Nick Hodges

Well, it’s been a bit busy for me the last few days.  Let’s see — I last wrote on Day One of SDC, but that was almost a week ago, eh?

Tuesday:  I had one talk to give at SDC, on Delphi and ASP.NET.  It’s a pretty fun talk — in it a build a really simple blog using master pages, membership, roles, and profile information.  The backend, both for the blogs’s data and the Provider information, is Blackfish. Very fun to do as a Delphi Developer. Working with the combination of Delphi, Blackfish and/or Interbase, and .Net 2.0 is quite a kick.  CodeGear RAD Studio makes it a breeze, as well.

I also got a chance to have a good visit with Ray Konopka and Cary Jensen.  Great guys, both of them.  Funny that I have to go to Holland to get a chance to chat face to face with them. 

Let me say a hearty thanks to Remi and Joop and Johan for their terrific hospitality, the great food, fun times, and a very smoothly and well run conference.  These guys do a great job, and really know how to take care of a speaker.  I’m grateful that they had me.

Wednesday:  I woke up and drove to Brussels, Belgium with Pawel Glowacki, the Delphi Evangelist for EMEA.  We navigated our way around Brussels a bit — not an easy task — but managed to make it for a presentation on RAD Studio.  Nice group of folks, and a big thanks to Pawel for taking good care of me.  Then it was on to the airport for a flight to Copenhagen where I met Jason Vokes.

Thursday:  Jason and I got up early for another RAD Studio road show in Copenhagen.  This one was highlighted by the enormous lecture hall and a huge video of David I up on the screen, giving welcome to all the developers in attendance. (David was originally supposed to attend, but couldn’t make it.).  More RAD Studio demos, including Generics and ASP.NET.  Folks really seem to respond to the Generics and AJAX demos — understandable since they are great features and really demo well.  After the session, it was another rush to the airport for a flight to London.

Friday: Jason and I made our way to the venue for another presentation on RAD Studio.  This time we were joined by Olaf Monien of AToZed Software.  This presentation was a bit different.  We gave demos of RAD Studio, but with a heavy emphasis on web development and web integration.  Olaf demo-ed VCL for the Web, and I showed how to build a Web Service in Delphi for .Net and consume it in either another ASP.NET application or in the VCL itself.  That was quite fun.  Then we sort of had a panel discussion, and had a fairly lively debate about Delphi, web development, and RAD Studio.  It is really valuable for me to have these face-to-face conversations with "real" customers. If I’m ever around, please don’t hesitate to come up and start talking about what you like and what you don’t like about Delphi.  I’m all ears, and really appreciate the feedback.

Saturday and Sunday: This weekend I have been the guest at Jason’s home in Lee-on-the-Soland in southern England. Jason has been very gracious, getting me the full "English Pub" experience, as well as a very pleasant Saturday morning on the coast.  We then followed that up with a trip on both Saturday and Sunday to the Portsmouth Naval Museum.  I really enjoyed that, as I’m a big Royal Navy history buff.  We got to go on the HMS Victory, Lord Nelson’s flagship at the famous battle of Trafalgar, as well as the very interesting HMS Warrior.  The Victory was quite fascinating — if for nothing else other than the cramped quarters.  I’m 6′0” tall, and I really had to watch my head. All in all, the weekend was quite nice, and Jason a wonderful host.  I’m grateful to him for having me to his home.  Even his wonderful dog Wendy seemed to warm up to me after a bit of hesitation about the new guy.

So, it’s off to EKON 11 tomorrow, with a very early start. 

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