After Tech·Ed Israel and Tech·Ed US, Europe will be my third TechEd this year and I'm really looking forward to it! Being part of the content team, I'm especially proud about the great speaker line-up and the quality content. Everyone involved in events like this knows how much energy and passion is required to compile a great track. And so was it for Emmanuel and myself: Over the last 5 months, we put a lot of effort into our two tracks, the ARC and the CTS track. (If you wonder why there is no session with a CTS prefix, here is the answer: "We decided to reduce the amount of tracks to 5 (ARC, DEV, MBS, OFF, SQL). Therefore the CTS track is now embedded within the DEV track. However all CTS sessions are part of the BPI (Business Process Integration) virtual track.").
As you can imagine, we're really looking forward to see the result of our work...

If you can't go to Barcelona check out the amazing Virtualside. This is just a great idea, I love it...

If you're lucky and will go to Barcelona here are a couple of things you shouldn't miss:

• The ARC booth
  Whether you have a specific question or just want to have a chat with another Architect, this is the place where Architects meet! BTW, this is also the place where you find more information about the great p&p stuff such as the Enterprise Library or the Service Factory. Come and visit us...
• Participate in the Iron Architect Contest
  Who comes up with the best/most elegant/most innovative/smartest/... solution for the given problem and wants to win an amazing price? Come to the ARC booth and pick up the 'ingredients' for the Iron Architect showdown. The showdown will be live on Friday Fri Nov 10 15:15 (ARCWD06 Iron Architect Finals).
• Don Smith's and my session "Proven Practices for Implementing Services"
  DEV308 Thu Nov 9 10:45 - 12:00 Room 113
  This session will take a closer look at some of the issues developers and architects encounter while implementing services using ASMX and Windows Foundation Classes (WFC). We'll discuss common challenges around contracts and messages and elaborate on how to decouple the service internals from its service interfaces without adding too much complexity to the overall service design. At the end of this session, we're going to demonstrate how to implement such services by leveraging the ASMX and WCF Service Factory from the patterns and practices team.
• My session "Abstract Concepts: Architecting Applications for a Service-Oriented World"
  ARC 206 Fri Nov 10 13:30 - 14:45 Room 112
  Many people still believe that service-oriented systems are just a Web of applications connected through Web services, where as the real power of service-orientation lies in the definition of a conceptual service model that defines the contract and interaction of the services. Given the fact that few projects count as 'grass root' projects, this session covers how to build new applications and also about architectural re-factoring to move an existing application into the service-oriented space.
• Iron Architect Finals
  ARCWD06 Fri Nov 10 15:15 - 16:30 Room 130
  Come and be a member of the audience and help decide the winner of the first annual Iron Architect showdown. Contestants have been given their ingredients, now it's time to see them perform in front of a live audience. All members of the audience will participate in voting for the winner. Come and be part of history and make your vote count!
  

Last but not least, don't forget your swimsuit as there are rumors that it it's still possible to take a swim in the Mediterranean...