I don't normally write much about .NET Rocks here. Heck, I haven't been writing about much of anything here lately, but I just had a really good .NET Rocks day and thought y'all might like to hear about it.
For awhile now I've been doing most of the editorial planning - finding guests, scheduling, etc for .NET Rocks. I won't say I do it all because Carl does contribute plenty. And to be honest, most of the shows I schedule come from the listeners anyway: ask (email dotnetrocks@franklins.net), and you will receive. Really!
And since we've switched to two shows a week (and thanks very much for that, Telerik!), I've felt we could take more chances on shows... explore a little further afield so to speak. At one show a week, I always worried that I was not serving our core audience of developers effectively enough - doing some ethereal, abstract show on design concepts followed by a SQL show followed by a live show at a conference and next thing you know, its been a month since we've done a real "in the code" kinda show.
With two shows a week, that's not as much a concern, I can get a codey show every week and still have a chance to try some wackier things out.
Carl and I have also taken to recording shows back-to-back, usually on a Tuesday. We both find that as the day goes on, we get more and more excited about shows, to the point where at the fourth show of the day, we can be a little giddy (proof - have a listen to show 219 with Shaun Walker, it was a fourth). I've taken it as a cautionary note and stick with three shows normally. We need to keep a few shows ahead all the time so we can go to conferences and such while maintaining our twice a week publication schedule.
So at the end of recording today Carl was laughing at me because the three shows we recorded today could not have been more different. The first show we recorded was with Brad Abrams, the Group Program Manager of the .NET Framework, where we talked about some special announcements he'll make at MIX on May 1 (the same day the show will be published). We talked Silverlight (aka WPF/e) primarily. This was a cool show for me because of the publication synchronization with MIX - I'd like to do more stuff like this in the future.
The second show recorded today was with Eric Evans, where we focused on Domain Driven Design and his book Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software. We got a lot of email around Jimmy Nilsson's show on DDD, mostly to the effect of "more more more!" We talked more at the level of the white board phase of an application, with a very broad viewpoint - although I enjoyed drilling into the ideas around how DDD really does work in an agile environment. We'll publish this show May 10.
Finally, we recorded a show with Rustan Leino, talking about Spec#, an extension to C# that focuses on static checking, pre- and post-condition contracts around methods and more. You'll hear this show on May 15.
When we were all done, Carl said "Wow Richard, we went from talking to a blue badge about the latest and greatest technology coming out of Microsoft to a broad discussion on design methodology to a deep drilldown into how languages ought to work in the future. What are you trying to do, kill me?!? My brain hurts!"
I saw it as a complement, really. I feel like I've achieved a goal of stretching the boundaries around what we can dig into with .NET Rocks. I hope you like the shows coming up as well, please let us know!