WCF Webcasts, Java and CodeMash

First off, I thought I was going to be able to jump right into my WCF webcasts that I promised, but it appears that I am going to have to put a little more thought into this. First off, I want to design my webcasts to be as short and focused as possible - hopefully five minutes or less. Why the limitation? I was listening to Mark Miller on an old episode of dotnetrocks (do yourself a favor and listen) talk about the great features we develop that are only ignored by the customer. Why do they ignore, you ask? Because customers don't know it's there and/or they don't know how to use it. One of his ideas to combat the problem was to was to include brief training videos no more than 5 minutes long in the help "infrastructure". I heard this and said, "hmmmmmmmmmmm....I know! I'm going to steal Miller's idea and tell everyone I came up with it"! Inject the evil scientist laugh here. All kidding aside, I think he brings up a great point for a couple of reasons. One, if you are new to a particular application, you will hit the help files and the internet a lot looking for very easy answers. I do not often find easy answers in help files. I do, however, seem to get a lot out of watching someone explain what they are doing while they are coding. As proof of this, I just recently listened to Miguel Castro talk about web controls on dotnetrocks AND watch similar content on dnrTV. The difference was amazing. I got so much more out of the dnrTV episodes (btw, this is no knock against dotnetrocks. I condider myself a loyal fan). Unfortunately, I can't watch dnrTV for an hour everytime I have a problem. Therefore, I feel very short, well-defined segments are far more helpful than hundreds of lines in a help file. I could be wrong here (or I suppose Mark Miller could be wrong), but I doubt it. Therefore, I'm looking I'm looking at the entirety of what I'm trying to develop before I begin. I'll keep you posted.

Last post, I was talking about Java. If you're one of the two people who read my blog, you'll know that I'm reading Thining in Java. I'm getting ready for CodeMash and want to be able to intelligently discuss platform differences - something I consider a shortcoming of mine. Well, I've read a couple hundred pages and I can tell you there is little difference at the superficial leve between Java and .NET. Makes sense, since Java was a bit of a model for .NET. One interesting point is that I feel I'm learning a lot about .NET by doing the examples in the book. Who would have thunk?


Have you registerd for CodeMash yet? If not, WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!? Here is a conference that has Scott Guthrie, Neal Ford and Bruce Eckel lined up as keynote speakers, something few of us have thought could ever happen. Register now at www.codemash.org. You want to be part of this one.