Friday, June 25, 2004

Worse than lack of a list of URLs is the lack of downloadable video files. Every chance I've had in the past 4-5 years, I've begged and begged everyone and anyone involved with various video "feeds" to consider the plight of the poor developers (read: me!) who CANNOT "waste time" at work (according to my managers) by watching streaming video (for hours on end). (Managers see this as two things: an abhorred non-ROI expense, since they hate all things "training"-like, and slipped schedules.)

I'am also unfortunately broadband-challenged at home (no access in my neighborhood), so the idea of watching streaming video at home won't work either.

Each time I've brought this up (the last time was about a series of videos on the Architecture portal...which were never made available for download), I've been told "we're working on it"...but the downloadable files never appear.

A third reason for downloadable video files is that there a quite a few developers here in Silicon Valley that are in "enemy camps": companies filled with Java and Linux bigots......and find it extremely hard to pass on information, unless its in the form of a DVD they can view at their leisure.

And, of course, a fourth reason for downloadable video files is that The DotNet Show and MSDN TV are downloadable.

Having said all this, while at the PDC03 I once again asked over a dozen people about downloadable files for all the breakout sessions (even though I'd already paid for the conference video DVDs), and was happy to find out they were doing just that, which set a new low-bar standard for conference coverage.

Thus, can we expect the same for TechEd04? Who do I need to beg this time? (You certainly shouldn't have to be posting URLs to individual breakout sessions...)