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Present(ation) Tense

  • Artigo

It's Thursday morning, 9am, at MEDC 2006 here in Las Vegas. I am at the Cabana checking e-mail and on-hand to answer questions about XP Embedded. So far there has been no one coming through the Cabana, just a slow trickle of people on their way to the breakfast tables (probably the function at the Tao Nightclub last night is having an effect on the numbers of people up bright and early this morning!).
It has been a great DevCon so far. It seems to be busier than last year, and there are many more sessions and labs than previously, so they are running later into the day than last year. There are also a number of repeated sessions but I think it is still a challenge to schedule which sessions and presentations to attend as there are so many choices.

On Tuesday I delivered my first two presentations for an audience of more than 10 people. My first presentation was on using the CMIEXP.wsf utility to assist in automating some of the most common tasks associated with tweaking and building configurations, and also discussed how to incorporate CMIEXP.wsf into existing build scripts and processes (CMIEXP.wsf can be found in the ValueAdd folder of Disk1 on the XPe1 CDs- we are working on an updated version with lots of fixes, enhancements and extensive documentation) I had lost all my user settings on my laptop that morning and had to quickly re-configure everything before the demos. I must have missed a few settings as I got some errors during my demos which was unfortunate, and that rattled my nerves. Fortunately the audience was very patient and kindly gave me some sympathy applause at the end of the presentation! At least I had broken the ice and settled the worst of my nerves.

The second presentation was on Device Update Agent. That went far more smoothly and I enjoyed my session (I only had one small glitch with one of my demos <grin>). I spoke a little about the DUAScriptGen utility (this morning the author of this power toy, Aaron Stebner, sent me mail to let me new the latest and greatest version of the utility has now been posted to his blog site- it can be downloaded from here). DUAScriptGen allows for easy creation of DUA scripts, and takes most of the grunt work out of writing the DUA commands to apply updated files and registry keys top a device in the field. I also briefly spoke about some tips and tricks and workarounds for some common problems that customers experience. Be sure to check back on this blog site for more posts from me in the next few days that detail some of these workarounds.

It has been great to meet with so many customers this week and see some of the very interesting applications of XP Embedded in their devices and scenarios. I am taking a ton of reminders for myself back to the office to try and recreate some of these unique scenarios, so that I can incorporate them into our testing plan moving forward.

On this last day of then Conference I am proctoring one more instructor-led lab session for Sean Liming (one of the XPe MVPs) and I hope to have a chance to walk around some of the exhibitor booths. Then it will be time for to relax and enjoy some of the Vegas sun on my day off tomorrow!

- Lynda

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