So a high profile ALT.NETter, who is not in attendance at this weekend's altnetconf, has decided he no longer wants to be associated with the group because of its perceived negativity. It is a shame he wasn't here in person to experience the bizarro-world like ending to Day 2. The closing remarks, which is a chance for anyone in attendance to stand and share their thoughts on the day, were composed entirely of expressions of excitement around the just demonstrated System.Web.MVC framework, and thanks and appreciation to the Microsoft ASP.NET team that created it. This is not an easy crowd to please, but mostly because we all want to be able to assert our preference of tools and practices individually. NOT because we want to use "anything but Microsoft", but because we want to be able to choose "some things that are not from Microsoft". When Microsoft does provide a great tool (as they did with the .NET Framework, and potentially the MVC framework) members of the crowd are willing embrace it. Now, we are not a hive mind (a fact which seems to be frustrating some people that want us to come to some kind of consensus... on anything), so I won't say everyone is excited about it. But unlike the earlier opening remarks, at the end nobody stood up to air their grievances with Microsoft. It was all smiles and love for Scott Guthrie (who was there demonstrating the framework and representing the ASP.NET team). Yes, even from Scott Bellware.

(Of course, it may all be a side effect of ScottGu's super-hero power of being able to foster man-crush's from entire rooms of ornery, cynical developers.)