So this is my official attempt to blog my way to the PDC 2005. Why do I want to go so badly? Here's the story.
I am currently doing my master thesis in multimedia computer science (probably a bad translation ...) here in Germany. Fortunately I have the chance to do it on something I have been exited about since I first heard of it: Avalon (now WPF). So for the past months I have done some heavy research on it and I literally absorbed everything that could be found throughout the internet about it and have also started to develop little example applications.
Within my research I have two major fields of interest:
The first is to get an overall picture of the capabilities of the WPF and how it can be used to create better applications. This includes performance investigations as well as the development of various prototypes that leverage all the different aspects of the WPF API. I am also covering the possibilities and restrictions of WPF for multimedia authoring. How can I use WPF to edit and save out multimedial content?
The second part concentrates on how a software company can use the power of WPF within their products (existing or new) without having to throw their long grown win32 codebase overboard. So I am investigating all the interop possibilities here.
I think the PDC is the perfect place and opportunity to get new valuable and fruitful input and to discuss my experiences with fellow attendees and hopefully to give those developers behind the APIs some valuable firsthand feedback in real eye-to-eye conversations.
So how would the community benefit? Well, I have set up this pretty little blog here. If I go to the PDC I will report about my experiences at the PDC in great detail. That means I will review the sessions I have seen and the discussions I had and reflect that on my personal knowledgebase within the above mentioned region of interest. I will also keep you informed about who I met, how I spent the day and how the food and the parties were (Channel9Guy and a Digicam will come along - so stay tuned for hot imagery on this blog).
As for the sessions, I already have a concrete idea on which ones I would like to attend. I will
post a list of them soon (500 words, baby !). I selected sessions that relate to my research and to where my competences lie. However I might not be able to see all of them but you can rest assured that I won’t miss any of them if they don’t overlap.
Since I have this odd hobby and to stress that I really would love to go, I made this little movie trailer for you to download and watch. I modelled, animated, composed and played everything myself. If you liked it and/or would like to see me going to the PDC click the
red flair at the top of this article.
Some of you probably might remember that Video with the Clear Type team on channel9. They showed off this very nice looking book: "Now read this - The Microsoft Clear Type Font Collection". As soon as I saw that video I asked them for a copy and forgot about it. Today I had this book in my snailmailbox. What a pleasant suprise.
