Today is the final day of TechEd and I woke up hurting all over… my feet, my head, my back and the rest of my body. Also today is the first day of the entire conference that I made it to the first session of the day (9 a.m.). The rest of the time I could not bring myself to get up that early and drive down to the convention center. Here are the final sessions that I went to:

• .Net Security In The Real World - Examples From Corporate America
• Visual Studio: Deploying .NET Applications with Ease
• Defending Against Layer 8: How to Recognize and Combat Social Engineering
• IIS Data Mining with Log Parser

I attended my first “cabana” session today. These were small open areas in the Sail Pavilion that had seats for about 20 people. I kind of liked it because the speakers were more laid back. The problem was because the light came from the sun, it was near impossible to see the plasma screen they used. If it weren’t cloudy, it would have been impossible!

The speaker for “Defending Against Layer 8” (Steve Riley) was hands down the best speaker of the entire conference. He kept the lights on and did not stand on the podium at all. Instead he walked around the huge room and really engaged the audience. He was so energetic and had a great attitude even though his talk was next to the last of the conference. He also seemed to have the largest audience of the day and got the most applause at the end of his talk than any other session I attended the entire conference. One thing Steve mentioned was that he never uses the computers in the Commnet area to check his e-mail because someone could put a keyboard sniffer on them. Well he is completely correct… I use to work for the company that did Commnet (located in Carlsbad) for TechEd last year and they found keyboard sniffers on some of the computers. So attendees beware!

Is it just me or did some of you notice too that the presenters had a lot of programs running in their taskbar? One presenter today had 11 and another had 13! Okay, maybe I’m the only one around that is minimalist and keeps as few things running the in the taskbar as possible for performance reasons?

It’s been 1.5 years since I have been at a conference, but I still see that the number of women engineers does not seem to be growing at all. Also I noticed that the number of engineers with long hair have decreased (I only spotted two others). Maybe I should finally cut mine… not!

After the sessions were over, I meet up with my friend Stan and my new friend Ambrose and we hit the Gaslamp area. We went to The Field for food, played pool at San Diego Billiards, hit Dick’s Last Resort and back to the W for a few drinks.

Summary
To sum up, I think TechEd was great. I would say it was the best conference I’ve been to. I was very impressed on how Microsoft ran the conference. I wished there were less Microsoft speakers and more “real world” speakers. I also wished the talks were more technical and less “50,000 foot level”. Some people told me that the PDC is more technical, but I figured with “tech” in the name of the conference, it would be more technical than it was. I hope TechEd comes back to San Diego soon!

Business Card Count = 3

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Day five of the TechEd conference… the wear and tare of going to a conference it starting to hit me… having to drink coffee in the afternoon. Here are the sessions I went to today:

• ASP.NET: Blackbelt Web Forms Programming
• SQL Server Data Access Developer Don'ts (10 Things You Currently Do That You Shouldn't)
• ASP.NET: Tips and Tricks for Building Server Controls
• ASP.NET: Best Practices for Managing and Operating IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET Solutions

At lunch I did my pass through the exhibit area since it was the last day for them. I gathered information I could take to the next meeting of the user group I hope run (San Diego .NET Developers Group). One thing I did notice was that it seemed that there were more vendors focued on the IT pro type person… not on the software developer. I thought TechEd was a developers conference… guess I was wrong.

After the sessions Microsoft rented out Sea World for the attendee party! It was pretty cool going to an amusement park and not pay for anything! Got to walk on to rides and exhibits. It was fun… thanks Microsoft!

Business Card Count = 3

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Today, day #4 of the main TechEd conference I had more energy that I thought I would. Usually by this time at conferences I’m running low in that department. The sessions I went to today were:

• Connected Systems: Using Web Services Enhancements v2.0 for Messaging Over Multiple Machines and Networks
• Smart Clients in a Service-Oriented World: Thomson Financial Case Study
• SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services: Managing a Reporting Services Implementation
• Improving Application Performance and Scalability

I think one of the reasons we all could keep our energy up was that throughout the day and throughout the conference area there were always coffee, snacks, soda and bottled water available. So any time we wanted, we could fuel up!

I made an effort at TechEd to not go to any Whidbey talks. Why? Easy, it’s a year away. Sure I want to learn about it, but it’s not even in an alpha release. I thought the conference focused too much on future technologies and not enough on the current ones.

They gave us two hours for lunch, so I spent the majority of that time doing what I call “slumming” for the user group that I help run (San Diego .NET Developers Group). What I do is go to all the vendors that I think could help out with the group by either donating software or come speak at a meeting. All of the vendors I targeted seemed into it… we shall see.

After the session I was invited to a private party thrown by Microsoft for people they call “influencers”.  They rented all of the Dicks Last Resort bar/ restaurant and the billiards hall above it for three hours. It was a lot of fun. After that, my friend Stan and I went over to his hotel, the W, and hung out at the upstairs bar which is mostly a sand beach type of thing. That was pretty cool too.

Business Card Count = 6

For more pictures click here.

Well today is day two of the main TechEd conference. I happened to make it for the last half of the keynote speaker (Andrew Lees, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Server Tools Marketing Worldwide). He announced a number of new things coming from Microsoft including that all developer tools will have 10 years of product support and that SQL Server 2005 will include data encryption. Cool!

Here are the sessions that I attended today:

• XML Today and Tomorrow
• ASP.NET: Building Secure Web Applications-Defenses and Countermeasures
• Visual Studio: Programming Middle-Tier Business Logic

As I was sitting in these talks, I noticed that it seemed to me that a large number of Microsoft speakers have some sort of British accent. I checked with my friend later in the week to see if he noticed the same thing and he verified my thinking. I’m curious to know why this is. Do they make for better speakers? More charismatic? I wondered.

Today was the first day I went down to the exhibit area. I had a mission of just signing up for all the prize giveaways. Do my dismay, I found out when I got to some of the vendors (HP to name one) they made me go to three or more other vendors to get a card stamped before you could be entered for the prize. So I ran around the (huge) exhibit area and did as they instructed only to find out that I had to come back later in the week because I had to be present to win? What a scam! Some of the times they picked to give out the prize were the same time sessions were happening. Not cool at all vendors! From then on I only entered giveaways that they would notify me via e-mail or phone that I won.

Also I went and had my first TechEd lunch in the massive lunch area today. I have never seen a dining area so big (see picture)! There were 970 tables that sat 10 people each and an army of waiters/ waitresses that corralled you to your table and served you iced-tea. I was very impressed how they pulled this off and the food was good and hot! No boxed lunched the entire week! They even had special lunches for vegetarians, vegans, lactose free and more! I also found out that the convention center donates any leftover food to two different shelters located in downtown San Diego. Very cool!

Early that evening I went and attend the Regional .NET User Group Meeting (put on by the San Diego .NET Users Group) held at the Horton Plaza Westin. It was a very informative meeting featuring a speaker from the Microsoft VB.NET team and one from the C# team, each giving a separate talk on what is coming in VS 2005. Lots of cool things coming next year, but I have to say the VB.NET teem needs to add the refactoring that C# has!!!

My friend Woody and I found out about a party that MSDN Magazine was throwing at The Bitter End. On our way there (in an attempt to crash it), we meet up with Ari Bixhorn (from VBTV fame at Microsoft) and someone convinced him to go to the party with us. He had a pass in his hotel room… without him I don’t think we could have gotten in. Thanks Ari!

Business Card Count = 1 | Free Shirt Count = 4

For more pictures click here.

TechEd Day 2... well I arrived right after the keynote given by Steve Ballmer, which I hear was pretty good. He officially announced Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0. To learn more click here. I also heard that the conference “over” sold out. There are 12,000 geeks in this place. WOW! I have never seen so many at one place in my life.

The rest of my day was filled with going to the following sessions:

• Service Orientation and the Windows/.NET Developer
• Prescriptive Guidance-Juggling Web Services, WSE, .NET Remoting, System.EnterpriseServices, and MSMQ
• Applied Web Services in Hewlett Packard's Core eCommerce Solutions
• Best Practices for Dealing With State at Multiple Layers Within Your .NET Applications.

All of these sessions were in the Connected Systems topic group. Unfortunately, most of them were kind of a let down, especially the first one. The last one was the best out of the bunch.

I was impressed how nice the San Diego Convention Center people were and there were always (free) food and drinks (including bottled water) outside of the session rooms at all times. On my way out for the day I stopped by the TechEd store to pick up some shirts.

Free Shirt Count = 2

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TechEd Day 1… actually the pre-conference day, but I did not go to that. Instead, I went to the INETA User Group Leader Summit on behalf of the user group that I help run called the San Diego .Net Developers Group. This meeting had over 70 user group leaders from around the country and a few from other countries. It was great to learn about how INETA can and is planning to help our user group. I meet some old friends and made some new contacts that I hope will be useful in the future for our group.

Besides a cool bag of swag we received when we arrived, the meeting was followed by an open-bar cocktail party (see picture to the right) and another very cool bag of swag provided by MSDN.

Business Card Count = 4 | Free Shirt Count = 3

For more pictures click here.

If you did not know it, TechEd is in San Diego this year! I believe this is the biggest Microsoft conference here since the PDC in late 90’s. The best part is since it’s here, I get to go (thanks to INETA)! Who knows when we will get a Microsoft of this magnitude in San Diego again, so I decided to take pictures and write some of my experiences in my blog for every day that I go (7 days total).

My TechEd experience actually started off the day before the pre-conference started (Saturday May 22, 2004) at a “Pre-Tech Ed Geeks Only Party” thrown by my very good friend Michele Leroux Bustamante (see in the picture to the right… the blonde) at her house in Bonita. The guests included lots of TechEd speakers, Microsoft RD’s and more! It was a very cool catered affair. I got to talk to some old friends and made some new ones. Any party is good when there is an open bar!

For more pictures click here.