Darryl Burling @ Work : TechEdNZ

MSDN Flash: Tech Ed - we have a problem...

dburling — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:36:51 GMT

I was going to open this editorial in celebration of the fact that registration for Tech Ed is now open and encourage you to register today.

And – I strongly encourage you to register today. Not tomorrow – TODAY! Here’s why:

As of this morning ALL the early bird tickets for Tech Ed 2008 will be sold – and well over half the total tickets are sold – in less than two weeks!

You might think that we rejoice greatly to see Tech Ed tickets selling well. And, well yes – two years ago we did. It was great to see the event sell out eight weeks ahead of schedule as it validates what we are doing and sends a clear message that we are hitting the right spot with customers.

However, last year we sold out even earlier, and the only advertising we did had a great big “sold out” on it – which was the first many people heard of Tech Ed registration. This leaves lots of people saying they missed out because they didn’t find out that registration was open until after it was sold out, and others grumbling that their management dithered about purchasing a ticket or whatever.

While it’s great that tickets are selling, it has become clear to us that this is actually becoming a huge problem. We continue to make changes to the way we sell tickets (like reducing the total ticket count one organization can buy, etc), but clearly this is not enough. So next year, we need to do a major rethink.

Having said all that, this year Tech Ed will be great (Scott Hanselman is coming!), and if you are at all interested in getting along (even if you are not sure) get in now and buy a ticket. If you decide you can’t use it later, you can always ask for a refund - if you have a ticket you have choices. If you have no ticket, you have no opportunity to go.

So – please – register today, and tell your friends to do the same! We’re selling out fast!

Happy coding!

Tech Ed New Zealand Tickets - 25% gone

dburling — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:08:34 GMT

Ummmm, yeah.if you were planning on heading to Tech Ed this year to hear the likes of Scott Hanselman speak, I would be considering signing up real soon.

The early bird tickets are already half sold, and when they are gone they are gone.

What is amazing is that registrations opened a week ago and while we expect standard tickets to sell slower than the early bird tickets, I wouldn't be surprised if we are sold out in six weeks.

So, what are you about to do? No the correct answer is not email me asking for a ticket - you know who you are!

Start lobbying your employer (or other boss) to make sure you get in before it is too late!

Tech Ed and MSDN Unplugged update

dburling — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:12:45 GMT

Sometimes it feels like we just live from one event to the next. So while we’ve now got the launch events out of the way, there is more coming – and we need your help to make them the best events they can be

First up – we are getting underway with our Unplugged sessions again. The unplugged sessions are where we tour around various towns and cities throughout New Zealand to give presentations. Nigel and I are doing these over the next few weeks. I’m expanding on my launch topic by doing a session on mixing up the web using HTTP, REST, WCF, PHP and IIS7 and Nigel is doing a Mix08 wrap up session.

You can get full details of these sessions and register at microsoft.co.nz/unplugged. Hopefully we’ll see you there.

The other thing that I’m starting to turn my attention to at the moment is Tech Ed. Each year we try and make Tech Ed better. This year is no exception – as I have more confirmed details, I’ll put them out here and on my blog. To start with though, I want your help.

What do you want to see at Tech Ed this year?

We are just starting to lock down track topics now, and I’m keen to hear from you. What sessions do you think will make Tech Ed better? What speakers do you want to see? What sessions should we not do? What level do you want us to pitch at? Do we have enough business sessions or should we have more introductory material?

If you have ideas, please either email me through the contact form, reply or leave a comment at the end of this blog post.

This is your opportunity to let us know how we can improve Tech Ed. Please note that while we will take all your suggestions into account, we may not be able to meet every need and whim, so please allow us to take some license with regards to the final outcome :-)

Thanks for your help!

Happy Coding!

Tech Ed sessions - top 10

dburling — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:55:15 GMT

I'll I've just got the Evaluation results for Tech Ed, so I thought I'd share the top 10 sessions from Tech Ed before I head out for a weekend. I've got to say that the competition among the top half of the sessions was very tight - you needed to be exceptional to get into the top 30 odd as they all ranked at 8.0 out of 9 or higher on average.

Hopefully the formatting will be OK in your browser.

I'll slice and dice the rest and send out emails to all speakers next week. Below are the top 10 sessions by average score.

Place	Title	Speaker	Avg
1	Woman in Technology Evening	Eileen Brown / Helen Robinson	8.69
2	Securing Your Friends and Family	Steve Riley	8.54
3	Building BackgroundMotion Scalable Web Fast by using the Composite Web Block	Jeremy Boyd	8.45
4	The Fortified Data Centre In Your Future: Build It and They Will Come	Steve Riley	8.41
5	Developing Data Driven Applications using the new Dynamic Data Controls in ASP.NET	Andrew Tokeley	8.41
6	How Did they Find That?: Implementing the New Microsoft Fundamental Computer Investigation Guido for Windows	Kai Axford	8.39
7	It's 11:00 P.M. Do You Know Where Your Data Is?	Steve Riley	8.35
8	Making the Tradeoff: Be Secure or Get Work Done	Steve Riley	8.35
9	Microsoft Enterprise Project Management	Paul Conroy / Doug McCutcheon	8.32
10	Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Security in Depth	Steve Riley	8.26

MSDN Flash - Daylight Saving and Tech Ed wrap up

dburling — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:43:00 GMT

Tech Ed is done. It was a great event and before you forget I want to remind you of something you may have heard about at Tech Ed and if you didn’t its critical that you understand it.

One of the lunchtime sessions we had was around the changes to Daylight saving. This year we are changing when daylight saving starts and finishes – which is great for getting more time at the BBQ or in the pool – but also means we all need to check systems to make sure they are aware of the changes.

I remember when Australia changed their daylight saving schedule for the Commonwealth games – a certain NZ executive happened to be in Australia and their system was not updated and they missed their flight as a result. This is not the sort of executive exposure any one in the IT industry needs, but unless someone takes the time to look at and understand the issues for your organization, someone may be affected by this change.

We have a New Zealand web page dedicated to the daylight saving changes. This page will be getting updated frequently to ensure you have all the information you need, so book mark http://microsoft.co.nz/timezone and visit it periodically.

Back to Tech Ed... The inaugural Women in Technology event went well, and as a result a girly geek group is about to kick off in New Zealand – so keep an eye on http://girlgeekdinners.co.nz for more details (site should be live this week).

For more coverage of Tech Ed, check out http://techedlive.co.nz and the Tech Ed category on my blog. I also did a fairly exhaustive wrap up earlier with lots of links to other blogs and coverage.

If you are interested in downloading the powerpoint decks for the event, these will be available here in the next couple of days. I’ll also post some of your feedback from the event to my blog late this week/early next week...

I do want to say, however, that we enjoyed putting on Tech Ed this year, and we at Microsoft want to thank you for taking time out of work (and in many cases your life) to come along and make the event as great as it was!

Tech Ed Blog posts

dburling — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 06:17:56 GMT

I thought I'd put together a list of blog posts I haven't already linked to elsewhere.

Code Camp:

For developers it all started with Code Camp - Summaries from Ivan and Kirk.

Tech Ed:

Eileen loved the keynote, as did Mauricio - and they've both seen a few...

Craig at Xero summarized Xero involvement this year.

ActionThis officially launched at Tech Ed

Mateus put up a couple of session journals (1,2) as did Nick.

TechFest:

Glen Olson obviously went, but was quiet about whether he enjoyed it or not - actually I couldn't find much on the party except Glens, Mauricio's and my own (which was rather easy to find :-))

Photos:

There are heaps of photos on Flikr - check out the show here (who the heck took all those photos of me???).

Speakers:

Nikhil has posted his thoughts and slides to his blog, Matt Winkler and Justin Smith jumped off the Sky tower on Thursday, Chan has posted his sessions to his Blog.

Alex spent lots of time in discussion with Nikhil and Mahesh and has also put up his slides and code.

Kyle and Deannah's session made it into Computerworld. Nathan also posted his slides...

JB, JD, and Andrew posted their wrap ups and decks respectively - I love the fact that JB's SQL 2008 for Developers session wasn't in Australia, but was wildly popular here :-)

Wrap ups and signoffs:

Jo Chapman did a great job of summarizing her highlights in three posts - Day 1, 2 and 3.

James also has two nice self portraits from him at Tech Ed in his summary post...

Nigel doesn't want to do video again next year, but gives some "how we did it" with regards to the Picture in Picture for the keynote in silverlight (WMV also available).

Kevin summarized his experience, Nas did a nice summary post on her highlights and Mauricio hopes to do another Unofficial Tech Ed Blog next year

Actually Mauricio did a great job of this years Unofficial Tech Ed blog, and for a play by play you should check it out.

Also there are more links, photos and videos on http://TechEdLive.co.nz.

Phew!

To all those who blogged the event - THANK YOU!!!

User Group Meeting at Tech Ed Today!

dburling — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:36:00 GMT

Rodney Lake has organized a last minute User Group meeting for anyone interested at 4pm today at TechEd.

If you are around, come to the Milford Room on Level 4 (its down the corridor in behind the stairways where the "Sponsors Rooms" sign is).

The session is a round table open discussion with the head of the Visual Basic team at Microsoft - Paul Yuknewicz. This top Redmond man has put an hour aside especially for the .Net user group today. You wont get an opportunity like this again so don't miss out!!

Update: This was a great event!

Evermore @ TechFest

dburling — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:16:06 GMT

I haven't spoken to anyone who didn't enjoy the Tech Fest last night. That means I've either spoken to very few people or everyone enjoyed themselves. Hopefully the photos speak for themselves...

Depth of technical sessions

dburling — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:53:11 GMT

One of the things we often get feedback on is that we often don't hit the mark on session depth. There are a few ways to fix this...

The first is to ensure we get deep sessions in to the agenda. I've made an effort to try and work these in this year. There are some extremely deep sessions on. I was talking to Andrew Leckie last night who was after a deep session, so I pointed him at Alex James's session which is a 400 level deep dive in to LINQ (sorry the session number doesn't reflect this - but hopefully the "Deep Dive" in the title will give you a clue). Alex can dive deeper than most, and I'm sure most in the room will be wowed with the depth of his knowledge. Alex is on at 9am this morning.

Joel Pobar can deep dive with the best of them, no body complains about Steve Riley's depth and Paul Yuknewicz can dive deep into VB if you are interested too.

If you are interested in Active Directory, g et along to SVR315 at 3:45. Michael knows his stuff.

Here is a second way to fix this - if you don't get a particular answer - ask questions - the speakers are happy to take them and you can dive as deep as you want to. Also - grab the speakers after their session and dive deep - if they don't have the answer, they can get them.

A third way is to make sure you pick your sessions well. Don't go to sessions where you already know lots - go to sessions where you aren't as deep - you'll learn more and round out your knowledge.

If you have any specific concerns, come find me and let me know or drop me an email! I'm keen to hear feedback that I can use next year!

Women in Technology - wow

dburling — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:31:04 GMT

The Women in Technology dinner went off really well. The team did a fantastic job and everyone was engaged as soon as they walked in the evening - and the chatter began.

The panelists did a fantastic job. Here's who they were and how they related to those in the room:

Eileen Brown: Exchange Server guru, Team lead for Developer and Platform Evangelism in the UK.
Helen Robinson: General Manager, Microsoft New Zealand
Hayley Smith: Developer and leader of .Net User Group in Hamilton
Sonia Yoshioka-Carroll: Communications and Marketing (PR Chick)
Terry Shubkin: Sales and Account Manager, Unisys New Zealand
Kathy Kam: Program Manager and Architect, Microsoft Corp, US

They did a great job of connecting with the audience and the w omen felt that they could get real answers rather than the more common cosmetic answers.

Here are some of the verbatim feedback given in the evaluatio ns:

"Excellent Evening, Very Inspirational. Need to have this next year."

"Again next year please!"

"Lets do it again next year!! Don't let the men in next time"

"Excellent ladies. A job well done. Very motivating for me"

"Please do this again"

"I really enjoyed being on of the few men that attended this dinner + feel that I can take a great deal back to the workplace. I hope to educate my fellow make colleagues"

"Excellent speakers and a great atmosphere for the exchange of ideas and meeting of other women in the industry - Thank you for this - Keep it up!"

"VERY AWESOME! DO IT AGAIN!"

For the first time event and with no budget we seemed to manage to pull off a great event.

There are some more photos up on Flikr here.

Thanks to all the ladies who came along and set up a buzzing atmosphere!

Ask the experts

dburling — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:46:21 GMT

The ask the experts evening went off. I have been going to Tech Ed for a few years now and I don't think I've seen delegates as engaged with experts as I did last night.

Those of you who stuck around to talk to the speakers - they enjoyed it. As I previously mentioned, many of them are looking to talk to you - not just present to you.

Ron Jacobs was great, and spoke to many of you with Nigel following along. I happened to be speaking with Graeme from http://gofetch.net.nz when Ron approached Graeme. He wasn't expecting it so the first words from his mouth were expletives :-). He then went on to talk about the Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget that he's put out for customers to use. His and more New Zealand gadgets are listed on the Microsoft NZ Gadgets page.

I caught up with some people from Canterbury Uni who wanted some advice as to how to find which printer driver on a server with 150 printers was leaking. Thanks to Eric Deily from the IIS team for knowing that a tool on http://iis.net could help!

I also got to meet a few of the speakers who were not around on Sunday and catch up with quite a few of you.

Tech Ed - Keynote and market place...

dburling — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 08:37:00 GMT

Well, we are well underway at Tech Ed. The first event of the day was the keynote. Interestingly, in my experience a keynote is really hard - you need to appeal to the entire audience - and this is where it gets tricky.

Lou Carbone was our keynote speaker along with Michael Platt. The theme was a nice mix of Software+Services and Make your Mark. There have been several comments about the keynote. The ever cynical Kevin Daly said it "was actually very good". Meanwhile Mauricio who has been to a huge number of keynote presentations said it was "the best keynote ever". If you missed the keynote (and it was kind of hard not to if you weren't here) it will be up on http://techedlive.co.nz tomorrow. Nigel has more from behind the scenes of the keynote.

I've also spent a little time around the market place. There are a number of partners there who are all happy to talk about their products and services. There are a few freebies, so go have a look for those. There are a couple of interesting things to point out. I caught up with Jay Templeton on the Microsoft stand who is showing off a new touch screen WPF application at the stand - if you are interested in what is possible you should go find him and check it out. This is very cool - we need to hook him up with the Virtual Tech Ed team :-).

Also - grab yourselves a community card from one of the partner stands or from the Microsoft stand. If you want to do me a favor - talk to the lovely Louie from Provoke and ask her how she is going giving out all her community cards :-).

If you are interested in what is going on in the community - grab a community card (again Louise has these) or check out the communities hub at http://mscommunities.net.nz - the central hub for all user groups in New Zealand.

Welcome to Tech Ed New Zealand!

dburling — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:46:32 GMT

Its the first day of Tech Ed New Zealand and we are ready to rock.

Last night was the speakers dinner, where all the speakers got to sit down and have an opportunity to meet each other and shoot the breeze.

The evening was great and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

We have 115 speakers from New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, England and the United States. They are all here to see you.

One of the things I discussed with some of the speakers last night was that many of the speakers are not here to present to you, but to interact with you. They want to talk with you, ask questions, find out what your experience with products is and understand what they can do to make things better.

So - don't be afraid to ask questions both in the sessions and out of the sessions. I'll be encouraging speakers to spend time at the Microsoft Stand so, go there and talk to them and as questions. This is your opportunity to dive deep with the products you use and are interested in.

If you are at the event, come and find me and say hi, I'm going to be around all day.

The keynote is about to begin so I'm off. Let the show begin!

Geekzone: Behind the scenes at Tech Ed New Zealand 2007

dburling — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:28:16 GMT

Mauricio did a behind the scenes Q&A with me yesterday for the "Unofficial Tech Ed Blog".

It *might* prove to be an interesting read, but I'm sure your life is more interesting than mine :-)

Behind the scenes at Tech Ed New Zealand 2007: Darryl Burling

Blogging about Tech Ed?

dburling — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:13:41 GMT

I mentioned this before, but thought I'd call it out separately as it was at the bottom of the post...

If you are blogging about Tech Ed and you want us to link to you from TechEd Live, you can tag it TechEdNZ07 and then best thing to do is to ping me a mail to ensure that it doesn't slip through the Technorati holes...

If you have a category you'll be using on your blog for Tech Ed, feel free to ping that to me too and I'll put it in my feed reader.

I'll then take the post and get it linked from Tech Ed Live (going live soon) and get you some juice :-)