I had a chance to catch up on some of the blogs about the second Microsoft Developer Day. You can read Dave’s comments here, and Sarah gives her view from the other side of the lectern.

The debate over Mike Roberts session is still widely split. We talked about it again at work, where we were talking along similar lines to this blog entry on Simons Software Stuff, in that the group discussion was beneficial not least because it gave us confidence in our existing processes. However, Ian has politely described it as a dud on his blog, but as he said, others were less polite! Having said that, whilst I disagree with Ian over that particular session, I certainly share the note of concern he expresses over the popularity of the event, I too hope that Microsoft will continue to support the event – as he said, it is incredible that they support an event where many of the speakers are showing open source alternatives to their products, or exposing flaws in their releases.

We’re also starting to see some pictures coming out. One of the speakers has posted a shot of the audience on their blog entry. If you look closely at the picture you can see that of the nine people from work who went to the day, seven of them are in this session! I am at the end of a block of six of them in the third row, and then Dave is a couple of rows directly behind me.

The session in question was on XSLT and XPath and was presented by probably the most amusing double act of the day, Richard Costall and Dave McMahon. Dave Oliver has described them as Morecambe and Wise, although I think their own description of themselves as the Chuckle Brothers was probably more apt. Whoever you want to compare them to, their delivery certainly livened up what was possibly a fairly dry subject, that from personal experience can be much more frustrating than anything else!