MEDC.2005

Just returned from the Microsoft Mobile Embedded and Developer Conference (MEDC). This year, it was held at the newly launched, KL Convention Centre located beside KLCC. I was given complimentary vouchers to attend the conference and I shared them with my colleagues. The event was managed by Crystal Edge. Registration and collecting the goodie-bag was swift for me but the queue was bad. They should have setup more registration counters.

The event began with a half-day keynote talking about the adoption of Windows Mobile and where the industry is heading. This year's focus was more on developing mobile businesses and showcasing solutions, as opposed to just gadget demonstrations. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the MDA IV though, but they didn't showcase it.

One thing I would like to complain about this event is the lunch. The meal was served in paper-lunch-boxes and there were no proper dining place for us to sit down and eat. We were hunting for chairs but in the end, we just stood-by those small tables to take our chilled-lunch. The quality of the food was ok but the serving was a bit small.

As usual the sessions after lunch was the most challenging to bear. I went to the SQL Mobile 2005 session with Johnathan but we relocated later to try out the hands-on-labs. Jonathan was quite reluctant to try out the labs initially, but he quickly learned to appreciate it when he did the exercises. We managed to get some first-hand practical experience in developing mobile applications in the labs. I'm looking forward for those materials to be available for download.

Although I enjoyed the lab sessions but I find that the VPCs on the machines run too slowly despite running on 1 GB RAM machines. The guides also contain many errors and mistakes but luckily, I managed to spot them and follow through.

There were a few contests running in the event and I participated in the Break The Code contest. I was hoping to win an iPaq *Hehe* but I won a keyboard instead. *I seem to always win keyboards huh?* Like last year, I didn't get any gadgets despite attractive discounts, as I was hoping for Windows Mobile 2005 devices. So, I guessed I will be hanging on to my Nokia for a little longer. ;)