I'm more than a little disappointed that I missed the ALT.NET conference in Austin, but I'm extremely happy that it looks like the movement has crystallized and gained enough momentum to be a legitimate option for .NET developers. Steve Kronsnoble made an analogy to the Agile Manifesto, where it took a bunch of informal participants and related ideas and turned them into industry standards. Hopefully, when looking back on this event years from now, people will be able to identify this as the genesis of  .NET.

I really like the idea of ALT.NET, and it maps to discussions I've had with many developers about trying to find a "Garden Path" of .NET development. Some percentage of .NET developers will use whatever Microsoft tells them to without question. That's fine, but that's not how I think. I like to grab the best technology no matter where I find it (Open Source, other languages, etc.) . I want to talk about things like NHibernate, Spring.NET, Subsonic, the new ASP.MVC framework, Domain Driven Design, Test Driven Design, Unit Testing, and on and on. To me, that's the excitement of ALT.NET.

To do my part, I'd like to start a discussion on where and when to hold a local Milwaukee version of this OpenSpace conference. If you're passionate about .NET development and want to help shape this new movement in the Milwaukee area, please leave a comment so we can find a way to move the ball forward.