DAMN! Despite all pre-conference materials and inside info, Steve Ballmer *was* the opening keynote (he was originally going to be the keynote for Tuesday). And because of the late night previously…I chose to sleep in a bit and missed it completely! ARGH! I was hoping for a bit of enthusiasm in the morning and possibly another “Developers! Developers! Developers!” rant from SteveB. Oh well, guess I’ll watch the webcast.
I registered (now carrying around two bags – including the one they give you), which is pretty nice. We also got the convention shirt in advance (smart move) as well as a bag of DVDs, magazines, marketing material, etc.
On to the complaints. Wireless lounge: sucked…never got access – got connected, but at < 1MB speeds and couldn’t do anything. I was using my Verizon aircard all day instead of the commnet stuff! I couldn’t believe it – they hopefully will have it worked out by tomorrow. Food: so far it sucks…but this isn’t anything new – you try picking out food for 12,000 people. I’m gratefully they are providing it and the snacks throughout the day.
Good stuff: facility is HUGE. Expo is great and big. Lots of people to see. I met with a lot of RDs and MVPs throughout the day.
Sessions: I went to two sessions today. First was ASP.NET Membership and Profiles. If you haven’t seen that stuff yet, it is really cool. I always learn something new every time even though I had seen that information many times before. The second session was a view of http://www1.msteched.com/content/sessionview.aspx?TopicID=f9102059-5485-40b4-8ba8-7958586651f2 (picture: here). This was great. There was a ton more about Generics than I knew about before. Static classes, generics in method calls, all good stuff. Anders did a great job about talking about what’s new. I got a call throughout the presentation and had to step out for the remainder.
Tonight we had a Nerd Dinner for the west region and invited about 30 attendees to join us at the PacMan Café in Orlando…yes, a true nerd dinner. Nothing says nerd more than pacman, galaga, and pizza :-D. It was fun to talk with all the guys. Richard Hundhausen brought his new book on Visual Studio Team System for us to look at – he and other authors did a great job and putting together the material. I can honestly say it was the first book I’d ever seen that had it’s own “beta” notation! Pictures: Wonder Works (some building upside down), Michael Palermo-Pacman, Pete Miller (well at least his back).
Tomorrow I’m hoping to tackle MikeFitz to talk about sharepoint v-next and show him some cool stuff that customers are working on to see if they are going in the right direction. I’ll recap sessions in more detail tomorrow! I arrived at TechEd one day early – coming from the west coast this was necessary or I would have missed the first day! (In case you didn’t know, TechEd is in Orlando, FL this year).
My flight sucked. Not because of the airline, but because the fact that someone sitting around me smelled pretty bad – normally I don’t care…but multiply “normally” by 5 hours. We also flew into a lightening/thunderstorm in Orlando, so were placed in what seemed to be a figure 8 holding pattern for an additional 40 minutes.
I finally got there and met up with some team members and we went to the hotel. We are staying at the Ritz Carlton. Yeah, I know, woe is me. In all seriousness…I don’t like these types of places. When we arrived…there was a bellmen about 300 yards even before the bellmen. Then about an army of 8 blue-jacketed guys trying to take our carry-on bags were there to greet us as well. This was followed by a gentlemen opening the first door, a different gentlemen opening a second door, and then a concierge to greet us there. Then after check-in the concierge escorted me to the elevator (which was around the corner) to show me where my room was. WAY TOO MUCH! Now before you get the “Microsoft has too much money to spend” – we are staying at the Ritz after a smokin’ deal was arranged. Truth be told, I’d rather be closer to the convention center.
At any rate, the first day was an INETA event as well as a MS Regional Director event. I had some invited guests at both of these. Apparently both were great events and a lot of insight was gained at each.
Afterwards I spent some time with PeteM and Michael Palermo to hear about their days and chat about ways we can better excite the developer community. It is good to hang out with solid leaders and share ideas…part of this job I really like.
Off to bed…for tomorrow.
i'll be at teched 2005 this entire week soaking in all the new microsoft goodness -- keep posted here as i'll keep some daily logs (hopefully more frequently) about the happenings in orlando.
i'll spend most of my time around the mvp and community cabanas in between sessions if you want to stop by and chat.
I wanted to share some important news to you. I encourage you to PLEASE share this with your respective colleagues, user groups, and peers.
It is not often that we receive direct communication to the community from Corporate VP's at the big ship…but yesterday we received one that contains great news regarding a situation of MS listening to the feedback of the community and reacting. Below are excerpts from a memo from Sanjay Parthasarathy (affectionately called "Sanjay P"), who is the Corporate VP of .NET strategy (translation: "the man").
We announced our product line and pricing in March, significantly ahead of product availability. What we heard from customers time and again was that they wanted Microsoft to provide as much advance notice as possible regarding product changes. Since the March announcement, we have received quite a bit of feedback about the SKU strategy, pricing and licensing.
[You] have been an invaluable source of input on these topics and we are taking action to respond to many of your suggestions.
We will place a limited version of Team Foundation Server in each edition of the Visual Studio Team System family (Architects, Developers and Testers). This version will be restricted to a maximum of five users and should serve the needs of smaller organizations. Teams that have a need for more users should still find that Team Foundation Server is significantly more cost effective than current source code control solutions and offers tremendous value through its role as the core of integration across all of the Team System.
To address the broader feedback on pricing, we have also finalized promotional pricing around Team Suite to enable current subscribers to more easily upgrade to the full Visual Studio product line. Going forward into 2005, MSDN Universal customers will have three choices:
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Universal subscribers that want all of the client functionality of Team System will be able to upgrade to Team Suite by paying just the incremental software assurance or renewal price for the duration of their agreement. In retail, this amounts to around $2,300 and for most customers this represents a 75% or more discount on the full price of Team Suite. Volume customers will, of course, pay less. »
Universal subscribers who want Team Edition for Software Architects, Team Edition for Software Developers, or Team Edition for Software Testers will be able to upgrade at no additional cost. Each of these "role Editions" includes the MSDN Premium Subscription. »
Universal subscribers who want the 2005 equivalent of MSDN Universal can simply choose Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium Subscription and get the functional equivalent of MSDN Universal for about 15% less than what they paid today. So what does this mean for you? A lot if you are already an MSDN universal subscriber. If you aren't, you should seriously consider it given the above information and the step-up upgrade referred to above as well as the benefits mentioned above. It by far is the greatest tool that a developer could have. I don't like pushing "sales-ish" comments like this, but I truly believe it.