Last weekend most of us from Engage went down to enjoy the Tulsa Tech Fest. While the individual sessions were hit or miss, the keynotes were excellent and got us all excited to start using Silverlight, and we all definitely had fun together.
One of the topics in which I have been becoming more and more interested is the concept of Test Driven Development (TDD) and the Model View Controller\Presenter (MVC\MVP) frameworks that enable it. I attended a few sessions on related topics, and was disappointed to learn that there seems to be little opportunity to use MVC (and, specifically, the new MVC Framework that Microsoft is developing) in DotNetNuke development. But, I did take away some of the more general principles that make these patterns and practices useful, and hope to continue being able to integrate them into what we are doing here at Engage.
The other topic that I tried to get into my head is security. I attended a session by one of the Vidoop guys that was very insightful and informative. He talked more about the things that you need to keep in mind as a developer, rather than the specific vulnerabilities and security holes. He inspired me to more firmly carry the torch of "Security Guy" at the office, since I'm passionate about it, and not everyone can be. Let's hope I can carry it well.
Tulsa Tech Fest was a great time to get away and take some time to just learn about what I need to know as a developer. Hope to see you there next year, maybe you'll get a cool EngageModules.com t-shirt!