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02 July 2004
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I've got way too much stuff to take home with me, as usual, but with only 30 minutes to go before the close of the event, now is the time to visit the exhibition centre. Let's see who doesn't want to pack all their freebies away ;)
5:00:14 PM 
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As TechEd's close the staff hurry around and remove all free food and drink. It's a tradition I think. "No no, bugger off - you've had enough freebies - go home".
I've found two things. If you complement the girl behind the bar in the MVP lounge you can get any kind of drink you want, even though the bar is obviously closed.
Second, I've found a secret stash of mars bars, milky ways, and twix's, and I'm not telling anyone where they are. Moooohahahahahahahaa
<MrBurns>Excellent</MrBurns>
4:50:53 PM
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The conference closes in 50 minutes. There are no sessions that I need to be in right now, and no reason to leave just yet since I've got 5 hours till I fly home, so I'm chilling in the MVP lounge. Outside the noise of workmen scuttling about taking down lighting rigs and sound systems can just be heard over the dulcet tones of the delegate that just decided to sit down at the piano and bang out some smooth jazz numbers really well.
I'm going out for a cigarrette in a minute and then I'll get back in here and onto the network again because with so very many people already gone from the event, the wireless network is silky smooth and super fast. Yummm. Wireless Heaven. A geek bar with a fast connection.
4:38:26 PM
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Despite how it might sound in some of my posts, I'm not being down on TechEd. TechEd is a great event and I truly believe that this year has been the very best ever. There's just so much great information to learn here for the upcoming versions of SQL Server and Visual Studio, as well as covering architectural mind-shifts like SOA, or collaboration tools like Sharepoint and it's amazingly strong integration with Office.
So, I thought I'd complement the TechEd Morons with TechEd Heroes. In ancient mythology the hero is always outnumbered, which is why there are 3 different kinds of moron, but only one kind of hero. That's all you need. A single hero completely obliterates any number of morons and other evil foes. Despite that though TechEd has had so many amazing heroes this year.
First up, the Cabana teams. I got chatting with the chap at the Office Information Bridge cabana today after he laughed at me saying "Hi there - so what's Information Bridge". These guys have suffered 4 days straight of the same questions over and over, giving the same answers over and over but each time with the same passion, drive and excitement they had the very first time they did. They'll talk with you for hours, never put you down for the dumb questions you ask (like me when after the guy had explained everything I still didnt get it and asked once again "So, what's Information Bridge"), and share with you whatever you need to know to help you adopt the technology in question, or just get to grips with it.
Next up the speakers. On numerous occassions this week I've seen Speakers grilled after their sessions by groups of people and then willingly take those groups to a wireless area, sit them down and give them a personal one on one tutorial on the topic in question. I've seen speakers outside of auditoriums training people, coaching people, shooting ideas at people stuck on tricky problems. The speakers at TechEd are a defining point of TechEd and this year, on the whole, they have been excellent. Since Microsoft no longer offers bonuses to those speakers that get great feedback, that's a pretty incredible thing.
The Friendly Geeks come next. Got a problem connecting to the network? If there's a friendly geek nearby he'll jump right in and with your permission lead you through configuring things right. Need a product to do XYZ? If Friendly Geek is nearby and knows the answer he'll not only give it to you, but he'll demo the product, point you at the website and beam you the product managers contact details from his iPaq. Battery shagged and no power nearby? I actually saw Friendly Geek at one point lend his power adapter to a complete stranger so he could check his mail. There are about 1500 friendly geeks at TechEd for every moron, and they really help define the event too.
Finally the MVPs in their scrummy friendly MVP lounge. I nearly took a picture yesterday of one MVP actually pair programming with a delegate he didn't know to get that delegate through a tricky coding question. I've seen small crowds gather around the MVP's as they try to drink and coffee or get their own work done, and then bombard the MVP questions. Never have I seen an MVP stop smiling, tell someone to sod off or generally behave in a manner unbecoming an uber-nerd. Good job guys.
So, to all the heroes of TechEd - 'Respeck
4:25:40 PM
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There's a small cluster of people here, with slightly different traits but with the same underlying moronic theme to them that I think I'll group together as TechEd Morons number 3: The I'm cool cos I hate it/I know more than anyone Moron.
The first group have watched Absolutely Fabulous way too much. They seriously believe that its very cool and trendy to be seen at something as big as TechEd and then denegrate it. These people drive me insane. I swear if I hear one more beer bellied person gush to his friends that "TechEd is really death by powerpoint .. HAHAHA", I'm going to rupture something. The other night I was walking out of TechEd and I heard this one guy talking to his overly attentive minions.
"Yeah, it's really death by powerpoint.....I nearly fell asleep, I mean powerpoint is so dull.....I just can't handle it - powerpoint appears and I'm like asleep within 10 minutes - it's a mental thing"
Damn straight it's a mental thing! What did you expect when you came here? Did you book up the event imagining that MVPs, Speakers, MCT's and Microsoft staff have some super magic Vulcan mind melding machine that you'd sit in for 2 minutes, learn everything you ever wanted to know and then leave you free for the rest of the week to go and get drunk, or more likely high? If you can't handle absorbing information (Powerpoint is just a tool for delivering info, but slides have been in use now for decades) why on earth would you choose to go to an event where for 4 or more days you'll spend 7.5 hours a day trying to absorb information? In fact, what the hell are you doing in IT? IT is about learning, it's about exploring, discovering and problem solving, and TechEd is all about giving you a leg up in areas where you need it. That whole "Death by powerpoint" statement just drives me insane and I hear it from so many people now like it's become some kind of trendy thing to say, and an ultra hip state of mind to achieve. I don't even think of Powerpoint when I'm sitting there listening to a speaker walk me through asynchronous windows forms programming - I think about Threads, Windows Forms and programming, and everything the speaker is talking about. WHO ON EARTH SITS THERE GOING "Powerpoint sucks powerpoint sucks". Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
The other variant (or deviant) is the guy that knows more than anyone and feels everyone should know it. I've lost count of the number of times that this guy has sat behind me this week (once you are aware of their existence you'll find that through some form of telepathic packet sniffing they are able to detect you and sit within 2 feet of you just to drive you to the point of suicide). As the presenter starts to share with us his hard earned experience and pearls of wisdom, Mr "I know more than anyone" starts loudly talking to anyone that will listen about how the presenter is wrong. Simple, obvious facts (C# is compiled for example) get a loud snort from this guy followed by a pseudo whisper to the effect of "Yeah right". I actually had one chap telling me that Apache could do everything Sharepoint Portal Server can do, and has been able to do it for years. Shit! I didn't realise that. I was obviously labouring under the completely false belief that Apache is just a web server, and not a fully integrated, immensely powerful online knowledge portal and team collaboration enabler. That told me.
If you know it all, and if you think that all the presenters are here just for a free trip to Amsterdam why did you come. OO, here's a thought. Why not submit some talk ideas to the TechEd team for next year - show us all how it's really done. I can't wait to attend "Team Collaboration with totally unmodified Apache" next year.
(But hey, it's the end of the week, and you just know I'm going to miss all these guys really)
4:11:22 PM
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Went to a great session this morning in 8a, the room used for the keynote. Given that the three presenters were Pat Helland, Rafal Lukawiecki and Clemens Vaster it's unsurprising that the room was packed.
The three masters put on a great theatrical presentation on how SOA solves a lot of the problems that have plagued traditional monolithic component and OO based developments, such as late delivery, inflexible development teams thanks to loose cohesion and strong coupling and so on. The presentation was great and certainly answered a lot of questions I had about SOA. I have to admit that I've been pretty good at avoiding all the hype so far and not learning anything at all about SOA until today. Basically the idea is that instead of breaking down large projects into a series of related objects you instead analyse the business structure itself.
Departments in a business make ideal candidates for services in an SOA, with the bits of paper that those departments typically fly all over the place acting as messages sent either internally or between services. The format of the messages in an SOA is XML, although how you actually encode and transmit the messages is totally up to you. Armed with an XML schema though defining each message, it's version, source and intent, it's very easy to gradually build up systems within an organisation that are completely extensible.
The team covered everything from Service Oriented Architecture, through Service Oriented Integration and even Service Oriented UI. The latter was weak though, not really making it clear whether a large application, which would typically cross departmental boundaries and thus more than one service, is a service itself or not and how that works. There was quite a strong underlying message on the UI side that perhaps the research and technology are not quite there yet, but it will be when XAML and Longhorn enter widespread use.
Overall though a fantastic session. If only all presenters could make potentially dry and tedious subjects like SOA as entertaining as Rafal, Clemens and Pat.
3:56:58 PM
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The TechEd Party is a legend across the Microsoft community. It's perhaps one of the biggest Microsoft organised social events of the year. Last year there were no less than 10 bands on stage, an Xbox gaming arcade, cinemas, an oxygen bar, outdoor games with bouncy hoppers, karoke, dancing. The year before Microsoft hired Barcelona's Olympic stadium and put on fantastic displays of acrobatics and stunts along all the other usual goodies.
How on earth would they top it this year? What could Microsoft possibly do to one-up the legend that has become the TechEd Party? In short, nothing. So they gave up. This year's party consisted of a small karaoke bar, a couple of cinemas and a large hangar dedicated to watching football (soccer). There were football related games prior to the match, and then the match started and I'm guessing 2/3s of the attendees left the event. This was the scene at the cloakroom at about 21:30 when I left.
Normally, that would have been jam packed with luggage and TechEd bags, but this year, with daylight clearly visible through the windows it was practically deserted.
I know the party is definately not the main reason for coming to TechEd, but I still couldn't help but feel very depressed at the whole affair. After 4 days of being couped up absorbing hour after hour of information, we wanted to let our hair down. Instead Microsoft made a few thousand people stand around and watch a game of football involving two teams that bore little relation to any of the attendees. I mean, seriously Microsoft, how many Greek and Czech attendees were there at this years event? It perhaps would not have been so bad had the previous night's country drinks not also been a big football related event.
Football is not really as popular as it's overtly vocal proponents would make out. It is not the central core around which Europe rotates, and it is definately not something a great many geeks and nerds enjoy. I mean think about - Football = jocks. TechEd = Nerds. Jocks beat up Nerds.
So, I trudged out of the party at about 9:45, went back to my hotel and packed, and then wrote code while watching the Hulk on TV. I did take a bunch of pictures on the way into the party in the hope that it would be an amazing event to beat all others. For those that are interested, here they are.
11:28:49 AM
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Hey, I'm famous. Tim Sneath blogged me and made some nice comments about the blog. Thanks Tim.
(Now, if I could just get him to sign me up as a speaker next year ... )
11:14:03 AM
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2004
Pete Wright.
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27/11/2004; 12:29:02.
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