Dave, over at extremeplanner.com, wrote a nice summary of the talk I gave at XPSD. I completely agree with him that "a review of these fundamentals [is] refreshing." As you can see, I'm doing my part to spread the word:

• Upcoming Talk in Orange County
• Upcoming Talk in San Diego (Tentative)
  
• The Rock & Roll Code Camp (details upcoming)
  
  
• XPSD Object Oriented Design Talk (past presentation)
• January SoCal Code Camp Talk (past presentation)

• Looking at some Cool New Features of ASP.NET 2.0: Managing Membership and Role Management
• Leveraging the New Windows Mobile APIs
• Visual Studio Team System
• Closer to the Data: Using Managed Code in the Database with SQL Server 2005

Lots of neat, whiz-bang features, but I would contend that 90% of the audience would be much better off if they had heard a good talk about solid OOD or TDD or this list goes on. It's been my experience that much of these old (5-15 years), tried and true fundamentals are unfamiliar to most developers.

So here is my call to action:

If you are a speaker or author, reach for something big for your next topic. Yes it's easier to write/talk about the details of the next version of feature X. But you'll do your audience a service if you reach higher, think bigger, and go for something "fundamental."

If you are attending user groups and code camps, ask for and expect something more than a talk on the of latest version of product X.