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TE08: First Ever Australian Annual IT Demo Champion - Tatham Oddie

Way back in March this year we kicked off the largest ever launch of a Microsoft product, with the Heroes Happen {Here} Launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.

Since then we've been running a competition throughout the community of Microsoft technologists, at Usergroups, Student Clubs, and Communities of Excellence, called Demos Happen {Here}.  In August we travelled around Australia, to hold the State Finals, and selected 7 winners to attend the National Finals here at TechEd08.

Then on Friday, after the Locknote, we announced the winner of this, now annual, competition.

R42

Published Sunday, September 07, 2008 4:46 PM by Rog42

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Monday, September 08, 2008 3:38 AM by Tech.Ed AU 08: The Ugly, The Bad, The Good « Enter the Tatrix

# Tech.Ed AU 08: The Ugly, The Bad, The Good « Enter the Tatrix

PingBack from http://blog.tatham.oddie.com.au/2008/09/07/teched-au-08-the-ugly-the-bad-the-good/

Sunday, September 14, 2008 3:40 AM by Adrian

# re: TE08: First Ever Australian Annual IT Demo Champion - Tatham Oddie

What's the thoughts on the effectiveness of this competition? Tatham Oddie won but I attended one of his sessions at TechEd and it wasn't good at all. He apologised on his blog for how bad it was.

TechEd overseas had "speaker idol" as a competition. I gather that out of the two winners so far, one did well in his session later at TechEd (Aussie Jeff Wharton) and the other absolutely crashed and burned.

Doesn't this mean these sorts of competitions aren't finding the right outcomes?

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 8:42 AM by Rog42

# re: TE08: First Ever Australian Annual IT Demo Champion - Tatham Oddie

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for your feedback. Personally I think they are finding the right outcomes. But just to be clear these are:

* Providing opportunities for everyone in the community to present and demo technology in a 'safe' environment.

* Identifying, and preparing, professionals in the community to become presenters at Usergroups - i.e. increasing our pool of presenters in the community.

* Increasing the quality of technical demonstrations in the industry (nothing like a healthy bit of competition to do that) and recognising those who deliver great sessions.

Just to add that Tatham delivered a fantastic demo, which won his UG, the NSW state, and the national competitions. I've seen him present a number of times, and have always been impressed. So I think it is a *little* unfair to judge his presentation ability on the basis of one session, which he later analysed, rather comprehensively, and apologised for.

Note, that the outcomes of Demos Happen {Here}, which is now the Annual IT Demo Competition, was not to produce TechEd presenters - we already have many great presenters for TechEd, and base the decisions to invite someone to speak entirely on their expertise in the technology, and demonstrated ability to deliver a session.

As ever, feel free to contact me by Twitter (http://twitter.com/Rog42) or email (mailto:Roger.Lawrence@microsoft.com) or you can call me at the MS office. I'd love to chat further with you on this.

R42

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