So here's a question I'd like to put out to people: how many of you are planning on coming down to Austin for REAL World 2006? And out of those of you who are coming, what talks would you like to see?
I'm kinda tired of doing the networking, linux and console applications talks and I'd like to write some totally new talks for this year. So I was coming up with a list of things to talk about, and I figured, hey, who better to ask than some of the people who are going to be coming!
So here's the list of talks I was thinking about choosing from, but feel free to add your own ideas to the list. Note: any talk ideas have to go thru upper management to get approved, and I make no promises about what my talk schedule will be.
- Win32 User Interface Design. Basically, how to make applications that look and feel like true Win32 apps.
- Threading with REALbasic. Seeing as how so many people had questions about how threads in RB work... It would basically be a re-hash of a lot of the information I just posted.
- Beginning networking. Basically, how networking works for people who've never, ever, done networking code. Ever. I'd guess that over half of this talk would be theory and the other half would be practical.
- Advanced networking. Cover some more of the advanced topics in networking, tips and tricks, etc. This would be perhaps a quarter theory and the rest practical.
- Serial programming. This would be akin to the threading talk (except, about serial programming). It would discuss what the various APIs are and what they mean and why you might use them. The trouble with this topic is that there's such an enourmous range of uses for it, it's tough to really focus on how to "properly" do serial programming...
- Cross-platform UI design. This session would be tips and tricks for designing a cross-platform UI. It would cover things like using constants to change captions (and for localization), container controls for designing UI that's appropriate on all platforms (like OK/Cancel buttons), and gotchas for each platform (like keyboard mnemonics on Windows).
- Design patterns in REALbasic. This would be a re-hash of many of the design patterns I've coverd in the blog.
- Grab Bag. In this session, you can ask whatever RB-related questions you'd like. It's a little tough to work it though, since I'm not an expert in many of the topics. For example, if you asked a networking question, I could probably answer it. However, if you asked me a database question, I probably couldn't.
What ideas do you guys have for topics that you'd like to see?
If I were coming (and I wish I could), I'd like to hear about your design patterns with practical examples. Also, you've got a lot to say about x-platform UI design - I'm sure you could knock-out a presentation on that.
Oh, I just thought of something else: Secrets of the trade! A workshop where you (or someone else) demonstrate how certain things in the IDE were done using the real source-code.
I don't know if a secrets of the trade session would go over well with the upper management. We tend to protect our source code by a fair amount since it's our bread and butter. But I agree, that would probably be an interesting session.
I am coming.
Databases, interface design, *cough*networking*cough*
Uh, tips and tricks woudl be fun, stuff that takes little coding, but provides immense power, like UDP stuff.
Of course, we coudl skip it all and you could just buy me dinner.
@Bill -- what sort of networking things are you interested in? Just tips and tricks? Theory? API discussions? Also, what about interface design interests you?
As for dinner, I usually make myself available to go out for drinks and/or dinner each night of the conference.
Put me down for the beginning and advanced networking! I just hope they do a better job with scheduling next year - I guessed wrong when deciding which ones would be a likely candidate for a repeat.
I mentioned this at RW2005 but it bears repeating: Have people sign up for the workshops they are interested in attending. That way the schedule could be made in such a way as to accomodate *most* people. As a psych I attend a yearly conference and they have us pick our first,second and third choices to get a feel for what is popular and schedule accordingly. Obviously it will fall short of perfection in some circumstances but the RW method of past fell short of perfect for MANY!
Ouch that's the second time I've ranted on Aarons site... Yikes I hope he doesn't keep track...
~joe
@Joe -- That's a good idea, I'll be sure to mention it at the planning meeting for RW2006. And don't worry, I don't keep track of rants very often. ;-)
I'd love to make it, but I don't think there's any big family trip next year. If I could make it, I'd love to see the Win32 UI stuff / advanced networking / cross platform UI design.
-- SirG3
I'll be at RW2006 and I wouldn't mind a session on Win32 'User Interface Design' and 'Cross-platform UI design'.
Thanks Aaron
It is a long time away so it might be possible for me to attend, but I don't know yet.
One of your blogs mentioned a critical analysis of UI design in software. While that could be part of the UI session, I think that this could be a session all alone. Spend a couple minutes on each software example explaining the good and the bad aspects. It could be a tag team session with you handling the Windows GUI issues and someone else handling the Mac with Linux issues shared between.
The example software could be gathered from the Design Award applicants, and if the session is scheduled after the Award Dinner it would be especially interesting to hear comments on how the winning entries could be made even better.
Hi there!
I live in Sweden and would like to be able to watch (buy) Quicktime movies from RW2006 since the costs to just get to RW2006 would be very expensive. Aaron I must say thank you for being so kind and share your knowledge with us.
Arne
XML, and specifically XSLT.
I'm looking into using Microsoft InfoPath 2003 in order to do a WYSIWYG layout of an HTML report generated using XML data and an XSLT(ransform). It's how I hope to achieve a true cross-platform replacement for Crystal Reports, but I don't want to have to write the XSLT by hand.
SOAP versus REST. BTW, RB 5.5 has some SOAP bugs, so I had to switch to REST, which has the added benefit of being faster.
I'd like to see a more code-specific version of your networking presentation. I also think that people who haven't visited your blog site would be interested in a design patterns presentation.
So it sounds like people are mostly interested in me doing hands-on networking and UI design stuff, with a bit of design patterns work?
I'll give some thought as to which talks I'd be interested in, how many, and how to structure them. Thanks for all your input! I'll be passing the input along to Janet (who's coordinating again this year) as well.
So are people expecting the sessions to be mostly theory? Mostly hands-on? A bit of each? It's difficult as a presentor to figure out whether people expect the talk to be more like a college lecture, or more like a hands-on, here's the code consultation.
Ack! No link! At this point, Google isn't much help either..
Link to what?
http://www.realbasic.com/realworld - er, http://www.realsoftware.com/realworld/
...
which, although has no dates or location for the 2006 conference, does have search engine hits tonight (realbasic conference, etc.), seemed to fail miserabley earlier today when I highlighted "REAL World 2006" and command-clicked "Search in Google"
Ah, yes, those links. I'm not certain we'd have anything interesting to link to at this point since we don't have any of the sessions picked. When there are links, I'll be sure to post them.
I'm not sure yet whether I will be attending but I would like to see talks on cross-platform design, design patterns and RB product realization. By product realization I would include setting up a repeatable build environment, unit testing with RB, product protection, handling updates, deployment, etc.