As part of the lead-up to this year’s TechEd in Sydney, I offered a prize to the person who could come the closest to guessing the final attendance number (without going over). I had a larger number of entries than I expected and the guesses ranged from 2612 at the low end up to 3273. I know it’s been...

One of the three key themes at Tech.Ed in Sydney this year is Connect (the other two are Learn and Explore ). Connecting with like-minded people is a huge benefit at an event like this and you could set yourself up a complex contact management system, with lists of people and their interests and so on...

Long time community guy, aut hor , gamer and geek Andrew Parsons has finally come onboard as our Academic Developer Evangelist, a role that’s been sorely missed since Tyson ’s departure a few years back. What’s more, not only has he arrived, he’s already blogging . Drop by and leave him a welcome note...

This evening (Monday 11 Aug) is the first of the Demos Happen { Here } state finals. We’ll be kicking off at 6pm at Microsoft HQ in North Ryde. Subsequently we’ll be holding finals in the MS offices in Canberra - Aug 12 6pm Melbourne – Aug 13 6:30pm Brisbane – Aug 18 6pm Adelaide – Aug 20 6pm Come and...

Now for a bit of TechEd fun. Maybe I’ve been on too many aeroplanes recently (in fact, I know I’ve been on too many aeroplanes recently), but after chatting with Ben, I’ve come up with a little competition (open to folks living in Australia only). Guess how many people will be at TechEd Australia this...

Craig’s been doing some great work around OBA and VSTO on his blog lately. As well as his recent presentation at SBTUG , he’s posted CLARITY: Office Business Applications (OBA) VSTO: VS2008 SP1 enhancements OBA: Office Business Applications resources VSTO: More on VS2008 SP1 enhancements ; and VSTO:...

I had a great time over the last couple of days hanging out with Christen Boyd and some of the other folk from the VSTO team here in Seattle. This culminated yesterday with a webcast of the session I’ll be doing here next week and then again at TechEd in Sydney. As promised, here are my slides from that...

Don Kerr and Rick Anderson are blogging now at http://blogs.msdn.com/wmoz . It’s going to be a great source for news and tips about the Windows Mobile platform if the first couple of posts are anything to go by. Of course, the lads have already blogged about the TechEd mobile virtual track . Subscribed...

Fin asked a few of us inside and outside Microsoft for tips in becoming a successful developer. I’m not sure that she expected the deluge (or verbosity) of responses – I think she only had about 300 words to fill in total – she asked 15 people so it turns out 20 words each was the target. I’m going to...

This evening at the Sydney .NET User Group , in addition to the great session that Nick Randolph will be doing as well as the Demo Comp demos , we’ll be testing some of the cool RFID technology that will be in use at TechEd . Come along and be part of the crowd. Tonight, June 18 at 6pm at the Microsoft...

See also Day 1 and Day 0 Another fun day at TechEd in the US started with a great session from Amanda Silver on VB and LINQ.I then spent a couple of hours in the massive Hands On Labs area, where there were 600 colour-coded machines set up. While I was there, I ran into a couple of familiar faces who...

I just got confirmation that the session I proposed for our internal technical conference, TechReady has been accepted. Deploying VSTO v3 Applications Building compelling, contextual applications on the Microsoft Office platform has become much simpler with the release of VSTO v3 with VS2008. Often,...

This is as close as I got to BalmerBot at the TechEd keynote on Day 1. I enjoyed, but wasn't blown away by the content. I'm not sure whether this is indicative of the way we generally have access to most information before a conference or event or whether being inside the organisation, the stuff we talk...

After 28-odd hours (and some of them were very odd) of travel, I arrived in Orlando ready to start the TechEd experience. After a brief sleep, I declined the complimentary buffet breakfast (served on the very best Styrofoam) at the hotel and jumped on one of the shuttle busses to the convention centre...

One of the tools we're using at TechEd Australia this year to facilitate the Connect pillar is called (aptly enough) TechEd Connect. Here's the US version of the card I can insert on my blog and use to find like-minded geeks to hang out with while I'm in Orlando.  We're planning to have the same...

Following Kleefy 's not so unexpected announcement , I've taken over the Technology of TechEd Track for this year's TechEd Australia event. Here's the spiel that I wrote for the track. Come on a journey behind the scenes at Tech•Ed. This track will take you end-to-end in the technology deployed...

As some of you know, I'm a big fan of the certification system . Well, there are only 11 days left of MS Learning's great offer to give you a free exam voucher for each MCP/MCTS credential you get before 31 May. You'll need to prove you passed by sharing your MCP transcript . Here's the skinny (for all...

Alistair and I did a session at the recent SharePoint Forum on "Delivering Systems that the Users Don't Hate: Why Office and SharePoint will change the way you work" (which I'll be redelivering in a slightly technified form tomorrow at the Perth SharePoint User Group ). All of the decks and...

One of the really innovative things about the Tech.Ed Australia web site is the capability to connect directly with the Track Owners while they're formulating the content for their tracks in Australia and New Zealand . Of course, you can subscribe to their blog feeds or contact them by email, but as...

The three themes of Tech.Ed this year are Learn , Explore and Connect . For me, at least, much of the value of attending a technical conference is to get to meet and interact with like-minded geeks and subject matter experts. I was having a chat with Dr Neil this afternoon and we were chucking around...

It's alive! The registration site for Tech.Ed Australia is live. Don't miss out on the great Early Bird special offer. There's a couple of great features of this Silverlight-enabled page. There are testimonials from Tech.Ed alumni and two consolidated blog feeds from the TechEd team and from the Track...

Still catching up on my blogging, so this one's a little old. The irrepressible Trika blogged about the VS2008 series of certifications and included a bunch of different paths through the tracks based on your current certification status. There's also a link to a Live Meeting webcast about all this stuff...

As I said , I'm off to Tech.Ed Developers in Orlando at the beginning of next month (and our event manager, Fran Barlow, is off to Tech.Ed IT Professionals the following week). I also noted that the track owners for Tech.Ed New Zealand and Australia are in the process of sorting out sessions for this...

As part of our quest to source the best speakers and content possible for TechEd in New Zealand and Australia at the beginning of September this year, I'm off to the TechEd Developers conference in Orlando Florida at the beginning of June (and yes, before you ask, we have someone going to the TechEd...

I went dark exactly two months ago and I'm finally coming up for some blogging air. Look out for lots of posts over the next little while as I clear my "Blog This" backlog. Yesterday at one of Greg Low's CodeCampOz pre-conf sessions I rattled off the names of the track owners for TechEd in...