What Does Alt.Net Mean to You?
I was fortunate that my schedule changed slightly just before the MVP Summit. This gave me the opportunity to stay a few more days for the Alt.Net conference. I have to admit that I was not really sure what to expect and had some preconceived notions before showing up. My only exposure to the Alt.Net conference and community before this weekend was hearing about the October conference in Austin after it happened. At that conference Scott Guthrie made the now famous presentation of the MVC framework for the first time. I also knew that many of the top developers in the .Net space were there.
While I am intrigued about the MVC framework right now, I have not had a real opportunity to actually work with the MVC framework and I sort of thought this conference would be a lot of MVC sessions. I was completely wrong! I am glad I was wrong. The Alt.Net conference (which is really not a conference as much as it is a face to face meeting of some of the greatest minds in our industry) is really about how to develop software the absolutely best way.
There is no agenda, no schedule and only a few rules of how things operate. Carl Franklin started DotNetRocks as a way to get some of the great conversations the Regional Directors have outside of the conference sessions out to the masses. After spending a few years running around to Code Camps, conferences and user groups those conversations are really at the heart of getting better. Alt.Net is really a gathering of these great minds that provides some loose structure for them to come together, discuss issues and try to share experiences, opinions and come away with a much better understanding of what the reality is or might be with different ideas in practice.
I found it very revealing that much of my own experience, meaning the methodologies and architectures that I have built over the years out of necessity are really close to these 'best practices'. I did not have formal names for my processes, but now I do and I can see how to make them much better. That means I can now go back refactor my processes and become a much more efficient developer.
Development is a continuous process where you should constantly be refining your process and architecture based on your experience. You should be adding new tools to automate your code and development process. The Alt.Net community does this all the time and they are very passionate about developing great applications by using great tools and process. That is why they created the community and whether the community survives or not does not matter to the individuals, each will press to be better every day. They want to share that passion with the masses.
I love Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged is my favorite book. In the book there is a secret society of very smart people that create their own little utopia where they can do things the right way, without being bound by society's limits. I think Alt.net is much like that group, with the exception they want the world to know what they are doing and want to share what they are doing.
What did I take away from my Alt.net experience? Well I learned about Mocking frameworks beyond what Scott Hansleman has shared in the past. I learned that many of the Alt.netters are very passionate about how Mocking should be done too! I learned about some great .Net related tools to help develop stronger applications and processes. I learned more about unit testing and available tools. I learned more about ORM frameworks and yes a little more about MVC.
But more importantly I was able to extend some existing relationships and make some great new ones. I was able to have some really good one on one conversations about software development and just personal fun things. The biggest thing was learning others love StarBlazers! It is great to meet authors and presenters you have been admiring over the years and see they are just normal like you and I and very approachable.
I want to encourage as many .Net developers as possible to keep up with what this community is working on and passionate about. I can see the arguments and concepts these guys are hashing out will ultimately result in how we develop software in the near future. So register at www.altdotnet.org and sign up for their Yahoo Group. These are not set of arrogant programmers or folks so caught up in their celebrity they wont talk to you. They will and you should feel comfortable approaching anyone in the community about what they are good at. Also as a rule, find a way to hang out with those that are smarter or better at what you want to do than yourself. You will be amazed at how much you can walk away being better.