As much as I appreciate what EdmUG is doing to rekindle the flame of the .Net community, they bombed out with their latest evening.
Rod Paddock's presentation on VS.Net project templates was an absolute snooze. Maybe it was the follow-up from JP Boodhoo's great presentation on TDD but I just couldn't muster any kind of interest in Rod's topic.
In all honesty, I went into the meeting expecting to be a bit bored but I wanted to support the group and I also figured that I might be able to get myself some free goodies.
But sitting through two hours of Hungarian notation (seriously, who prefixes their objects with 'o' anymore') and quips like 'nobody under 30 knows what a dos command window looks like' was enough to send me running for Texas Hold'Em on my Blackberry. The good news is that I went all in when it counted and managed to win the World Series of Poker. The bad news is that Rod's presentation went on for almost 2 hours.
As if this wasn't bad enough, I think that MSDN is using edmug.net as the dumping ground for all the books that London Drugs couldn't sell at their most recent computer book clearance sale. I love free books as swag but there comes a point when free crap is still just crap.
Sorry guys, but I look forward to seeing how the next few presentations can improve in terms of both speakers and swag.
UPDATE: I just noticed that Don posted on his blog that I'm not the only one that wasn't impressed with the presentation. I'm not sure if I agree when he says ''I don't think that many people would say the talk sucked'' (from the people I talked to I was able to calculate a suckage rate of 9 out of 10) but I definitely like that the group is taking action based on feedback. It's what the previous group sadly lacked and I certainly commend the edmug.net folks for their prompt actions.