is your trying to master.

Dan described some of the many facets of craftsmanship and talks about trying to figure out exactly what the craft is that we programmers do.

Day 1 – Cleaning up Code Smell by Venkat Subramaniam (@venkat_s)
The first talk I attended was Cleaning Up Code Smell by Venkat Subramaniam – his talk was covering ways to identify code smell, how to clean them up. We will also discuss proactive ways to avoid smells in the first place.

Venkat is a superb speaker and covered a lot within 1 hour, his talk was well delivered and he cracked a few good jokes along the way, very entertaining talk.

Day 1 – Simple.Web 101 by Mark Rendle (@markrendle)
The second talk I attended was Simple.Web 101 by Mark Rendle – his talk was covering his .NET/Mono web framework Simple.Web.

Simple.Web applies the SOLID design principles to web application development, and makes building web applications an experience of the deepest joy. Simple.Web makes keeping your code clean, and building real REST/HATEOAS APIs.

Mark talked about why he wrote Simple.Web, showed us some of the code and then showed off some examples of how to use Simple.Web in an application

Day 1 – Introduction to Windows Azure Part I and II by Scott Guthrie (@scottgu)
The third and fourth talks I attended was Introduction to Windows Azure Part I by Scott Guthrie

Scott gave a two part talk which provided an overview of Windows Azure – including a number of demos, and how you can take advantage of it to build great applications in the cloud. His talk was a superb introduction to what Azure is and how you can leverage Windows Azure to build great applications. As always his talks were very informative, every question was given a detailed answer and was a really great way to learn about what Azure can do.

Day 1 – Windows Azure Essentials by Michele Leroux Bustamante (@michelebusta)
The fifth talk I attended was Windows Azure Essentials by Michele Leroux Bustamante

Michele’s session was aimed at getting you up to speed on the essential features developers should be aware of, and how to apply them in practical scenarios on all aspects of Windows Azure.

Michele showed off the differences between web sites and cloud services, as well as other practical tips for building Azure apps such as storing content, sending email, working with queues and choosing the right technology, and collecting important metrics for visibility into application health.

Day 1 – Why Agile doesn’t scale – and what you can do about it by Dan North (@tastapod)
The sixth and final talk I attended was Why Agile doesn’t scale – and what you can do about it by Dan North

Dan talked about shared guiding principles, a clear vision and a common understanding enable what he called contextual consistency. He also talked about delivery assurance, governance and portfolio management in the enterprise.

Was a very interesting talk and a nice end to the day.