TechEd
TechEd
Early-bird registration for TechEd 2007 is now open until April 7th. TechEd will be held in Orlando on June 4th-8th.
http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2007
There is also a special VIP Sweepstakes. Register by March 8 and be entered to win:
- A 6-day, 5-night stay in a hotel suite with priority check-in
- VIP treatment at the Tech·Ed 2007 attendee party
- Front-row seating at the keynote session
[Cross-posted from
http://blogs.msdn.com/cbowen]
The TechEd 2006 site now has details of the attendee party on June 15th. The main event will be a private concert by the band Train.
From the special events page:
"Throughout the night you can enjoy traditional ballpark food and beverages as you tour the historic park learning facts and trivia from Fenway Tour Guides. Don’t forget to bring your camera! Top tier Red Sox alumni will be on hand to sign autographs, you can take a close-up look at the World Series Trophy and other memorabilia collected through the ages. Batting cages and speed pitch cages will be open if you want to test your skills (all gear provided), you can take a walk up to the top of the famous “Green Monster” or simply sit back and enjoy the beautiful view from one of the upper decks, bars or club lounges - all seating areas will be open for you to enjoy."
See you there!
-Chris
The TechEd 2006 site has now been updated with details about the June 11-16 event in Boston. Registration is now open as well.
http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2006/default.mspx
Interesting details:
- Early Bird (by 4/14) cost is $1,795
- A Sunday night keynote with Ray Ozzie and Kurt DelBene
- The special attendee event will be at Fenway Park. (Unfortunately the Red Sox will be out on a road trip, but it should be a great night of food, drink and music.)
- The Technical Learning Center
- The standard staples of Bird-of-a-Feather sessions, Chalk Talks, Expo Hall, MCP testing, Hands-On Labs and Jam sessions are fully intact
While I usually enjoy being able to travel to a distant city to get away and "geek out" for the week, it's going to be great having it right in our back yard.
I hope to see you there!
-Chris
If you happen to be at TechEd, be certain to head over to the development cabanas (6-8) where DVDs of the complete and fully-installed Team System Beta 2 are being given out (currently by none other than Rob Caron whom I see has just blogged about this.) The DVD contains a Virtual PC instance with the data, app and client all installed and ready to use. It is a very hot commodity and I believe there are only 2,000 DVDs available, so get there soon!
There are some requirements:
- 2.0+ GHz CPU
- 1.5 GB RAM
- 10 GB disk space
- Virtual PC 2004 (of course)
If you aren't at TechEd, word is that MSDN will have the Virtual PC instance available for download “soon”.
I also heard (at today's “.NET Rocks” lunchtime recording with Team System PMs) that Microsoft is considering releasing differencing disk VPC images containing VSTS walkthroughs which you can essentially snap onto the base Team System image to get running quickly and easily.
Great news!
-Chris
I've been to a decent number of TechEds since my first one in
1997. This is probably my sixth visit. TechEd has certainly
grown and changed in that time, so I'd like to offer some advice to
people attending for the first time (especially if you've never been to
a large tech conference.)
- If you're really looking forward to a speaker or topic, chances
are that lots of others will be, too. If the session is in
something that sounds like “Room x” (vs. “Hall x” or “Auditorium x”),
you should do your best to get there at least 15 minutes before it
starts, or you'll find yourself standing in the back (if they let you)
or hovering in the hallway, hoping someone will walk out so the
door monitor will let you in.
- When you go to Hall B
for a meal, do EXACTLY as commanded by the shepherding food people.
You'll recognize them as the hundreds of people excitedly gesturing and
telling you to go “this way, please.” If you stray from the herd, you
will be given a nasty electric shock. Do not stray.
- If you have a laptop, bring your own bag and use it instead of the
one you'll get at the conference. If you do use the provided bag,
at least bring something you can attach to it (a “Windows ME is for
ME!” button, a framed picture of Jeff Richter, etc.) to make it
distinguishable from the 10,000 other identical black “TechEd 2005“
bags that will be there.
- Microsoft is very good about putting drinks out.
Do your body a favor and go nuts with the water. Grab a bottle to
drink and a bottle to shove in your bag. Heck, grab a few to
bring back to your hotel room.
- Microsoft is also VERY good about putting snacks out.
In the past two years, however, they really have gotten better about
putting snacks that don't require a defibrillator. Fruit, baked
chips, etc. There are even tables with sugar-free food. Be
strong. Resist the siren's song of the Mountain of Pastries and
Frozen Goodies. Well, okay, maybe just one Dove bar... oh, and what's this, Krispy Kreme?...
- Bring business cards. Even if you never actually talk to
anyone, they can be fun to fling around the session halls during long
talks.
- A grand tradition of TechEd is trying to fit a mountain of
plastic gadgets and t-shirts into your bags the night before
checkout. Some swag is Great and Good, but most of it will go
completely unused once you get it home. TechEd goes by much too
quickly to waste time obtaining such trinkets, so choose
carefully!
- The weather will be warm, so wearing shorts will be de rigueur.
A friendly tip - wearing knee-high black socks with shorts is generally
something best reserved for trips to Bermuda. However, if you
elect this style of dress, you will find plenty of company.
- While the weather will be warm, inside the convention
center is normally super air-conditioned and can be pretty
frigid. If you chill easily, bring a sweatshirt or light jacket.
- If you're interested in something at the Microsoft Store and
don't mind taking a chance, you can wait until the store's last day
(Thursday or Friday) and hope it is still in stock after they've marked
down the prices.
- Finally, don't forget to bring your conference badge for the
attendee party on Thursday. I've seen people turned away, having
to return to their hotels to get badges and losing valuable “partay”
time.
I'm very much looking forward to next week! I hope to meet you there!
-Chris
The personal calendar feature has now been enabled at the TechEd site. Log in and you can choose your favorite session for each slot.
http://msteched.com/SessionSchedule.aspx
One annoyance, though. In previous years, you were able to store more than one selection per slot. This was a useful feature because I liked to note my top X sessions per slot. This would give me an at-a-glance view of my favorites per session in case I changed my mind about a topic. It's still early, so maybe they'll change this.
Enjoy!
-Chris
“NTeam” Open Source Project Based on Team System
E-Week has coverage of the fledgling effort, called NTeam, just getting underway to create an open-source counterpart to Visual Studio Team System. They seek to integrate existing open-source solutions (e.g. NUnit, NAnt, etc.) to enable smaller development organizations to achieve a degree of VSTS-like functionality without a VSTS-like price.
Here is the project home page.
It will be interesting to see if the initial fuel of interest is enough to propel this effort through the many issues that will undoubtedly be faced trying to integrate disparate technologies in a workable (and pluggable) solution. While they mention they aren't trying to directly compete with VSTS, even trying to emulate the features and integration of VSTS is a tall order.
Whidbey/VSTS Newsgroups Moved to MSDN Forums
As reported by Rob Caron, The microsoft.private.whidbey.* groups have now been replaced with new groups in the MSDN Forums.
Command-Line Code Coverage with VSTS
John Cunningham has a great post on how to perform code coverage using the command-line tools in Team System. It is based on Beta 2 APIs, but you'll have it very soon, right? ;)
Class Designer Channel 9 Videos
While Visual Studio 2005's Class Designer isn't technically part of Team System, it can be considered an “honorary“ part of Team System Architect and Developer editions. There is a three-part series of short videos with John Stallo demonstrating the Class Designer over at Channel 9:
“.NET Rocks!” on Team System at TechEd
Carl and Richard will be recording a .NET Rocks show at TechEd during a lunch break. The guests will be members of the Team System development team, including Eric Lee, Michael Leworthy, Ajay Sudan and Beindia Hallauer.
I'll see you there, Carl!
-Chris
Rory and Scott have pulled out all the stops to get the TechEd word out. Now, with the disturbing and frightening “video #3“, they've given us a glimpse into a secret ritual never before seen outside of Redmond. Don't watch video #3 in the dark, or alone, or alone in the dark.
Here are links to the videos:
Of course, they're wearing the same shirts in each video, so let's hope that means they were all shot on the same day (or they REALLY like those shirts and have a bunch of identical ones.) How many more videos will there be? Keep an eye on Scott's blog to find out...
-Chris
It looks like I'll be able to make it to Orlando for TechEd this year! (Flair image has dutifully been added at right.)
I always get so much out of attending - great content, discussions with vendors, hands-on labs, catching up with acquaintances and making new ones. The 2000 TechEd in Orlando went very well, having a good convention center and plenty of activities for the, oh, 60 minutes of free time I had each night. Looking forward to it!
I've added my blog to the growing list at TechEdBloggers.net.
-Chris
P.S. I haven't booked a hotel yet. Has anyone done the legwork to pick out a good one from the list?
The videos and slides from TechEd 2004 are now available online at:
http://microsoft.sitestream.com/teched2004/
(Note: You have to click on the session titles to watch video - and each takes a while to load.)
Now, I'm off to watch the videos from those numerous sessions I couldn't attend because they conflicted with other sessions!
-Chris
UPDATE: Unfortunately, these have been taken offline.
UPDATE: The above link is still offline, but if you attended TechEd, you can use your CommNet login to access the materials at:
http://microsoft.sitestream.com/teched/
According to the TechEd site, here are the details for the next two TechEds:
Tech·Ed 2005, Orlando, FL, June 5–10
Tech·Ed 2006, Boston, MA, June 11–16
I admit I'm torn about having 2006 in Boston. While I do think it is long overdue that a northern city host a TechEd, well, I live just outside Boston!
I look forward to TechEd as a week away from distractions where I can geek out and focus on drinking Microsoft Kool-Aid. With the conference so close to home, I'll have to face the commute to Boston and the potential to be pulled into the office.
On the plus side, the chances that more people from Monster will be able to attend would be much higher. Also, since Boston is such a fantastic city, it will be great to expose the TechEd community to all it has to offer.
I can only wonder what the attendee party will feature. Duck tours over to the Hatch Shell for some Jim's Big Ego or Push Stars (two of my favorite Boston bands)? Amusement parks like Canobie or Six Flags are too far away... Museum of Science? Aquarium?
Any other guesses?
-Chris
What a week! So much going on and so little time left over at the end each day. I had intended to write a summary of each day, but utterly failed to do so.
I'm sitting in CommNet now with about 45 minutes left until I'll be braving the holiday weekend airport scene.
Overall, I'm very satisfied with TechEd this year. As I mentioned before, this is my sixth one, so I have some perspective on what makes a good TechEd.
The content was great - I had lots of excellent breakouts. The cabanas were a great idea that unfortunately had serious flaws in execution (at least at first - they attempted to mitigate some of the issues later in the week.) Specifically, having Microsoft employees and other involved third parties on hand during the day, available for any discussion, was fantastic. The problem was that they also conducted breakout sessions in these cabana areas. Due to the nature of the Sails Pavillion at the convention center, it was difficult to see the monitors and very difficult to hear the presenter from any more than 10 feet away.
The convention center itself, while not bad, is not one of the best ones we've had. A bit difficult to get to/from certain areas. I miss having large areas of grass to stretch out and have a quick rest during the day. Not much like that here - lots of concrete. There are some nice views of the water, but I'd trade the latter for the former.
The hands-on labs were good in terms of content, but I would sometimes find a machine/lab combination that simply didn't have enough juice while running under the Virtual PC instance. However, that didn't stop me from doing about 5-6 of them!
Of greatest interest to me is Visual Studio .NET 2005 and the Team System addition. Tons of great work done there. It was good to get many details (and chances to use) the new features, so I can plan and adjust our current architecture and approaches to make migration easier when they are available.
More later. I'm off to sacrifice a small woodland creature to the God of Connecting Flights...
-Chris
Brian Loesgen of INETA has a great post detailing the San Diego area, check it out! I've recently volunteered with INETA, so I'm looking forward to the chance to meet Brian and others at TechEd.
I've also found some good resources:
Looking forward to great content and meeting many talented people!
-Chris
I noticed that the BOF sessions have been added since my last visit to the TechEd scheduling system. Unfortunately, two promising BOF sessions I had hoped to attend are scheduled for the same slot:
BOF35 Continuous Integration in .NET
Tuesday, May 25 6:30 PM- 7:30 PM, 16A
BOF36 Integrating Unit Testing Tools and Practices Into the Software Development LifeCycle
Tuesday, May 25 6:30 PM- 7:30 PM, 16B
Another sad case of wanting to see everything, but not being able to be in two places at the same time. Well, it seems the sessions are next door to each other, so maybe I should spend the hour running between the rooms for 5 minutes at a time? :)
Is anyone planning to attend either of these? Let me know and we can share notes afterward.
Now, to address the fact that I have on average 3.5 sessions picked for each breakout slot...
-Chris