TechDays 2008 Toronto.....it’s a wrap!

Hi Everyone,

I can’t express how excited and how tired I am. It has been a wonderful journey to bring this type of conference to Canada. I received some great feedback on how we are going to adjust the experience for the next cities and I'm floored about all the positive feedback that shows we are on the right track.

Here’s a summary from the context of a TechDays guest. I’ve tried to take a scenario approach to capture the experiences as we’ve had many individuals share their experience and comments with us.

When I first heard of TechDays, I was excited and a little be skeptical that you can move so far from the marketing sessions to deliver on this technical conference. I arrived on the first day and was pleasantly surprised as the logistics and breakfast was unlike any of your past events. Being treated as a guest vs. an attendee was a nice touch. Oh yeah, the TechieCrunch box was pretty neat as well......it took me a while, but I got it.....the spoon is a pen. Then it was time for the rubber to meet the road....the first session. Bringing real world speakers that have been then and done it was a nice touch. You can see they were nervous and as there some early logistics to work out as we got started….so it was sort of slow to get going. But after that, it seemed to pick up and it took stride, especially day two. There were lots of great speakers, some needed some more work and can use some practice, yet the speakers, their experience and the content really made the difference. There was so much content over the two days it was hard not to find something for anyone. We found ourselves mixing it up and went to 3 or 5 tracks. Here are some ideas I’ve gathered to help improve the experience.

It really did show it was your 1st event - which I find REALLY weird since you have been in business how long...glad you are taking the focus off marketing
I would recommend it to others, and I would go yearly to such an event....please make it yearly and give time in advance to know when it’s coming
Provide some more healthy snacks, the food was great...(nice touch with the break snacks) and there was lots
Provide the ppt in soft copy or allow access for attendees onsite...maybe provide all demos and ppts on a usb key
Bring in more of the real world speakers and invest some time in supporting them with speaker training
A little confusing to realize that I got copies of all the platform software....as part TechNet subscription
Need more interaction, fun stuff to drive connection as it was great to share and meet people that are deploying the technology
Great clarity.....Techdays is about current technology which I can deploy today.....PDC and EnergizeIT is about looking to the future
Overall a great start and we can see the possibilities
Having access to the speakers was great….can we get more time with them….i.e. open panel at the end of the day or lunch?
Sessions need to be longer so not to rush and have more time to discuss the topics.
Love to see some sort of hands on built into the sessions….maybe access to onsite demos?

On to the next city and continuing to improve and refine the experience as we go. From the Toronto event it’s clear that we need to support this type of conference across Canada and we will. Please keep sending me your comments and feedback as that is what has gotten us this far. We can only make it better and build this into a yearly conference based upon your desire to help us make it happen.

Please feel free to contact me directly as my email door is always open ..... john.oxley@microsoft.com

See you in Montréal!

John