Monday, November 16, 2015

Visual Studio Live! Day One

Wow! This is my first conference post college. The conference I am attending is Visual Studio Live! It is exciting to be hear so I can learn about Visual Studio and more! Not only that, this is my first coding conference and so short after starting to actually code. This event is a Live! 360 event and contains information and sessions around SharePoint, SQL Server, Modern Apps, as well as Visual Studio. Most of the sessions I signed up for are Visual Studio related, but I can go to non-VS events and there is so much to learn. Any session will be very beneficial to me.

Today was a workshop day. The session went from 8am-5pm. Seems like a long time but the time flew by and didn't seem long enough! I went to session Triple D: Design, Development, and DevOps presented by Billy Hollis and Brian Randell. Both seemed to be very knowledgeable to talk about the topics.

Brian started by asking what we thought of DevOps and what that meant to us. This was great timing as we have talked about DevOps at work and how we can move towards better and more DevOps along with continuous deployment. To fully achieve DevOps we need to change our vocabulary and make sure our processes fit with the way we deploy. A few things that were mentioned is automating infrastructure, share a vision with ops, and one step building and deployment.

So, how do we achieve that? Brian said, "You do not buy DevOps" and that you have to implement it from the top down. I believe that 100%. Those working in the DevOps must have the correct mindset and willing to work towards the deployment. We are lucky! We already have some testers and developers that know the importance of getting DevOps correct and what it will take to deploy in the end. One top of that, our managers know we need to move towards better DevOps and are willing to take what is needed. Engineering owns features from end to end (although the development team does not own the deployment in most circumstances, but it still stays in Engineering).

I am excited to continue improving DevOps at work and hope we can fully implement the continuous deployment.

Next Billy talked about UX and design! A few posts ago I actually talked a little about design, looks like I think about the correct things sometimes. Billy focused a lot on UX and how the correct amount of time in designing the UX will increase flow and productivity. Not only do we need a good UX we also need to get feedback and data about how the UX is actually being utilized.

"When you start UX design, you'll suck at it." - Billy Hollis. There is a lot that goes into design and UX and every company needs it to keep customers happy with the products that are delivered. Billy discussed some of the theory behind the best designs and I am sure he could teach an entire course on the best and worst designs. We can't just make it pretty by adding makeup. It doesn't matter how much makeup you add a bad design will still have the ugly elements.

There is so much! We then discussed the new builds on TSF. There is a lot to learn on what can be down and how to utilize the new build server.

The key note speaker was Mary Jo Foley. She gave a very candid view of Microsoft and the direction we might see them take. We got a little history, a little speculation, and a lot from a reporters point of view.

It was a great first day. Tomorrow we start the sessions and I say, bring it on!

2 comments:

K.C. said...

Wow great write-up. I feel like I'm there in person!

Robert Jorgensen said...

Thanks for reading, K.C. Hopefully the rest of the days writings are good too.