It's midway through the final day of the conference so it's about time to give a summary of the week.

The Event

  • The overall level of announcements was light during the week. There was a lot more focus on the products that have been released than the products that are upcoming. Acropolis was announced at the beginning of the week (links, my review). Windows Server Core got some additional elaboration but had already been announced previously.
  • The attendance was larger than last year but the venue was massively larger. There is still room for growth next year when TechEd returns to Orlando.
  • Lunch was distinctly improved from last year in Boston and was at the level of moderate cheap cafeteria food this year. Snacks were plentiful and varied.

The Talks

  • There were a lot of great talks this year- too many to attend everything I wanted to see. The distribution across the week is uneven depending on your interests so I'll have to watch a few sessions once the recordings are published. It's unfortunate that the chalk talks aren't recorded because I missed almost all of them due to conflicts.
  • The rooms for breakout sessions were large and I had almost no problem getting a spot. Even the smaller rooms held 300 people, which was great for the sessions that turned out to be unexpectedly popular.
  • The setup for chalk talks was much better than last year. Each theater was equipped with AV equipment, monitors, and this time the white boards were usable. However, a lot of the chalk talks had capacity problems as they only held 32 people. The chalk talks last year only tended to get 20-30 people but this year a lot of chalk talks had 40-50 people. The microphones were not powerful enough and the monitors weren’t large enough to support an overflow crowd.

The Location

  • The weather in Orlando is absolutely brutal coming in from Seattle. Every day was in the 90s with the humidity maxed out.
  • It's actually tough finding nice restaurants. The towns in the area are spread out a bit and a lot of places serve resort fare. You have to search around and ask people in order to distinguish the good spots from the best-advertised spots. This is going to be a whole lot easier next year at least.

Update: Lunch on Friday sucked so that has pulled the average down a bit.  It was still better than the lunches last year.

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