Chris Jackson's Semantic Consonance : TechReady

TechReady 9 Recap

Chris Jackson — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:27:57 GMT

This one has been on my to-do list for a while, so it’s far from breaking news. I use these posts as a resource to gauge how we’re doing with our presentation content. Typically these posts don’t generate a lot of feedback, but it is always welcome.

At TechReady 9, I presented the following sessions:

CLI323
The MCS Application Compatibility Strategy Engagement: Predicting the Unpredictable

CLI313
Application Compatibility Remediation: The Dark Magic of Fixing Broken Applications

CLICT300-R1
Application Compatibility - Tools discussion (Part One – AppDNA and ACT)

CLICT300-R2
Application Compatibility - Tools discussion (Part Two – ACT and ChangeBase)

CLI207
What EVERYONE should know about Application Compatibility (with Aaron Margosis)

CLI401
Not for the Faint of Heart: Hard Core App Compat Debugging (with Gov Maharaj)

SOLNCT202
How to Navigate the Microsoft Services Application Compatibility Offerings and Deploy Windows 7 at Your Customers

The rating criteria were:

Q1 - The speaker was knowledgeable about the subject matter.

Q2 - The speaker's presentation skills helped me better understand the material.

Q3 - The content was effective in achieving the stated learning objectives.

Q4 - The demonstration(s) were effective.

Q5 - This session builds skills improving how I sell, market, and/or provide services to our customers and partners.

Q6 - The knowledge/skills I gained are relevant to my role.

Q7 - This readiness solution was worth the investment of my time.

Q8 - I will recommend this readiness solution to others.

Q9 - Overall, I was satisfied with this Session/Chalk Talk.

Q10 - Content Level: Please rank the level of technical information actually delivered.

Q11 - Please provide additional constructive comments, suggestions, feedback.

QAvg - Average for all questions combined

Here are the rankings. I kind of vacillate between displaying rankings as raw numbers or as raw percentages. In this case, I have enough of a distribution that the raw numbers can be misleading, so I’m using percentages:

	CLI207	CLI313	CLI323	CLI401	CLICT300-R1	CLICT300-R2	SOLNCT202
Q1	24%	10%	9%	27%	14%	23%	28%
Q2	35%	18%	8%	26%	17%	26%	26%
Q3	35%	13%	8%	19%	22%	29%	25%
Q4	30%	8%	19%	31%	20%	39%	26%
Q5	36%	14%	5%	26%	17%	30%	22%
Q6	34%	11%	9%	37%	15%	23%	10%
Q7	36%	13%	9%	27%	16%	26%	24%
Q8	39%	13%	9%	29%	17%	29%	36%
Q9	39%	12%	8%	25%	19%	31%	29%
Qavg	33%	10%	6%	24%	19%	25%	24%

Analysis

People are interested in both the technology and the business approach. My two top sessions? A technology session, and a strategy session that didn’t include a single demo (which is incredibly odd for me). This was one of my areas targeted for improvement, and it seems as if we’re finally getting that story put together.

Hard core debugging is still a polarizing session. This session still generates one of two pieces of feedback. Either someone thinks it’s the best thing ever, or they think it’s impossibly obtuse and not useful. There is nothing in between. I threw in a demo this time of “debugging without a debugger” which has traditionally been really powerful with the folks who actually do the work, but for a general audience, it fell flat. They wanted to see hex, apparently. :-)

Don’t be depressing. Our “what everyone wants to know” session was still in the top half, but boy, it isn’t at all what I like to see in my scores. We raced through topic after topic, painting a horribly depressing picture in an effort to be “real.” But it’s not this incredibly depressing thing – you actually can do it. We didn’t leave any hope, only despair. It turns out people don’t really like that much. Do-over.

Don’t leave your technical guys behind. I did a series of 2 sessions – one with AppDNA and the other with ChangeBase. AppDNA sent their CEO and their CTO. It’s lit up in green. ChangeBase’s technical director didn’t make it, leaving only their director of sales. They are awash in a sea of red and orange as a result. Technical audiences like hearing it straight form the geeks’ mouths.

We need to keep our remediation sessions current. I did a minor revision of this content for TechReady 9, and have a major overhaul in store for the 2010 conference season. It’s still getting consistently high scores, which tells me to keep it current and continue to include it.

TechReady 8 Recap

Chris Jackson — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:46:58 GMT

Updated: Added co-presenter info, and corrected 2 typos.

The 2009 conference season has begun, launched with an internal Microsoft conference: TechReady 8. So, while not everyone can be there, it’s fairly representative of what there is to come at the public conferences happening later in the year. Clearly, I want to learn everything I can from the internal one so we can really deliver some great stuff at external conferences.

Not that internal folks deserve any less, just that we can take more risks. And take risks I did. It turns out that, if you show a photo of the COO of your own company immediately after a photo of Darth Vader to a bunch of people who report through him, they pause a moment before they laugh…

So, what am I presenting this season?

CLI318
What's New in Application Compatibility for Windows 7

CLI400
Writing Compatible Applications for Windows Vista and Windows 7 (with Aaron Margosis)

CLI401
Mitigating Application Issues Using Shims

CLI402
Debugging Application Compatibility Issues (with Gov Maharaj)

CLICT306
Q&A with Chris Jackson and Aaron Margosis

Now, let’s look at the scores that people provide for this conference:

Q1
The speaker was knowledgeable about the subject matter.

Q2
The speaker's presentation skills helped me better understand the material.

Q3
The content was effective in achieving the stated learning objectives.

Q4
The demonstration(s) were effective.

Q5
This session builds skills improving how I sell, market, and/or provide services to our customers and partners.

Q6
The knowledge/skills I gained are relevant to my role.

Q7
This readiness solution was worth the investment of my time.

Q8
I will recommend this readiness solution to others.

Q9
Overall, I was satisfied with this Session/Chalk Talk.

Q10
Content Level: Please rank the level of technical information actually delivered.

Q11
Please provide additional constructive comments, suggestions, feedback.

QAvg
Average for all questions combined

Let’s take a look at my ranking compared to every other session. This year, there were 734 breakout and chalk-talk sessions. How did I stack rank on these sessions?

TR8	CLI318	CLI400	CLI401	CLI402	CLICT306
Q1	11	12	12	12	13
Q2	13	29	8	14	23
Q3	7	21	22	24	24
Q4	5	25	17	18	7
Q5	23	27	16	22	18
Q6	44	18	19	24	20
Q7	26	18	12	24	21
Q8	15	21	12	20	31
Q9	10	27	11	23	1
Qavg	19	25	16	22	18

Now let’s look at the comments:

CLI318

Great content, great speaker. Great job Chris

This kind of session are the most useful for CSS guys, I wish there was more of them.

The session was somewhat chaotic. I know the speaker can do better. Found it hard to understand all.

I would suggest to rename the session and the description. The initial expectations were more oriented in understanding how the OS evolves ... but the session when more into demoing how to program to leverage new OS features ... which is fine ... but need another name for the session Been a .NET programmer I was able to understand the demos, but I guess some infrastructure people were not able to gain as much knowledge as they expected

PLEASE UPLOAD TO ACADEMY MOBILE. IT'S A MUCH BETTER OPTION THAN VOYAGER

Great speaker!

Great presentation!

CLI400

Very useful

Session too unstructured - I hate "death by powerpoint" as much as anyone, but a few slides would have helped the flow and would re-inforce the key points. Also, too often some important knowledge was assumed without good reason - i.e. one new Vista feature was used to explain another without checking the attendees were aware of it. For example,Integrity Levels were used to explain some UIPI, but then it turned out the audience weren't too familiar with them, so had to backtrack.

This is simply the BEST SESSION OF TR8! Awesome is the only word- ability to deliver all we need without PPT is just great!

GREAT INFO! After the session I was up giving a suggestion about making this available as a WorkshopPLUS to our customers. The ADC (Application Development Consultant) should be able to levarage your content as a WorkshopPLUS event through Premier Support. My recommendation would be for you to hook up with Premier Services offering leads in making this happen.

CLI401

One of the best sessions I've attended so far.

Excelent presentation ... keep up the good job ... I would really like to see HOL on this topic ... I think it is very important to ensure the deployment

CLI402

This session should be a model

This was over my head, my fault. Should have read the description more carefully.

Great stuff, wonderful to see a core debugging session @ TR8

it would be nice to have some one-page hands-out that describes how the application are debugged and what's the learning points from that debugging session. This can be used as a "cheat sheet" by the field when they perform application compatibility work.

Content was over my head

Good session. I wish more sessions were technical like this.

thanks

This session was just excellent! Chris and Gov clearly stated all the big implications involved in the compatibility subject in Windows. Good Job, guys!

Chris did an excellent job presenting - very polished speaker. Gov also did a good job speaking and was entertaining. Both were very knowledgeable of the subject matter, and the session made me aware of the differences of how the appcompat team approaches problems compared to those of us in GES. Very useful session and content!

CLICT306

thanks

Analysis

The scores kind of mapped up to my initial impressions. Overall, I thought it went well and was a lot of fun, but I didn’t “nail” any of my sessions, so no #1 session for me this go-around. Not even top 10’s. But they were all top-25, and there were a number of highlights.

I need to finish figuring out the Windows 7 app compat story. This one has been stretching me a bit. You see, we’re really not breaking a lot more. So, the story is a lot the same as the Windows Vista story, with a few minor tweaks. With Windows Vista, you could ramble on for hours about all of the security features that broke stuff. For Windows 7, you have to get kind of obscure. So the conversation either diverges to hard core technical, or it rises up to strategic with a little technical flavoring. Either way, I clearly need to just pick one, because people didn’t walk away feeling empowered to actually get something done.

I really need to work on the developer story. Aaron and I whipped up some decent content, but it felt unstructured because it was. We were taking ideas and throwing them against the wall. Some of them stuck, others didn’t. We really needed to have this experience, I think, to do it right. But now that we’ve had it, it’s up to us to really nail it next time. One guy was calling for more PPT. I don’t think you need PPTs to organize, but you clearly need organization!

The debugging session needs to be clear what it is. Some people ended up feeling it was over their head. So, I renamed the session for TechEd (assuming it gets accepted) to “Not for the Faint of Heart: Hard Core App Compat Debugging” so expectations can be more clear.

It’s a blast presenting with Aaron and Gov. I always love working with Aaron – I had no idea what it’d be like working with Gov. Awesome. We played off of each other well. Aaron and I have a very Odd Couple-esque on-stage relationship which is fun. Plus he’s so damn smart. Gov is just authentic hard-core to the bone who can debug on a stage much like Eddie Van Halen can play guitar. All I really had to do was narrate. He was constantly laying down a solid rhythm track, and watching him solo is a sight to behold.

People like the hard stuff. Every time I have a crazy-go-nuts deep session, it just really jives with some folks. Now if I could just get my explanatory abilities to the same level as Mark Russinovich…

Shims are still relevant. In the 2008 season, I had two sessions. I combined them into one, and it’s still getting good reviews and comments. So, looks like this one is still interesting and helpful.

As always, I want to make sure the conference content helps you do your job better, so if I’m missing a category of learning you wish you could get at TechEd or some other conference, then make sure to let me know.

TechReady 7 Recap

Chris Jackson — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:37:32 GMT

8-Aug-2008: Added details on my abbreviations (per comment)

7-Aug-2008: Updated to fit the table into the width of the column for web readers...

...And I'm back. I've been conspicuously absent for a while because I was furiously preparing for TechReady 7 (an internal conference for the Microsoft field), and during the middle of that conference I decided to break my arm. I've been reviewing my scores publicly for a while to elicit external feedback, so I figured I'd continue that trend here.

The sessions I delivered were:

Shims1: CLI315 - Mitigating Application Issues Using Shims Part 1

Shims2: CLI403 - Mitigating Application Issues Using Shims Part 2

Debugging: CLI400 - Debugging Application Compatibility Issues

PjM1: CLICT300-R1 - Application Compatibility Project Best Practices

PjM2: CLICT300-R2 - Application Compatibility Project Best Practices (Repeat)

Once again, let's take a look at my ratings relative to my peers. Last time I was looking specifically within the Windows Client track but this time around let's compare scores to the conference as a whole:

TR7	Shims1	Shims2	Debugging	PjM1	PjM2
Knowledgeable	2	1	6	11	73
Presentation Skills	7	1	5	54	93
Content	5	2	12	99	92
Demos	5	5	6	76	39
Builds Skills	8	2	15	66	111
Relevant	22	4	33	57	90
Worth My Time	13	2	9	61	111
Will Recommend	5	1	11	84	116
Overall	6	1	11	68	112
Average	6	2	10	62	97

And some of the comments:

"This was the best and what i had expected out of every technical session at TR. thanks for skipping the marketing decks!"

"GREAT presentation without PPT. Other presenter have to do the same. We are here to see how it's working, not print screen."

"I appreciated the demo-centered approach to presenting. Chris has a wealth of knowledge and he is a very good teacher."

"This was the only true 400 level content of all the classes that I did attend. This was beyond my skill level, but the presentation skills of the presentor kept me awake and interested"

"I loved it, hardcore to the bone!"

"I lack most of the pre-req skills to really take advantage of the insight & info presented in this session. 20 years ago when I joined MS I was very good at Dissasembing Apps. I've not used it since. So I'm skilled enough to see he did a great talk & also to realise that I'd need a lot more coaching before I could replicate what he showed me. Great Talk."

My learning:

Dispensing with the PowerPoints is goodness. That's right. PPT, be gone with you from my technical sessions! They're still there for you to take home, but I don't need to read to you. I took my shim sessions, which have traditionally done fairly well, and rocketed them up to the top of the entire conference by just doing away with PPT. #2 session in the conference, #1 on 4 attributes (including overall). Pure goodness.

You can go too hard-core. Debugging Application Compatibility Issues was a top session in the conference, but I didn't leave enough breadcrumbs for folks. You should walk away from every talk knowing something more than you did when you came in. If you walk away feeling like you can't do any of that, then it's just a show, and not educational. Fun, but almost as helpful as a box of hair. Take it from deep to deeper to deepest - don't just start way in the depths with a screen full of assembly language.

I'm not so good at chalk talks. Now, to be fair, I did deliver one with an untreated broken arm, but I think the scores speak for themselves even for my able bodied session. I tried to make it interactive because I wanted feedback on project management, but clearly I should bring in talent better suited for that goal.

I need to make sure to keep it relevant. The scores aren't horrible here, but they're the weakest link. Perhaps I should start polling the audience more. And, for anyone attending an upcoming conference, feel free to tell me what matters to you. I'm trying to base what people are interested in by the questions that get funneled my way, but I'll communicate with you any way that I can.

Thanks again to anybody who attended - I hope you enjoyed the demos and the absence of PPT! See some of you at TechEd EMEA! (And perhaps at PDC - that's not locked in yet.)

I've got a pile of topics to cover that have backed up in the queue, so now back to your regularly scheduled geekiness...