I was luck enough to be presented with the opportunity to attend Tech-Ed again this year. This was my third Tech-Ed ( 1997, 2006 ). I spent a lot of time on the Expo floor talking with various product groups and meeting old friends.

This year was the first year that MS split the conference into Tech-Ed Developers and Tech-Ed IT. I can't say I though it was a success. About half the sessions I attended weren't worth it and the other half were a no brainer ( Rocky Lotkha, Ted Neward  ). There were some times that I though the presenter was there more for themselves than the attendies ( Jeffery Palermo ). 

The conference center was huge compared to the number of people attending ( roughly 4800 ), and the layout was a little off. The partners seemed like they were stuck in a corner and the distance from the breakout rooms to the dining area was the full length of the center, a good 5-10 minute walk. I did however have a good time at some of the evening events including the attendies party @ Universal.

I met Bill Chiles, Jimmy Schementi and Curt Hagenlocher from the IronPython/IronRuby team at the Dymanic Languages booth. It was nice to put some faces to names that I have been seeing on the IronPython mailing list for a while. I was also able to resolve some issues I was having after talking to them so, thanks guys! I did however seem to miss Jon Lam no matter how much I hung out down there.

Some of my favorite sessions were actually during the lunch break, which meant wolfing down whatever was in those steaming catering dishes ( I think that was chicken ) and rusing to a breakout room. Eric Gunnerson from Microsoft gave two presentations on HealthVault which was a very interesting SaS initiative they have going. Andy Dunn also gave a presentation on XNA and Game Studio, which actually drew an audience of roughly 200 including myself and fellow Magenic Consultant Chris Williams.

Look for a few more posts on some neat things from Tech-Ed.