Sebastian's WebLog

.NET Architecture & Technologies

Two funny sessions by Don Box and Pat Helland

Today is my third day in Amsterdam and unfortunately I don't have the time to blog as much as I want to. There are so many session from early the morning up to the evening. Yesterday, I was in luck to attend two great sessions (of course, others were great too ...) Pat Helland in "Metropolis: Envisioning the Service-Oriented Enterprise" and Don Box on "Service-Orientation and the Windows/.NET Developer".

Pat's session ended with great song on the end of the IT. On the guitar: Mr. Don Box, on the piano Mr. David Chappell and vocals by Pat Helland. "Bye bye Mr. CIO guy ..." Really great song!  ;-) Video should be available on http://www.PatHelland.com next days and surely on MTV.

Don's session was a great PowerPoint-free session starting with the FAQ (answers will be published on his blog http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/dbox/) typed into an XML file. If you know Don Box you know why this session was a great one - he's really one of the best speakers presenting technical stuff in a very funny way. Even the most abstract issues will become clear and don't end in a boring talk. At last Don introduces the buzzword of next years: Business Agents ... Business Agents ... Business Agents ...... (googled it today: http://www.google.de/search?q=Business+Agents)

 

Posted: Jun 30 2004, 07:34 AM by SebastianWeber | with 2 comment(s)

Comments

TrackBack said:

# June 30, 2004 10:41 AM

Daniel Losch said:

Don Box is really a cool speaker.

Thinking about the benefit of TechEd

Microsoft EMEA sponsored me a trip to TechEd this year (I do not work for them, just some sort of community program). Unfortunately I was only able to stay until wednesday but I was able to get some really good insight into a microsoft conference (never been to one before). It's huge and everyone who's never been to one has really missed a thing - just think about the keynote and the drum stuff - and all these orange bags running through amsterdam.

I watched some sessions (especially regarding VS.Net Whidbey, SQL 2005 and Biztalk) and speakers like Don Box or David Chappell really impressed me. They are able to present technical stuff in a interesting and fun way and they really know a lot about the stuff they talk about.

What was disappointing to me was the technical depth of some sessions - I learn more by reading articles on MSDN, which contain much more in-depth details about certain topics. The sessions might be interesting, but I knew much of the stuff I heard during various sessions, even that I do not consider myself to be very competent in the areas I opted for. And having one "Aha-Erlebnis" per two to four sessions really does not seem to be a good cost to gain ratio to me. You lose a week of work and especially some freelancers I talked to would hesitate to go there if they had to pay for it (losing one week of income plus having to pay 3k Euros to go to TechEd).

Additionally, some sessions are just pure marketing hype by microsoft - click here, click there, drag and drop - man whidbey, sql and asp.net really rock. No real in depth information, just "everything cool here", 70 percent less code.

So I wonder what was the most important reason to go to TechEd?
Watch the sessions to learn about (new) technologies?
Get in touch with other developers/admins/experts from Microsoft?
Going there because if as a Microsoft developer or admin you have to have been top one or your life isn't complete (for the sake of the experience)?

It seemed to me that some (big) companies just send their people there to keep them happy (some sort of a gratification for good work). But who else is willing to pay more than 2k Euros for such an experience?

Well - I did not pay for it, so it was like one of the coolest holidays I ever had ...



# June 30, 2004 4:34 PM
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