I saw Udi Dahan this week at an event at Onalytica, Udi and a small group of around 20 developers. Onalytica’s CTO acted as host and made it an interview with Udi while giving him plenty of time to talk. This interesting format was pleasantly different than the usual technical talk where the speaker picks the topic. This was more wide-ranging and covered some of his early background as well as current topics in large-scale system design. This was the first time I’d seen him speak and he was as good as everyone had said, very funny and very thought-provoking….

Saw Jesse Liberty (Microsoft Silverlight Evangelist) speaking at a joint UK Silverlight User Group/London .Net User Group event this week.  The topic was “Silverlight 4, MVVM and TDD: A Brave New World”. Jesse was a very engaging speaker and not at all phased by the large audience of over 200.  His jokes about “us Americans” and comments about driving in London went down well and showed he’s good at connecting with his audience as well as that he’s enjoying his trip around Ireland and the UK. MVVM is looking like a good fit for Silverlight or WPF applications.  Jesse’s emphasis…