Right after the completion of DevTeach in Toronto, I hopped a plane to India to present at the inaugural Great Indian Developer Summit being put on by Saltmarch Media. First let’s say that the flight duration from North America to India just flat out sucks. It’s an aweful long time to spend in a sealed aluminium tube. In hindsight, the trip was worth every second of re-breathed air I had to inhale.

Dilip Thomas and his group from Saltmarch Media put on a polished and invigorating conference. The organization wasn’t without flaw, but each flaw that I saw was noted and addressed before the start of the next day. Not once did I run into the same problem twice. The most notable of the situations that I ran into (and this will tell you how trivial the problems really were) was that my power adapter wasn’t working properly and I was having to run off of battery during my sessions. The helpers at the conference scrambled in attempts to make the hardware that I had work while sending someone off to find a replacement adapter/powerbar. That happened on the first day. On the second day there were power adapters provided in every room for the speakers.

The other thing that I noticed was the amount of advertising and banner work that was present at the event. There was no question that the Great Indian Developer Summit was being held at the Indian Institute of Science when you drove by it. Once you drove into the grounds it was pretty clear that this thing was going to be big. Registration was setup to accept a fairly large number of people at one time. Lunch provided a wonderfully complete and sizeable buffet that was easily accessed by all. Probably the only thing that was lacking was seating for attendees to use while having their lunch.

During the sessions the attendees (or delegates as they were being called) took a little bit of time to get warmed up and interacting with you. Once they did get comfortable with the idea of a dialog instead of a pontification during the presentation, their passion, concerns and technical skill bubbled to the surface. Presenting to this group was an exceptionally positive experience (more to come in a future post). For those that attended my sessions and don’t want to wait for the CD/DVD to arrive, you can download the Powerpoint files here.

Thanks to Dilip for inviting me to the Great Indian Developer Summit, to Usha for her work to make the trip as painless as possible, and to the delegates for their energy. If given the chance, I’ll be back again.