I have spent my first couple of days working in the Connected Systems Infrastructure (CSI) track cabana. My "focus" has been on Enterprise Services, .NET Remoting, and System.Transactions (new for 2.0). I haven't seen a lot of questions on these topics -- mostly BizTalk and Host Integration Services -- but it has been fun interacting with those who are curious about upgrading to WSE and Indigo.
What I really enjoy is meeting people that I haven't seen for awhile as well as meeting those I have only "met" through email or IM or reading a book or blog. Because I have been working in the Cabana area, I haven't been to a session yet. Wednesday will be my day to explore, though. I am really looking forward to Aaron Margosis' security talk in the morning.
Some other news of note:
1) Paul Flessner announced a ship date of the week of November 7th for Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006.
2) SQL Server 2005 June CTP is available at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/downloads. Of course, I got a real CD -- no download for me! :)
One other highlight for me this Tuesday afternoon is talking to those responsible for System.Transactions to learn about some of the untapped possibilities of this new namespace in .NET 2.0. I hope to learn more, play with the bits more (System.Transactions are essential code complete at this point), and start writing (again) on this cool topic.
