Snowball - The Blog

After a week of way too many bratwurst (which I didn’t eat for the record), I’m home again, from a TechEd in which quite a lot happened. Here’s my view on things.

Berlin, aber ja (yes, that’s about as far as my German goes)

For the first time, TechEd Europe took place in Berlin. When some time ago, I saw the date that Microsoft planned to do its biggest conference on the European continent, I was a bit worried. The conference was to start on the day of the celebrations of the fall of the Berlin wall, now exactly 20 years ago. Because I planned on going by car to the event, I feared quite some traffic problems. However, this turned out to be a great choice. Not only did we attend the technical event, we were able to attend a once-in-a-lifetime evening, witnessing the fall of the 1000 domino blocks, representing the Berlin wall. Despite the rain, it was nice to see this.

The city itself is huge and public transport is great. You can get anywhere within minutes. It has a safe feeling as well, we were walking around quite late and it all seemed quite OK.

Technical content

For the first time (as far as I know that is), Microsoft decided to make TechEd a one-week event. Previous editions were split: one week was for devs, the second week for IT Pros (or vice-versa depending on the year). While this new formula has its advantages (like in: you can now take a peek over the hedge if you know what I mean), it also has its disadvantages in my opinion. In some time slots, I personally felt there were not enough dev-oriented sessions. At TechEd Barcelona 2007, I had to choose between a good session, another good session and often another good session. Being at the event as a pure developer, I missed that this year in some of the time slots sadly. The good news is that some of the sessions were really good though. My top sessions were Jeff Prosise’s Secrets in Silverlight and Stephen Forte’s Agile Estimation.

I personally do hope for a split event again next year, although I doubt it. With a one-week event, the event is probably easier to organize and financially more interesting. In unsure times like these, this is probably a heavy-weighing factor on the decision making, which is understandable.

Speaker Idol

As announced, I took part in Speaker Idol this year. I won the first heat on Monday, which got me a Flip HD camera :) . On Thursday, I didn’t win in the finals, although I got a ticket for free for next year’s event! No pics yet, but I expect them to arrive soon.

A bad Coke bottle

Right after the Speaker Idol finals on Thursday, I got injured. Opening a bottle of Coke (only glass bottles at the event… why??), it broke in my hand. Result:  a deep cut in a finger on my right hand and had to go to first aid. The bottle was probably broken already and upon putting force on it to open it, it broke further. Luckily, the doctors decided it did not need stitching.

Typing is still quite difficult with so much band-aid on my finger, I keep hitting too many keys at the same time.

Ask The Experts

I was also at the Silverlight booth for the Ask The Experts program. While working there, I spent some time with Tim Heuer, Shawn Wildermuth, Emil Stoychev and others. It was really nice to finally meet all of them!

A tech talk or two?

While at the event, I did 2 TechEd Online TechTalks. The first one, in which I was interviewed by my colleague Bart Wullems on building real world applications with Silverlight, is online already at http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=298625e9-142f-4b7f-8018-81615efd51c4 . The second one on multi-touch in Silverlight apps will be online soon.

Pictures?

Of course! Here are all the photos I made while at the event: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gillcleeren/sets/72157622685362577/ 

See you in 2010 again, Berlin!