CDNUG event #9: Introduction to WPF

I just returned home from tonight's User Group meeting where I spoke about the WPF (a.k.a. Avalon).

Must say that I'm not impressed how everything went, mostly because the demos I had prepared earlier didn't really work as expected. The content took me much more time than I ever thought it will and it might have been my mistake that I wanted to talk about EVERYTHING in a single hour. WinFX is a huge topic and the session supposed to be the intro to WPF - but at the end it took its toll. Few glitches with the January CTP of WinFX and Sparkle brought my demos to the ground but hopefully the audience got the idea what's hiding behind WPF and how powerful it is.

I was glad to see that there were lot of people interested in the subject - there were over 30 attendees - the most we had until now! Good lesson I learned from today is that I need to:

1. Prepare,
2. Prepare, and
3. Prepare.

That's it. Sessions need preparation, especially when working with the CTP stuff. I haven't tested the demos more than once each one and almost none of them worked. Another mistake was timing: I haven't timed myself well while preparing the content. It took me double time while presenting the material then while preparing it. In the upcoming months I hope to split the hard content in many small, specialized topics and present drill-down of each of the interesting features of WPF. As long as the time allows...