ADO.NET vNext Provider-palooza Day 2

I'm writing this from Microsoft's picturesque campus, building 20 to be exact where numerous other meetings are taking place at Microsoft's Adoption Center. While queueing up yesterday morning at the registration desk I was quickly reminded that the software biz is really very small - I bumped in to Gilad Bracha, author of JSR-14 and who is still doing great things at Sun Microsystems. I had ocassion to work with Gilad on a few ocassions and it was good to catch up. Otherwise, Microsoft's set up here is impressive to say the least. They are able to run numerous meetings along the lines of the one I am attending but interestingly, the focus is not entirely on the meeting context. We are also set up so as to allow us code, and put into practice some things we have learnt so far. Each attendee is even provided with their own code-controlled office to accelerate the work we can do. Over-all very pleased so far... and I'll talk more later...