TechEd 2008

A couple of weeks ago I attended TechEd in Sydney. This is the first time that I've been to TechEd and can say that I was really impressed. The theme at this year's TechEd was to Learn, Connect, Explore. The direction at the moment in the industry is all around SaaS (Software as a Service), or as Microsoft likes to call it "Software + Services". They have their "Live Mesh" platform to try and take advantage of this. The cloud is the future ... in the cloud we trust. Personally, I think it's kinda scary and comes along with a bunch of risks around security and availability (in Australia anyway).

 

Learn

Learn through the dozens of breakout sessions, hands-on labs and instructor led sessions. A great opportunity to hear about new technologies and build upon existing knowledge. We recieved 9 DVDs full of the presentations as they were presented in the North America TechEd. Here are the sessions I attended:

• Two pre-day training sessions on Microsoft BI.
• Not Just Spreadsheets: Microsoft Office and Excel As a Business Intelligence Development Platform.
• Career Development for Architects.
• Taking Your Application Design to the Next Level with Data Mining.
• Creating Solutions with the Business Data Catalog.
• Stop Searching... Find it! With Microsoft Enterprise Search.
• ASP.NET MVC – Should you care?
• Building Loosely Coupled Applications with Unity.
• Designing High Performance Cubes in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services.
• ADO.NET Data Services – The Zen of RESTfulness and the Art of “Astoria”.
• MDX for a SQL dude (Demystifying MDX).
• DEV210 The Hour of Power: 6 of the Best - Best of the Best in VS2008, Fx 3.5 inc SP1.
• Web Futures - the next 18 months.
• AJAX-Enable Your Windows Communication Foundation Services.
• Architectural Considerations for the ASP.NET MVC Framework.

Connect

The opportunity to Connect with other industry experts was also a key advantage of TechEd. I was able to meet some of the Microsoft people that I will be dealing with to boost our SharePoint and BI practices. It's good to know that we have "people on the inside" we can approach for leads and support in these areas. It was also good to hear that Microsoft acknowledges the amount of effort our CEO (Mark O'Malley) puts into the partner program. I think this is extreemly positive for DSC-IT as a company.

 

Explore

The opportunity to Explore the products and services offered by other companies was great. There were several booths in the exhibition space from a varying array of companies. Some of the more interesting products on display were tools to synchronise DEV, TEST and PROD SharePoint environments. There was also a good company that offered a solution to secure password storage. The difference about this product is that it could tell you what passwords an employee had access to and enable you to expire them immediately by integrating into AD. 

 

The Lighter Side

The food ... what can I say ... wow! There was plenty to choose from. While they only had one selection of Beer, I was quite happy with that and made the most of it (within reason of course:). The TechEd Party was also fantastic. It included a "side-show/Circus" themed environment with Side shows, pinball machines, Xbox consoles, Karts and comedians. I can see why people pay just to go to the TechEd party.