DOT Net Rocks live in Atlanta

This past Friday night, I had the opportunity to be present at the last stop on the .NET Rocks tour. For those who do not know, .NET rocks is the best pod cast available for .NET developers. I have been listening for a few months now and was so impressed, I went back and downloaded all the shows for the past couple of years. The hosts, Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell give the show a good mix of technology and entertainment, something that is missing among us computer geeks. I was excited to get to watch the recording of one of the shows live. The Road tour began 3 weeks ago on the west coast, hit 15 cities, and ended in Atlanta.

The guest was Brandon Watson, who is responsible for the Windows 7 phone developer experience. I felt extremely fortunate to be at this recording as I am one of the many developers gearing up to write apps for this phone. Being able to hear the podcast first was incredible and having the opportunity to talk to Brandon made the trip well worth it. This phone is going to be incredible from the looks of it and I think it will give the IPhone a run for its money. To find out more about the phone and Mr. Watson, you can visit his blog http://www.manyniches.com/ or if you are interested in developing for this device, visit the Microsoft page http://developer.windowsphone.com/ .

If you are developer in Microsoft technologies, you should also consider subscribing to the podcast available at http://www.dotnetrocks.com. The shows are informative and downright fun to listen to. During the show, they go over selected .NET framework classes (briefly), read emails from listeners and interview relevant guests. The shows are about an hour long (perfect for my commute at this time).

After the show was recorded, we were treated to Carl's musical talents as he performed "Hesitation Blues" as done by Hot Tuna. As a guitar player myself, I really enjoyed the song (thanks Carl) and headed to ITunes when I got home to get more of Hot Tuna's music. Also, I must admit, I experience a first when one of the door prizes was a Fender Jazz bass guitar, of which I was one coin toss away from winning. :( I have seen some off the wall door prizes but that has to be the most off-the-wall-iest. Another treat was a demonstration by Richard of the testing features Visual Studio Ultimate and an attempted demo of Silverlight Streaming. W.C. Fields once said never share the stage with an animal or a child. I think you could add a temperamental broadband connection to the list as well. This is truly a great tool and I am excited to be able to work with it.

All in all, I was several hours later getting home than I told my wife I was going to be but I was having such fun, I figured it was worth getting in trouble. I didn't get in trouble but if I had, it would have been worth it. Thanks to Carl and Richard for putting together a great show, taking it on the road, and letting us experience it in a way we couldn't have experienced it otherwise. Thanks for a fun evening and I'll keep listening to .NET Rocks.