Telerik at DDD! Sydney 2012

Last weekend, Vesselin Vasilev (@vvassilev) and I had the good fortune of attending DDD! Sydney 2012. This year’s event was held at the University of Technology Sydney and featured over 25 sessions covering a wide variety of topics, including .NET, HTML5, JavaScript, Visual Studio, and, of course, Windows 8.

Like all events we attend, Vesselin and I were at DDD! Sydney to support the developer community. As our customers know, Telerik is a strong supporter of events like these around the globe. Over the past number of months, we’ve supported a number of events across Australia and around the Asia-Pacific region. We were also there to talk to developers about our products and in particular, to showcase Kendo UI and our RadControls for Metro. (You couldn’t miss us with our bright orange t-shirts!) I was fortunate to be asked to deliver a presentation on Kendo UI in a session entitled, “How to Kick Ass and Take Names with Kendo UI”.

I suppose one could make the argument that I’m fairly passionate about our technology.

As they say, the best part of a conference is the conversations you have in the hallway. Events like DDD! Sydney collectively represent a wonderful opportunity listen to your customers. Let’s face it: these are the men and women who use your technology; you’d be foolish not to participate.

If you build software and don’t visit your customers then you’re really missing out. Seriously.

— John Bristowe (@JohnBristowe) June 29, 2012

As a Developer Evangelist for Telerik, it’s absolutely essential for me to talk to our customers. Whether or not the feedback is positive, I want to hear it all. Because how else are you to gauge your success and future direction without engaging your customers? Events and conferences are perfect venues for these kinds of discussions. For example, at DDD! Sydney, I had separate eight, 5-10 minute conversations entirely focused on Kendo UI alone. The feedback I received was wonderful and I was able to share it with the development team.

I’m already looking forward to my next visit to Sydney. In the meantime, we’ll see you - the developer community - at DDD! Melbourne.