So, there was this little conference in Houston this week. The locals (and everyone else, come to that) called it Microsoft TechEd 2014, and it seems that several thousand attendees were there; and, to be honest, I think I shook hands with the majority. Yes, DevExpress was there in the shape of Seth Juarez, Mark Miller, Mehul Harry, Amanda Christensen, Jeff Cosby, and yours truly, and we were showing off our snazzy new backlit booth. Er, I mean our wide-ranging suites of UI controls, frameworks, and libraries for all .NET platforms, as well as our HTML5/JS widgets and libraries. And our charting solutions. And our reporting suites. And our dashboards. All part of our DevExpress Universal product.
As you may gather, there’s an awful lot to talk about with Universal. Part of the fun of TechEd is that Microsoft and Penton Media (the publishers of Windows IT Pro) co-sponsor a set of nine awards under various categories that celebrate the very Best of TechEd. We were finalists with DevExpress Universal in the Software Development category, and I drew the short straw to explain it all to the TechEd Award judges in 25 minutes or less. Luckily I can speak quickly when pressed and my slides and demos were pre-loaded for maximum performance. It seems our feature-rich suite, my patter and familiarity with the product (and with the help of several throat lozenges) worked: on Wednesday evening, just before the Exhibit Hall was to close for the day, DevExpress was awarded the Best of TechEd 2014 for the Software Development category.
Can I tell you how wonderful this is? Only a few weeks ago, Universal won the Jolt Award for Best Programming Library (with quotes like “the Jolt Award winner this year led the field by a sizable margin — a comparatively rare occurrence” and “stunned by the vast amount of functionality delivered in this library packaged with remarkable polish and attention to details”) and now it’s gained the Best of TechEd 2014 Award for Software Development. Brilliant!
To say we are pleased is an understatement. It certainly could not have been done without our customers – you – holding our feet to the fire and providing feedback, good and bad. Without you pushing, we may not have had the verve and commitment to keep on polishing the code and UI, adding new controls and features, improving the services we offer, and just making it all better and better. (Oh, and I think our development teams may have had something to do with it: thank you ladies and gentlemen!)
Just to prove it, here’s Mark, me, Mehul, and Seth whooping it up at the booth with the award!