I think it was interesting being the only designer in a sea of hardcore developers. In fact, some of the devs I spoke with were really surprised that Microsoft had people like me — Designers, people who care passionately about User Experience — actually worked here. The impression many had was we were 100% developer-focused, and farmed a lot of the “pretty stuff” to outside Creative Agencies. To learn that UX is such an integral part of our software design was well-received.

The Oomph presentation went very well … especially in spite of the fact it was scheduled directly against the most-popular PDC2008 session, “What’s New With C#.” So, we had at least 50 people in our session, and those who were there seemed engaged. There were lots of questions and we met some enthusiastic and smart developers. After the session, Michael Kordhai “cornered us” (literally, he filmed us in a corner) and shot some video for his DelicateGenius blog. See my previous posting for that.

The sessions were well-received, and most got very high-ratings. Unfortunately, most were *very heavily* developer-oriented, and, frankly, over my head. I did attend a few sessions, though.  I’m particularly jazzed about designing for Windows 7, which was demoed heavily at the conference.

After PDC, I headed home for a quick respite, and then headed out for The Future of Web Design conference in New York. More on that next …