As a first time attendee to TechEd, I did not know what to expect. The first day was filled with information, seminars and a couple of things that made me wonder.
You wake up the first day of a conference and feel a little out of place. A hotel room, being by one’s self, and the uncertainty of what will be going on. At least this is how the day started for me.
I arrived extra early to TechEd so I could get in on the twitter army meeting. Rod trent who runs it, and is CEO of myiITforums.com, got off to a late start because of missing projectors. Once things got rolling, we were informed of what was expected of us, and how important we can be to TechEd and letting the world know about what was going on with it. considering the power that social media has in this era, I can understand why something like the Twitter Army is formed at every Microsoft event.
The Keynote was next on my docket (and just about everyone else) . For those who don’t follow my Twitter account I will give a run down of what I heard. First was probably the coolest thing in the whole Keynote, which amounted to the DJ they had using a piece of hardware/software called Emulator. A piece of glass that is see through but also a screen, and is available for anyone to purchase. The device works only with Windows machines, so sorry Mac users. Satya Nadella came out and opened the event. He went through a brief history of the 20 years of TechEd, making sure to hit on the way things have changed from a client/server focus to a device/service focus over the years. This setup the majority of the keynote, as it was heavily cloud based. Event the sections going over the upcoming Server 2012 operating system had a cloud slant to them. Unfortunately, as much as Microsoft, and other companies, keep pushing the cloud (and I dislike that term for nothing more than distributed, offsite computing) the fact is that there are a great many businesses that are not ready to make that jump yet. Between bandwith costs, regulation and compliance issues, and just general wariness over who owns the data and who is responsible should data be illegally copied, it just isn’t quite there yet, but I digress. The virtualization improvements, especially throughput and network virtualizing, in Server 2012 are impressive, and it looks like a good solid upgrade.
The Windows Azure stuff that came next really was more of a sales pitch than anything else. Then of course we got into the developers section, which doesn’t affect me directly, so I just half paid attention, instead trying to watch twitter for news from Apple’s WWDC that was getting ready to start. What did surprise me though was outside of one brief moment, there was no mention of Windows 8. Considering you have the people who will be supporting the new versions of both Server and Desktop, not showing how they can work together, what was coming up in it, and basically brushing it aside does not allow us to push for its adoption. In fact I felt like they did not have enough faith in Windows 8 to bring it up. This is in stark contrast to the forums before TechEd where a large amount of people were asking Microsoft to give us Windows 8 tablets while we are here, so we can start learning them. Now Windows 8 might not be meant for businesses, but to completely brush it off just doesn’t make any sense, especially when people are asking for it.
After the keynote, a little time was spent walking the TechExpo floor. With all the companies there, it was rather interesting to see so many that were focused on security or management software. I still have more companies to visit, even after the TechExpo Reception, which seems like a way to just get the attendees loosed up with free food and alcohol to be more susceptible to the sales pitches from the vendors, than an actual reception. Still it was a nice effort on all of their parts.
In the afternoon, I went to 2 “cram” sessions for exams that I am taking while here. To call these cram sessions is really a misnomer as they were only 75 minutes long and barely had enough time to just go over the basic areas of studying. Its a nice attempt but they should have allotted more time, especially since they were given by Microsoft Certified Trainers. The trainers tried their best, but there is only so much one can do when they have such little time.
Overall, it was an interesting day. Tomorrow comes exams and some regular sessions, which should give me a better feel for what is really out there. The experience is definitely worth while here so far, even with the shortcomings of today.
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