Any readers who have started following this blog from talks I give from time to time on Public Relations may recall me mentioning Nick Hodge. It usually involves me putting up this picture and telling people that “this is the face of Microsoft”. Well, the man will be in town for Edge of the Web and I had a chat to Nick about what we should expect from him on this outstanding occasion. So here’s what he had to say:

IE6 is an abomination and one of the worst things for web development productivity EVA according to Microsoft evangelist (and Professional Geek) Nick Hodge. (Geek kudos accrued.)
One thing you learn about Nick pretty quickly is that he’s not one to shy away from criticising his employer when he thinks they’ve got it wrong. At the same time, you can also pretty much guarantee that anything good he has to say about Microsoft he truly believes in. Nick will be presenting a talk at Edge of the Web on “Not your father’s Microsoft” and is hoping to convince even the most hardened and cynical code-monkeys that Microsoft has learned from past mistakes and wants to engage in an “internet frame of mind”.
This is something Nick is really passionate about, having been a big supporter of open-source software for years.
Nick admits Microsoft has been late to the game in embracing open-source, but there are some interesting developments that he wants to communicate to developers. He’s particularly excited by the IronRuby project that is bringing Ruby into the .Net platform, a step that has seen Microsoft accept external contributions. The other thing he wants to highlight is the Silverlight tools for Eclipse it has released, which is the more common framework for development compared to Microsoft’s commercial Visual Studio. And yes, he even wants to tell you about cool ways you can use Microsoft on a Mac (he owns one himself.)

Ofcourse, Nick is looking forward to hanging out with the Perth web community, one he feels other Australian cities could look to emulate (it is true, we do rock!) He’s here to listen as well as give a presentation, so even if you are most cynical about what he has to say – seek him out and have a chat.

If you haven’t got your tickets to the conference I suggest you do. It’s not often that you’ll get to experience something like this in your own city. Hope to see some of you there.

PS. I’m hoping to get a much more incriminating picture of Nick, so I can keep my tricks fresh!

Nick that does NOT mean I want to see you with your shirt off – a LOLcode shirt will do