Ryan Olshan accomplished something that has really impressed me and I don't get impressed all that often. He put together a chat with the top ASP.NET icons in the industry. Not only were some of the top folks there, but everybody else from the community was invited. If you think about the concept in general, it is really a dream come true for any ASP.NET developers. We all have questions and get stuck at points in our days as developers. At first, you can usually ask your colleagues because the questions are pretty easy ones. When you are working for some time and develop an expertise, your questions can become so difficult that sometimes only an expert can answer them and there is not always one around for you to chat with your question. After all, it is not as though you can just chat Scott Guthrie, Scott Watermasysk and a team of MVPs and say, "Hey, how do I....(fill in impossible question here)? Well, on this past Febrary 16th, Ryan Olshan organized the first live MVP Chat. There was an impressive list of MVPs on hand and about 40 attendees armed with questions.
The chat was in the form of a group chat and the attendees had a chance to ask questions of the experts and even chat amongst themselves, some answering questions before the experts had an opportunity to answer them. On the "Experts side", the experts each attacked the questions with vigor and as questions came in, different people would claim ownership for them and reply back to the person asking. Alot of many good questions were asked and a few funny ones were thrown in there as well, my favorite being "How do I get Scott Guthrie's autograph?".
Overall, it was an excellent event. Possibly the best that I have been involved with in a very long time. I had to bail out at 9:00pm, when the chat was officially over. But around that time, the question was discussed among the experts... "It is 9:00 right now, does anybody want to stay? A few people chimed in with "I can stay for as long as it takes!". Now, that is what I call real community spirit!!!"
In the end, it was a tremendous event and a big thumbs up to Ryan for putting the whole thing together and for all of talent that dedicated their night to helping out the community. When I say talent, I am not using that term loosely. It was a veritable who's who of asp.net gurus, including Scott Guthrie, Scott Watermasysk, Steve Smith and many others. I am not sure when the next one is, but I encourage everybody to attend.
You can download the transcript here. You can see the list of experts here. Just about everybody in that list was there.