I received a nice email today:

Hi Reg,

When I was only a couple years into my career as a developer I attended your talk on SOLID principles at MS Tech Days 2009. You’re easily one of the best presenters I’ve seen at a conference, and even though the subject of the talk wasn’t particularly earth-shattering, in retrospect, the talk was very engaging. So much so that I believe it was a catalyst for me to change from just hacking on code until it did what I need to actually reflecting on what I create, and perpetually, actively learning to do it better. It’s made be a better developer and my architectural design has been commended by my peers and seniors. I just wanted to reach out and say thanks. You couldn’t have known at the time, but that talk made a big difference, at least to me.

All the best,
Mic

Thank you, Mic, for sending this email. Very much appreciated.

And yes, I did speak at a Microsoft conference! The “deck” had been prepared, I simply needed to speak to the various bullet points, drawing on my personal experience with the SOLID principles. IIRC, I fast-forwarded past a few slides that didn’t fit my own thinking, and lingered over a few more that I was passionate about (like Liskov Equivalence), but any credit for the material belongs to the original authors.