Overall the conference was just OK.  For the cost (even if you got suckered into the $75 fee) I don't have alot of room to complain but here is a short review of my experience: 

The Good

 1.  "Some" Good presenters.  I specifically liked Caleb Jenkins presentation on DI.  Here are a few items I wrote down during his presentation:

• Spark Energy Drink
• Unity "CodePlex"
• DevelopingUX.com

The Bad 

1.  Lack of vendors/sponsors.  I think there were maybe 3. I like free stuff.

2.  ...Um seemed a little chaotic during registration.

3.  Stick on badges? Combined with no free lunches...most nametags were ripped or missing after going out for lunch.

4.  The silverlight track was a little weak.  It would have been nice to have more advanced topics instead of assuming everybody was new to silverlight.

The Ugly

1.  Teasing us with free coffee and breakfast was just wrong (the bankruptcy conference had it).  I know coffee was offered after the first session but c'mon.

2.  Parking was bad.

 

I had a bit a free time last week to play around with silverlight.  A couple of observations based on my 2 hours of playtime are:

1.  Silverlight/XAML in general feel alot like Adobe FLEX 
2.  coding for silverlight won't make sense until you understand it is a CLIENT side technology so you will need to work with data connectivity just like you would with Javascript (making a AJAX call) or FLEX/FLASH making a call to a webservice.  So since silverlight runs on the client side it doesn't have access to a SQL datasource (for security reasons).....you'll need to reference a service (see notes and code below).

Getting Data into a grid.  Below is a little snippet from the codebehind of a xaml page. 

The process i went through was

1.  created a WCF service  library (don't forget about the clientaccesspolicy.xml..what a pain)
2.  Referenced Library in Silverlight project
3.  OnLoad call the webservice method that returns a collection (in my case) "GetIssuesAsync()"
4.  Add a method that captures the webservice methods "Complete" event

public Page() 

{    

   InitializeComponent(); 

   Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(Page_Loaded); 

} 

void Page_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 

{    

   ServiceReference1.Service1Client webservice = new Service1Client(); 

   webservice.GetIssuesCompleted += new EventHandler<GetIssuesCompletedEventArgs>(webservice_GetIssuesCompleted);

   webservice.GetIssuesAsync(); 

} 

public void webservice_GetIssuesCompleted(object sender, GetIssuesCompletedEventArgs e) 

{ 

    dataGrid1.ItemsSource = e.Result; 

} 

A quick way to convert a generic list of one type to another (more for documentation)

List<Merchant> merchant = new List<Merchant>(); 

List<MerchantDTO> mdtos = merchant.ConvertAll<MerchantDTO>(new Converter<Merchant, MerchantDTO>( 

     delegate(Merchant m){      

      MerchantDTO mdto = new MerchantDTO();

      mdto.ID = m.ID;

      mdto.Name = m.Name; return mdto; 

      } 

)); 

Straight from the Microsoft "Rapid Application Development" book..

1. People
2. Process
3. Product
4. Technology

                          People

            Process     +     Product

                      Technology

Impacts software productivity and quality

The most effective practices leverage human potential not technology

Areas that effect peopleware:

o   individual ability

o   individual motivation

o   overall team ability

o   overall team motivation

Staffing for team projects: Five principals

o   Job Talent

o   Job matching

o   Career progression

o   Team balance

o   Misfit elimination

o   Other: design ability, language experience, machine and environment experience, and applications area experience

Team Organization

o   Match project size

o   Match product attributes

o   Match schedule goals

Motivation

o   Is your strongest ally on RAD Projects

Management methodologies and technical methodologies

o   neglect to process will cause developers to work inefficiently and at cross purposes when there isn’t a need

Rework avoidance

o   avoid doing things twice (get accurate requirements)

Quality assurance

o   assure that product has acceptable level of quality

o   detect errors at the stage when they are least time consuming to fix

Development fundamentals

o   source control

o   requirements management

o   design

o   construction

o   configuration management

Risk management

o   merge schedule related tasks

Resource targeting

o   effectively focused

o   contribute to overall productivity

o   Best practices: productive offices, time box development, accurate scheduling and voluntary overtime

Lifecycle planning

o   lifecycle models make it easier to identify and organize the many activities of a software project.

Customer orientation

o   put yourself on same same side as customer

o   best practices that help with this: staged releases, evolutionary delivery, evolutionary prototyping, throw away prototyping, and principle negotiation.

Reduce product feature set: reduction in project scheduling

Product size and characteristics offer opportunities to cut development time