Hans VB's WebLog - For FREE!!! : TechEd: Developers 2006

Gerd Debruycker blogs about Virtual Conferences and football marketing

Hans VB — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:36:00 GMT

Gerd Debruycker is an event veteran at Microsoft. He has been driving many events succesfully amongst which Tech Ed and many others.

Finally Gerd started to blog. http://gerdde.wordpress.com/

He blogs about Virtual Conferences and about football marketing. He playes football with the best at the time.

Enjoy!

Hans

2007 TecH ED DEVELOPErS

Hans VB — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 15:49:10 GMT

Tech Ed Europe content planning has started. If you want to be there, you can already start by locking these dates:

• Tech Ed Developers: 5 – 9 November 2007

• Tech Ed IT Forum: 12- 16 November 2007

My interest is obviously mostly the Developer event which will be bigger and beter than ever before. I was the overall technical content owner the last two years. This year I will jointly taking on that role together with David Webster. Check out his blog to find out more about the current thinking around shaping the tracks: http://blogs.msdn.com/davewebster/

Early thoughts I feel comfortable about... We will grow and offer even more sessions (I expect 20% more). We will offer the best of the PDC. In short, PDC (Los Angeles) will offer a view on what's a head of us 18 months and more and Tech Ed will help you with your job today and also help you prepare for what's coming in the near future. We will fight to offer some 20 sessions covering the highlights of the event.

Registration will only go live mid May but until you can already start influencing content. Please leave comments on my or Dave Webster's blog.

Tech Ed Developers (Europe) goes virtual

Hans VB — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:34:55 GMT

It's going to be a busy buzzy event but in case you can't make it, check out this site to keep your finger on the pulse: http://www.mseventseurope.com/TechEd/06/Pre/Live/DefaultDev.aspx

There's going to be quite some content up there. 1 session per day will be posted there, Paul Foster is chasing people for interviews, Channel 9 is there, podcasts so check it out.

Obviously it's not too late to register. It's almost sold out but not yet completely. I'll see you there...or...through the Virtual Side, you'll see us there :-)

Tech Ed early bird coming to an end

Hans VB — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 14:55:02 GMT

Today is the last day to benefit from the early bird discount and registrations are just going great.

The descision to split into a DEV and an IT Pro event was definately the right one. It's just amazing what you can do with the content if you all of a sudden have twice the amount session slots.

If I look over the session list then there's one thing I feel particularly good about: the speaker line up. Content is one thing and very often makes one select a session. But then the experience you get from a session is for 90% driven by the speaker. Proof is that for instance Rafal Luckawiecki can get the event's top score with a session on MSF 4.0. Not that MSF is particularly boring...ah well, it actually is.

So just to list some of the speakers...

Anders Hejlsberg (Microsoft Corporation), Clemens Vasters (Microsoft), Steve Swartz (Microsoft Corporation), Ron Jacobs (Microsoft), Roy Osherove (Team Agile) ,Keith Brown (Pluralsight) , Chad Hower (Microsoft), Aaron Skonnard (PluralSight), Arvindra Sehmi (Microsoft EMEA) ,Ingo Rammer (thinktecture) ,David Gristwood (Microsoft) ,Patrick Tisseghem (U2U) ,Ted Pattison (Gorilla Training) ,Bob Beauchemin (SQLskills) ,Donald Farmer (Microsoft Corporation) ,Don Vilen (Microsoft Corporation), Kimberly L. Tripp (SQLskills.com), Brian Randell (MCW Technologies), Ivar Jacobson , Jeff Prosise (Wintellect), Fritz Onion (Pluralsight)...

And there are more: David Chappell, Rafal Lukawiecki, Carl Franklin, Stephen Forte, Richard Campbell...

Oh wait, and there are more...

You get it, it's going to be great. I know it!

Win a ticket to Tech Ed Europe

Hans VB — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 14:31:00 GMT

Tech Ed: Developer planning is moving on really well. And I'm happy to say that also registrations are ahead of where we were last years.

I'll be talking more about content soon but in the meantime I really wanted to spread the news on the .Net Rocks deal. Check out their site and win a trip to Tech Ed in Barcelona.

See you there!

Tech Ed US Boston Part 1: Getting around Boston

Hans VB — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:33:00 GMT

Tech Ed US Boston Part 1: Getting around Boston

We have lift off. My wife and arrived on Saturday in Boston, can you tell? On Saturday we didn’t do much as we were tired from the trip and also because it was raining like… you know, raining hard. Not so on Sunday. Woke up early and went straight to the place where everybody knows your name.

After that, we kind of followed the freedom trail had lunch by the harbor and then we headed to Harvard. Just wandering around enjoying the fantastic environment, we walked into this building with the MARK I in it. This is one of the earliest computers. Interesting to see how this machine was part mechanics and part electronics. It’s the work of some (many?) geniuses that lead to Microsoft having an event like Tech Ed attracting many thousands of people from an industry employing many millions impacting the lives of many billions.

In the evening, I attended the keynote. Yes they do that to you over here. Keynote from 19:00 to 21:30. I really haven’t that much to say about the keynote though. I really like Ray Ozzie as he talked us through a series of disruptions in the IT industry and invited us to think in terms of Clients, Servers and Services. Besides that, the keynote was very IT Pro centric. Very. Maybe understandable since most of the audience here is IT Pro.

There was a DEV part and it was particularly nice to see the VSTS Data Tool (errrr. correction, I mean data dude) but all in all the DEV part of the demo was too small a part of the overall keynote in my opinion. I’m also sure the 24 fans enjoyed the session as the actress that acts as the techie in the series was brought on stage a couple of times. Not being a 24 addict, this didn’t mean that much to me. Makes me wonder, if you are attending Tech Ed Europe, which non-IT person, if any, would you want us to bring on stage? Any suggestions?

Missing the developer message in the keynote, leads me to what I will be writing about in the next few days. Where does Tech Ed Europe differ from Tech Ed US? What’s the advantage of having a DEV only event, and what are the challenges? Which speakers did we meet? And sign up?

I’m not the only Tech Ed: Developer person here. Also attending are Mark White, David Boschmans, Chad Hower and Beat Schwegler. Check out their blogs too.

In the meantime, congrats to the dutch team for winning their first match. Well deserved. I watched the game in some hotel.

This post is about: Microsoft, Tech Ed, Tech Ed: Developers

The snob-ism of Architecture

Hans VB — Wed, 31 May 2006 11:08:00 GMT

A lot to do about Architect roles these days. As I mentioned before there's a site Skyscraper where you can find out more about the different types of Architect roles you can find in an enterprise: solution, infrastructure, strategic and industry.

What I've read on blogs so far has been centered around the question: Which type of architect am I. Jelle Druyts puts himself in the triangle as shown in the picture below as suggested by Simon Guest.

Pasted from <http://jelle.druyts.net/2006/05/30/TheTechnicalSolutionsArchitectRole.aspx>

I'm deeply convinced about the value of architecture . I've written way to many applications I'm not proud of because of no-design or bad design (1. data model 2. middle tier 3. client) so I won't be stating that the importance Architecture is being overstated, it isn't!

What I do want to rant about though is about the usage of the architect title. It's like everyone needs to be one. Especially the top developers seem to be targeted. If you are a lead developer then you stand a big chance of being labeled an Aspiring Architect by some folks within Microsoft. IMHO, you don't need to be an architect to be architecting. I would even say that probably most of the good architectural work comes from Lead Developers who have a deep deep udnerstanding of what software is all about.

That's why I would like to add a bit to the graph Jelle put on his site. If would still be a developer, I would love to have grown to being a Lead Developer. Great in writing code, designing software/solutions but staying clear from the business (political) side of things.

That said, skyscraper still rocks and Tech Ed: Developers is going to be THE place for all Lead Developers and probably a few Aspiring Architects too :-)

software architecture, Tech Ed, Tech Ed: Developers

Tech Ed: Developers bloggers

Hans VB — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:07:00 GMT

Happy to see that many of the Tech Ed: Developers track owners are blogging. We are all excited about this opportunity to build a developer focussed event and we want to have a conversation with you about it. If you're interested, subscribe to these blogs:

Beat Schwegler (architecture, connected systems)

Chad Hower (base framework)

David Boschmans (web development track)

Gerd De Bruycker (overall owner event)

Gunther Beersaerts (SQL Server)

Mario Szpuszta (2007 Office System)

Niels Hilmar Madsen (tools and languages)

This post is about: Microsoft, Tech Ed, Tech Ed: Developers

TechEd Europe: Developers 2006 - Building the tracks

Hans VB — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:18:00 GMT

Deciding which tracks we have is non-trivial but really important. Our first goal isn't to please Microsoft product groups or marketing folks, we want to have tracks that make sense to the attendee.

But what is that? Really, I'm asking! Do we create tracks aligned with the way see the Microsoft Platform? Or do we take a more product centric approach? As usually, there's good and bad about both of the approaches.

Taking the platform route

When creating tracks that follow the platform route, we come up with something like displayed in the image below. This is not final or complete but gives you a good idea.

Although this option is quite nice to display, there are some difficult choices to make. For instance, IIS, do we put in the Server track or the ASP.NET track? My guess is that most developers will look for these sessions in the ASP.NET track. Then the Office System with Sharepoint Server, Excel Server and Forms Server, do we put this in the Office track or the Server track. Biztalk could go in the Connected Systems track and you potentially end up with only WSS and Infocard in the Server track.
Also, do 'smart client' or 'Connected Systems' have any meaning at all to the developer? Let me know.

The Products route

This way we get a create tracks based on products. Isn't that the way most developers think? I need to build this solution and I need products x,y and z for that.

These would be possible tracks:

Office System
Tools & Languages
Architecture & Connected Systems & PAG & Security (we need a name here)
SQL Server
Web
User Experience
Servers
Business Applications

Still this is not complete because we might need a seperate track for building windows clients. We could also group all client dev stuff having one client developer track containing: ASP.NET, Atlas, WinForms, Avalon.

As you can see. A LOT of ways to slice and dice the content. I'll have the track owners debate this but thought also putting this online in case any attendees out there would like to express their preference too. Please share your thoughts and help us build an event that's structured the way you think.

TechEd Europe 2006: moved and reformatted

Hans VB — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:28:00 GMT

Although the rumor has been spreading for a while now, the official announcement has been made today. TechEd Europe has been reformatted and moved to November.

The format

Without a doubt, the biggest change is the event’s format. Instead of having one event where content and audience was spread evenly on Developers and IT Pros, we’ll have two separate technical events moving forward.

Tech Ed: Developers (week November 6^th, CCIB Barcelona, Spain)
Tech Ed: IT Forum (week November 13^th, CCIB Barcelona, Spain)

Being the overall technical content owner for TechEd, I can’t be but happy with that. First reason is that we’ve been consistently hearing from attendees that they want more and deeper content. We can’t stay stuck at the 200-300 level sessions but need to move more towards the 400 (deeply technical) level. With the format we had so far, this simply wasn’t possible. We had far too many topics to cover across both audiences. The track owner meetings where I had to tell track owners to cut there sessions by x numbers are still burned into my mind. They remind me of a Visual Basic Team meeting I once attended where the PUM (Product Unit Manager) told the PM’s (Program Managers) they had to cut 20% of the priority 1 features for the release VS2003. It’s the type of meeting that no one leaves happy.

By separating the events, we’ll have more timeslots available for deeper, audience specific content. We will definitely use this opportunity to include more 400 level sessions in the event. Also I would love to take this opportunity to make the agenda less heavy on the attendees. Do we really need sessions running until 19:00? Sure there can be some sort activities running later but regular sessions, should be kept within normal hours so people can enjoy the conference, the side activities and the city to the full extent. Also this is based on attendee feedback. For those of you interested in both topics, we will offer promotional packages for people wanting to attend both events.

If you want to stay tuned to what’s happening with the content for TechEd: Developers, subscribe to my RSS feed and I’ll keep you up to date.

Time and Location

Moving the event to November offers many opportunities. Firstly we believe this will allow us to attract more high profile keynote speakers as opposed to an event in the week of the 4^th of July. Did you know that TechEd Europe was never able to get BillG to keynote? Now, to be clear, I’m not saying we will this year but I sure will try to get Bill to keynote the event for one of the next editions! Also PR-wise it makes so much more sense to spread TechEd US and TechEd Europe out over the year as it provides to clear opportunities to launch products. So yes, I’m expecting more launch activity at TechEd Europe and yes, I’m hopeful that this will bring more swag to the event!

Staying away from that date also automatically means that we’re moving away from the start of the 2 month European holiday season. I know quite a few people who haven’t been able to attend because they were on holiday. I understand this differs from country to country but I guess we all agree that because of the complex European holiday map, it makes good sense to stay away from July and August.

Also this will be easier for other speakers. We try to attract the best speakers from the product teams to speak at our events. Some of these guys really want to be home around the 4^th of July. In November the pool of speakers from the product team will be bigger.

We also changed the location to Barcelona. Originally we were heading for Amsterdam for one more year. Now it’s Barcelona. I’m sure I don’t need to sell Barcelona to you. And although Amsterdam is a very nice city too, Barcelona still is cheaper for hotels, food, taxi’s, etc… I didn’t do a poll but where do you want to be in November?

Anyway, please comment whether you like this or not and let me know what your wishes are regarding content since that’s my main concern and the bit I have most influence on.

Cheers!