Yes, it's time to return to reality. This PDC has been amazing. It was so awesome to talk to all these people. Everyone had great questions and comments on what we are doing (especially on the desire for a visual designer for XAML <G>) and it was so much fun to finally meet a bunch of the bloggers that I read on a daily basis.

We stayed last night and had a great dinner as a celebration of finishing the event up. I don't think things could have gone better. Sure, we had a few demos fail, but I keep hearing that people had so much fun.

I think one of my highlights from this convention were the number of times people said stuff like "You folks are developers just like us!". I heard that multiple times, and it is awesome - because we are. Way too often people get wrapped up in the "Microsoft is evil" mantra and they forget that we are just a bunch of folks trying to write great software. It was so wonderful to make connections with so many people, and I really hope that we are able to keep up this communication.

What is next?

For the Avalon team it is time to execute. We have spent a big chunk of time in this past year doing a big rearchitecture (which is why the wierd "MSAvalon" namespace is in the bits) and now we need to get heads down and start cleaning up and getting ready for Beta 1.

The developer preview bits that we delivered for the PDC aren't ready for any form of production use (put them on a test box, or use Virtual PC - not on your main machine), but for the Beta 1 bits we need to be rock solid. We are going to get down to fundamentals and really push on performance, stability, and completeness for the next set of milestones leading up to Beta 1.

My flight back to Redmond leaves at noon, so we are all heading out from the hotel at around 10:15... a few more minutes to check email and maybe grab a quick bite...