Notes on TechEd Israel 2008

Last week was the (now) semi-annual TechEd Israel conference.  This was my sixth time participating in this event - I have given presentations at all six TechEds here.  The conference is an amazing experience and has come a long way from 2000/2001 when we had to lobby Microsoft Israel to put on such an event.  There were about 3,500 participants - about half the amount of TechEd EMEA for all of Europe!

The attendees enjoyed most of the sessions/speakers and the speakers enjoyed the interactions and challenges of the attendees.

A particularly interesting observation for me was when I asked the attendees at my session (Sync Services for ADO.NET) how many of them were VB developers.  At VSLive last month I got about 80% VB developers. Here I got only one (1) !! and even he was only after I promised SWAG to anyone who admitted to it.  Wow...

An extra treat for me personally was getting/seeing some of my Redmond friends to come over for the conference, including Pablo Castro, Matt Winkler, Lisa Feigenbaum, and Shy Cohen.  The attendees really enjoyed their great sessions as well.  An extra thanks to Matt, for staying in Israel an extra day to be the guest speaker at a special joint VB/C#/Architects User Group meeting.