Gather round the campfire friend and I'll tell you a harrowing tale of a city gone wrong and 5,000 warriors armed with C#, khaki pants, and Blackberrys. I've made my escape just recently. I'm still a little shaky, but at least I'm alive.
Now, I find Las Vegas a wretched place to be -- probably because there's so much about it that I don't like. I hate how plastic it is. I hate seeing all those old timers with slack faces robotically feeding the slots at 9:00 a.m. I hate that my clothes -- even those shorts I never wore -- smell like cigarette smoke when I get home.
I just don't dig it.
A few massive blocks down from the New York, New York hotel where I'm staying is the Mandalay Bay resort. James Taylor is playing there tomorrow. Shocking. Vegas is not a place James Taylor should be. It's the type of place he should write a great anthem against.
Las Vegas is so bad that I didn't take a single photo. Me.
What's that? If I dislike it so much, what the heck was I doing there? For three freakin' nights no less?
Well, Mandalay Bay is also the location OpenForce '07 -- the first North American gathering of DotNetNuke developers and users. OpenForce is a wee portion of a gargantuan development conference for computer programmers, IT professionals, and random flotsam like myself. In fact, it's just one of eight different conferences happening simultaneously. More than 200 different sessions in all.
It's impressive, but oh so intimidating. These guys know their stuff. Try as I might to stand on my tippy toes, my mental height falls far short of what's necessary to ride this attraction.
The keynote gives this away. Held in the massive ballroom at the hotel, the room is filled with literally 5,000 chairs, all neatly arranged.
"No way they'll fill this place," I chuckle (I'm already getting good at talking to myself at this point).
But -- whodathunkit -- it soon fills to overflow with mostly earnest-looking men in their late twenties to early 50s. (No pocket-protector jokes, please. They have far more variety than that, yet still possess some unifying trait I can't pinpoint.)
And all these "smart guys" are rapt when the speaker -- you know, "Guzz" from Microsoft -- says the new SQL Server 2008 will have geo-spatial tagging, cross platform scalability, and a full frappe setting for both enterprise and business solutions using the new Silverlight app with chrome display, revolving headlights, and fully articulated tank treads. I think I might have some of the exact terminology wrong, but it's a lot to take in. All the thousands of heads nod up and down except mine. "Oh man," I think to myself, "I'm screwed."
"Guzz" goes on to say how the proof of the program's vitality was that the 'softies are eating their own dog food despite how impossible it sounds to write an application using the very same application -- you know, like it's time travel or something. All the heads nod up and down. A few people even chuckle merrily at this small bit of jest -- a trend that picks up volume when he says it's like eating your own dog food before you even have a dog.
Oh, you crazy kidder. Stop! Stop it!
I stumble out of the room hoping the next day would be better. Fortunately, it is. Much. In fact, there are a few instances when I not only follow what's being talked about, but I actually get excited by what's being said. This is gratifying and yet slightly troubling. Perhaps I'm being assimilated.
The crowd is half Borg already. During the breaks everyone -- and I do mean everyone -- cracks open a laptop. Every outlet -- and I mean every outlet and there are hundreds -- is docked with an electronic umbilicus connected to a device that shines a ghostly glow on the faces of the developers, hunched over as they are on the floors, under tables, and in the far corners. "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."
But there are moments of genuine pleasure, too, like hearing from the creator of DNN himself that social networking is central to the upcoming DNN v5, dubbed "Cambrian." Or when I actually meet Lee Sykes, a man whose video tutorials shone god-like light down on problems I thought were intractable. It was also cool to talk to other mortals using the DNN platform with success and hear the enthusiasm we share for what's coming down the pike.
But, my gosh, some of workshops are impenetrable, inscrutable.
Consider these actual titles:
+ "Incorporating Com Objects Into Your .Net Compact Framework Application."
+ "Upgrading Your DTS-Based Solution To SSIS"
+ "WPF In Windows Forms And Vice Versa"
And vice versa?! No way man!
Then there are the ones I went to:
+ "DotNetNuke Business Opportunities"
Actually easy (well, easier) to follow.
+ "Introduction To DotNet Nuke Skinning"
Surprisingly, this had nothing at all to do with taxidermy.
+ "Creating Accessible DotNetNke Skins Using CSS"
Damn good. No joke.
+ "Site Administration Best Practices"
Another real whizbang.
+ "DotNetNuke Modules: Beyond The Browser."
Beyond my comprehension, too.
+ "Data Exchange And User Personalization."
Painful. The woman behind me is gently snoring. The six guys in front of me are hunched over their Crackberrys, trolling for porn or whatnot, as I pray for an earthquake or bomb threat.
+ "DotNetNuke Perfomance -- Why? What? How?"
Good, but hard for a punter like me to follow. Although it was nice to hear about how they're speeding up the backbone by limiting the number of executables.
Eek gads! Backbone? Executables? Maybe I have been assimilated.
In reality, the whole week was more valuable and more instructional than I'm letting on. It certainly expanded my horizons. I'm grateful to Surf Expo for giving me the opportunity to attend. And yet it cemented all the reasons why I chose to work in the beach lifestyle/boardsports industry in the first place -- the same reasons you probably know firsthand as well. Sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone to realize just how incredible our business is.
