Teched Developer Europe 2007
Would you believe it planning has already started for this years TechEd Europe. As I am running the technical content strategy this year I would like to ask you folks for your opinions. I would like to devise a category scheme to help you navigate your way around the sessions at TechEd. So I really need your feedback on these questions.
Now some of you will plan your whole week using the online tool and get a personal printout. Others (like me) will look through the schedule in the morning or during a session and figure out where to go next. The schedule is a small cramped piece of paper which anyone in the 40's will need to use reading glasses to read. I would like your feedback on how you navigate the conference, and what's good and what stinks.
Firstly the DEV track. I wonder if there is any point in having a DEV track at a developers conference. I looked at last years numbers and found that out of about 200 sessions 130 were DEVxxx in other words 65%. So what do you think about scrapping that designation? Instead DEV would be implied for everything and we would have more track names like this:
BPI
Mobile
Tools and Languages
Web
Windows (Frameworks and Base Platform)
Architecture
Dynamics
SQL
Office
Now of course some sessions cover more than one thing, such as a session on Orcas and WPF. For this I would suggest a primary category and a secondary category.
Traditionally we have used a number scheme based on courses in North American universities, so we have level 200, 300 and 400 sessions that give you various degrees of credit. We are not North Americans so how about we scrap that too? We would use another scheme to show depth or breadth of a session. Perhaps we could use European ski run designations, Blue, Red, Black each with a different shape so you can see it quickly in the black and white printout.
Therefore the session number becomes just like a primary key in a table, of less interest except when filling in your online eval forms.
It would look like this:
Another question is about accessibility. For those of us ageing rockers or those with visual impairments would you like to be able to get a printout of sessions in larger point sizes?
Ok please let me have your input. Don't forget that this is not a discussion about content yet, my team will be working as hard as ever to bring you the Best Developer Conference in the world!
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