My TechEd Experience

choskins — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:51:00 GMT

Orlando, FL

June 2008

Introduction

This year was my first visit to TechEd. This about sums it up: I was indoors 99% of the time. I got little sleep. I drank lots of Mountain Dew. I met lots of great people. I saw lots of cool stuff and I can’t wait till next year. The sections below are a more detailed version of what my week entailed. If you aren’t one for reading lengthy and sometimes witty text, you might want to skip to the “Schedule” section below. This is a detailed account for my activities at TechEd.

Pre-TechED

The weeks before I flew to Orlando for TechEd 2008 were full of excitement and anticipation for the 5-day conference. I poured over the session schedules that were posted on the TechEd website. I had at least three classes planned for each 75 min block of time on the schedule – just in case my top two choices were full or canceled. I searched the TechEd website for tips on how to get the most out of the conference. I looked at the blogs of some of the speakers. I printed out maps and directions to my hotel and to the conference. I started packing two weeks early. Most importantly, I decided that I was going to get out of my shell and make a real effort to socialize with other people at the conference. I am normally very reserved and a little bit shy so this does not come naturally to me.

Nerd Heaven

Sometimes when we get all hyped up about an event, we expect too much and are disappointed. As a kid, I experienced this buyer’s remorse several times – after visiting the Ringling Bros circus and feeling sick from eating cotton candy, waiting in line for 90 minutes for every good ride at Disneyland, and watching the Harlem Globetrotters pretend to play a real game of basketball. It was never quite as exciting as I expected it to be. This did not happen to me at TechED. It was even better than I hoped it would be. I was like a little kid in a real-life Candy Land. I didn’t know where to start. I wanted to be everywhere at once and try everything.

I took full advantage of the offerings of the conference…until Wednesday at 9pm when the hands on lab closed. I was exhausted and ran out of steam. I had to tone it down on Thursday and by mid-day, I was so exhausted that I plopped into a random couch and didn’t care if I interrupted the discussion that was going on. While the Mountain Dew was setting in, I ended up joining in on the conversation with two Silverlight nerds who were sitting on the nearby couches. One of them was an R&D consultant for Microsoft and he was the developer who put together the keynote graphics that Bill Gates himself presented on. How cool is that? My whole week was filled with experiences like this.

Going With the Flow

The types of sessions I attended and my general activities changed during the week as I figured out what works for me. As expected, my week did not go according to my detailed plan. Plans change, as they should, and I was happy to go with the flow during the week. During lunch on the second day of the conference, a Microsoft employee asked if I was enjoying myself. I said I was having a great time. He then asked me what sessions I have been attending. My mind went blank. I could not remember. I could feel my face start to redden. Then I realized it was because I was enjoying the people I was interacting with so much. I told him that the presentations I was attending gave me ideas for my own projects. After the presentations, I would often head straight for the Microsoft demo area with questions in hand about the ideas that were forming my head. This, I discovered was the bulk of the content that I was absorbing. I was a sponge.

The great thing about the conference is that the sessions cater to everyone’s learning style. Attendees choose the types of sessions that work for them, including the following:

· Breakout Session

o Large conference rooms with hundreds of people and one expert speaker who is often a published author

· Interactive Theater

o Small chalkboard sessions with a facilitator on a topic that everyone may participate in

· Instructor Led Labs

o Large computer rooms with an instructor who guides the class on a lab that each attendee completes during a 90 minute sprint

· Lunch Sessions

o Watch a short presentation while you carefully pick through mystery pasta pie and multi-colored broccoli. Is it supposed to be brown? And what’s this yellow stuff?

· Birds of a Feather

o Small groups of attendees discussing and debating a topic

· Hands On Labs

o Large computer room with self-serve labs on every Microsoft technical topic you can imagine. Certified trainers walk around, ready to answer any questions we might have. There was no schedule for the labs and they were open from 8:30am to EOB (either 6:30pm or 9:00pm). This was one of my favorite activities of the conference. These fantastic labs gave me material to talk about with the MS developers in the demo station area. This really sparked excitement for me.

· Ask the Expert

o My favorite type of session was not even on the formal schedule – “Ask the Expert”. These sessions, held in a lounge area on cozy couches, start out with about three people gathered around MVPs or Microsoft employees. If the talk is especially interesting, a small crowd hovers around the area. The schedule for these sessions appears on whiteboards in the demo station area.

I also enjoyed other parts of the conference including:

· Lunch

o I loved Lunch. This is not because they had gourmet food. The food was actually terrible, and I am not fussy when it comes to food. The part I loved about lunch was randomly finding a table to sit at with Microsoft employees and talking to them about their job. This gave me the opportunity to ask passionate Microsoft developers and other attendees about what they do for a living in a super casual environment.

· Demo Stations

o Every Microsoft product related to development tools had a booth with 2-4 MS employees and MVPs available to chat with and answer questions. They were kind of like techie therapists. I had the chance to talk about problems I have had in the past, current problems I am struggling with, and coping strategies for future projects. A few times, I asked a question and found myself redirected to the person who actually wrote the code. The opportunity to talk with developers about the tools they have written an amazing experience. Another bonus, I got the best SWAG (by far) at these booths. If you do not already know, SWAG (stuff we all get) is a bunch of freebies that vendors hand out to dweebs to get them to visit their booths. Dweebs just love things that spin around and make funny noises. We also love Tee shirts, pens, hats, key chains, squishy balls, and my personal favorite, flying monkeys that make screeching sounds when you throw them.

· Vendor Booths

o I visited several vendor booths. Talking to the developers about their tools was cool. A few booths only had marketing bozos available to talk to (I do enjoy asking them technical questions and watching them squirm) but most had at least one dev to answer my questions. These vendors gave out lots of SWAG – mostly tee shirts. I got several of these to give to my co-workers who were not able to attend the conference. I did keep one shirt though, from a company called Automated QA. I just love that word – automated. It gives me warm fuzzies every time I hear it.

My Schedule (a Detailed List)

I could go on for days talking about the people I met and the conversations we had. But my goal here is to give in overall picture of my week, not write a book. The detailed list below lays out my entire schedule at TechEd.

Tuesday (Bill looks much smaller from 500 feet away)

1) Bill Gates Keynote

2) Breakout Session -- OFC 202 – Intro to Sharepoint Development

3) Interactive Theater -- TLA03 – Writing Administration Tools For Your Applications

4) Lunch – sat with 2 members of the ASP.Net group

5) Vendor Booths

6) Instructor Led Lab -- OFC16 – Creating & Deploying VS.Net 2005 Workflows

7) Demo Booth – Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle

Wednesday (I can sleep on the plane)

8) Demo Station – Architecture

9) Hands on Labs -- OFC01-HOL - Introducing Content Types for Sharepoint Services 3.0

10) Demo Station – Dynamic Languages

11) Demo Station – Visual C++

12) Breakout Session – ARC 304 User Experience – Selecting the Right Client Technology

13) Lunch – Sat with a member of the Silverlight automated test group

14) Lunch Session – LUN16 – Microsoft Speech Platform: Build tomorrows user interface today

15) Ask the Expert Session – MS MVP who is an expert on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

16) Breakout Session – WIN401 – Implementing Objects for Data Binding

17) Hands on Labs -- OFC03-HOL -- MS Office InfoPath 2007 Forms Development

Thursday (I need coffee)

18) Demo Station – Visual Studio .net 2008 TFS (version control and build)

19) Hands On Labs -- WIN11 – Developing a WPF application

20) Lunch – had a nice conversation with a can of Mountain Dew

21) Demo Station – Windows Forms

22) Demo Station – Visual Studio .net 2008 Test Addition

23) Vendor Booths

24) Breakout Session – SOA 315 – Productive Windows Communication Foundation

25) Microsoft party at Universal Studios

Friday

26) Demo Station – Visual Studio .net 2008 Developer Edition

27) Demo Station – Visual Studio .net 2008 Database Edition

28) Demo Station – Visual Studio .net 2008 Extensibility

29) Demo Station – Virtual Earth Demonstration

30) Hands On Labs – WIN08 Building Windows Powershell Providers

31) Breakout session - - ARC 303 Design For Testability

32) Lunch – sat with a developer in SQL server group

33) Breakout Session – TLA 323 – Introduction to IronRuby

Coming Home

After the very last session on Friday, I took one more stroll through the conference halls. Most people had already left. The Microsoft demo booths were empty. The vendor area was blocked off. I wished I could go back in time a few more days and run a few more laps around the arena. I was in a good state for coming back home though. I was very tired but at the same time very excited. My spirits were renewed and I was glowing from experiencing that wonderful feeling of knowing I am in the right field and I love what I do.

Cindy.Connect.OnAddInsUpdate