On Jan 31 2019, Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman and Damian Edwards (along with David Fowler who came along for the ride), dropped in to present a talk at our local user group, MK.NET.
Unsurprisingly for the calibre of our guests, turnout was high, with an at-capacity 120 people coming along.
Scott is one of the highest-profile public speakers in the .Net world, and someone whom I have wanted to see in person for many years. I figured I’d eventually get the opportunity to listen to him at some large, anonymous, conference in the future.
However, to see him in the flesh for the first time, on my very own home-turf was freekin’ awesome! I was very excited.
Scott was already over in the UK, attending the large NDC conference in London. After a little bit of arranging, Scott kindly agreed to extend his visit and to come and see us all over in Milton Keynes. Thanks to Twilio’s Developer Evangelist, Layla Porter for making that happen! Thanks to Twilio for generously sponsoring the event - they cover the significant expense of the rental of a large venue and proving food and drink to over 100 people!
Speaking of which, I was busy doing volunteer-work to support the event … and I missed my opportunity to snag a selfie with Scott … although much to my jealousy, Layla bagged a cool selfie with Scott!
It was a demonstration of strong community to see how a bunch of people came together to make the event go relatively smoothly. It was not without its hiccups - notably, the venue had left us with some frustrating AV issues and no support. I recommend you read this article by my friend, AWS Evangelist Martin Beeby, as he talks about how our local community came together to make things work.
The talk was one of the most engaging I’ve seen, with plenty of tangible information to take away.
The three guys are clearly good friends and having them all together in one room brought a dynamic and interplay that I have not seen [on recorded material] elsewhere. In places, the show was downright hillarious.
I recorded the entire event and you can watch it for yourself. My raw footage wasn’t very good, so editing the video ready for YouTube soaked up a huge amount of time (I did teach myself Adobe Premier in the process though, so it wasn’t wasted effort!).
I hope you enjoy the video!:-
(check out 56:15 in the video for a giggle)
Scott, Damian and David had also made a detour to visit the world-famous Bletchley Park.
I would imagine that, even internationally, most people in our industry will have at least heard of the wartime code-breaking facility, even if they weren’t sure of where it was.
I’m sure that far fewer people will realise that Bletchley Park is also home to the UK’s National Museum of Computing.
The modern Bletchley Park, as a site, has been largely swallowed up amongst the homes of the small town of the same name. Bletchley is itself incorporated into the much larger modern city/town of Milton Keynes - my hometown.
You can read about Scott Hanselmans visit to Bletchley Park on his own blog.
You can listen to a 2015 Podcast between Scott and Dr. Sue Black, where they talk about efforts to save Bletchley Park.