On Thursday 18 November I’ve been in Milan to attend to the Microsoft Technical Conference, held at the Assago Forum.

3008 people were present at the event, mostly developers and Technet or Msdn subscribers. The day quickly passed away among the presentations by Microsoft staff divided in four main areas.

Of particular interest have been the application installation and deployment issues discussed by the always brilliant and friendly Fabio Santini, although a bit unlucky with his demos ;), and a preview of the features of Visual Studio 2005 by Gabriele Castellani-Donald Duck voice, as a friend funnily pointed out.

Then Bill Gates performed the final speech in the crowded auditorium. It was the first time I saw him in person and I must say that it has been fascinating hearing about his visions of the incoming future and his intentions on focusing on well-made software to provide a challenging experience to the common non technical user.

After the speech he answered to three questions from as many MVPs and then he disappeared just as he came in. Here are some pictures of the event, sorry for the low quality of the digital camera I used.

Now some news about the incoming version of Ecpc: there’s still some testing to do, but judging from the increase of traffic towards the website it seems this release is getting some attention and that’s a positive sign considering the important switch to the Shareware distribution model I already announced.

This additional time will be well spent since I’ll probably also include the full spanish translation! 🙂