Mike Plate

So the last day of TechEd is over. After a full week, my brain is a little tired. The last day doesn’t have the same energy as the other days. I find it somewhat unfortunate. The lunch was only a bag with sandwich, salad and stuff. The lunch break is shortened and only one session after lunch. Of course, people want to go home since I assume their brains are as tired as mine. But I did manage to retrieve some previously unknown facts for Silverlight. Read the rest of this entry »

Half time has passed and it is time to secure the most valuable knowledge before the week has ended. The tactics of session selection is complex. You could go for the topics that interest you the most, but since all of the breakout sessions are being recorded I would recommend to go more on the speaker than the subject. That is, do you recognize the speaker name as someone who usually presents with passion, knowledge and wit, choose that session even if the actual topic isn’t your highest priority. Read the rest of this entry »

Day three at TechEd was the best one this far. Maybe getting better at selecting good sessions and speakers, which is always somewhat of a science in itself.

The food is great, even better than in Barcelona. After some glitches with queuing to the lunch rooms the first day, everything has run smoothly. Warm food buffet style with vegetables and rolls. Very tasty indeed. Read the rest of this entry »

Day two was also mixed. Three good presentations and two wastes of time.

Berlin Messe is really a huge complex. I’ve noted that some have complained about the long distances between session rooms, technical learning center, lunch and so on. Yes, it was more compact in Barcelona, however I didn’t find it to be a big issue. With 30 minutes between sessions it is not a problem. The conference material states that there would be no wifi connectivity inside session rooms (which seemed a bit odd in these times of twittering), but it turned out that it was only in a few session rooms this was true. I had good enough connectivity in most session rooms. Read the rest of this entry »

First day at TechEd was a little mixed. I don’t understand the thinking behind putting the keynotes after lunch and after we’ve already had a few sessions. Isn’t a keynote suppose to kick off a conference? On the other hand, keynotes with nothing to launch is usually really boring and so was this one. More passion for great products, please! Also, note that I’m talking about the developer keynote (called “general session”) and not the “real” keynote that was only for IT guys (in my opinion) and skipped by me. Read the rest of this entry »