As a MSP, we were invited to join Tech-Ed Europe 2009 conference, in which we were 3 Danish MSP’s that accepted that offer, that was Jacob Korsgaard, Allan Juhl Petersen and Mikael Syska (myself).
As I missed the first flight, cause I read the departure time wrong (god damn). I first arrived Monday morning 8:30 in Berlin, and then had to go to the Hotel with my luggege and just to get a shower, cause I smelled like crap after spending the night in the Airport.
I then took the S-Barn to the South entrance to Messe Berlin, and I then thought I was maybe one of the last people to arrive, but I was wrong.
As you can see on the picture above, there were lost of people arriving the same time as me, so after all, I was not that late at the first day, even though I missed the flight I was supposed to have taken.
When I entered the registration room, holy fuck there were many people waiting to get there badge. But it went fairly quickly. But then … 3 people in front of me, there were some problems with a persons registration and it took like 30 minutes (excluding to the 10 minutes i had allready spend in the queue, where 100 people had completed there registration) before they send him over to another booth, where I guess they can see some additional information about the attendees. There must have been something completely wrong, I don't know. But at last I got in … weeeee.
The keynote the first day was about “The new Efficiency”. In short terms, its about cost savings, productivity and innovation. They talked about where companies have used Microsoft products to achieve these 3 goals.
Don’t got a phone with wireless access, no problem. There were plenty of computers freely available to use, and also access to a printer. So you could plan your schedule or maybe just print it, if you forgot to do it at home.
So … does we only listen to speakers, talk with other developers … not at all, 2 days at the conference there were beers, wine and food. That’s nice, and while you were having a drink you could also walk around and talk to the different speakers, exhibitors and of cause all the other attendees.
Two of the Danish MSP won the AntMe battle, Jacob(with the WOW game in his hands) and then Allan, the 2 persons to the left on the picture. Though out the week, at the Community lounge, you were given the opportunity to program the Ants what they should do, collect food, kill bugs or attack the other ant colonies. There goals were clear … kill kill kill after they watched a demo and there strategy gave them the victory. The biggest problem was to get the game back to Denmark, because it was so big. But our ADE, Martin Esmann knew a danish guy that had traveled by car to Tech-Ed Europe, so he could bring it with him is the car to Denmark.
Yes, there are also Band Hero is here … I guess its all over the world now.
So what else did I see at the conference.
In the future I will blog about the following
Windows 7
Mostly tip and tricks ... and what i find usefull in Seven.
Hyper-V R2
How my the reinstallation of my Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2 went. The people at the virtualization booth said that the preferred way was to reinstall the system completely to avoid any problems. Then just export the guess systems that are running, and afterwards import them again.
Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server
I have never used VSTS, but as I attended a few of the sessions about it, I could understand that the 2010 version is way better. MS people has to say this of cause, but other attendees were also very positive of 2010 and the new features are great.
- Graphical administration, instead of small console apps.
- Integrated Rollback are also supported now. Undo of rollback are not supported but as they said, you can rollback to a previously version to get the same effect. So rollback a rollback … that's like a undo :-)
- Better integration into Visual Studio, braches, setup etc.
- Installation in less than 20 minutes.
- And even more I will look into later.
MSSQL 2008 Spatial Data
I attended a session about spatial data in SQL and what you have to watch out for and how to debug performance problems. If I get the time I will try to make a little sample app in WPF with a SQL server with spatial data. But not sure I get the time. If one ever want to use map data, this is the way to go. So easy to do mapping etc.
WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation
As I have started learning WPF, I will blog about some of the nice and bad things I find.
What i missed were at TechEd Europe 2009
- Something about Silver light 4
- Internet at the hotel
- Shorter distance between all the halls and soda and coffee close to the sessions.
- That we did not get the bottle to have water in, so we had to get our own, totally odd.
My over all score is 4/5
The next time i attend such a big conference, I will have more knowledge how to spend my time and not waste it on session I think could be interesting. Then just skip it and and use the time with the exhibitors booths.
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