TechEd 2.0
Sorry about the title, I'm just jumping on the stupid Web 2.0 band wagon :)
Dave Lemphers posted recently about the growing pains of TechEd (at least, TechEd AU). As I've talked about before, I really do think that TechEd needs a facelift.
The thing is, what should it evolve into? I had a go, Dave has had a go, but there's dreams and then there's reality. There's also the masses to consider - I know what I'd like, but that doesn't mean that anyone else will.
Having recently been to this year's event, it's much fresher in my mind what I'd like to see there, and I think I can boil it down to 3 things.
- Shorter presentations. At the last minute a whole heap of cabana sessions were added. I only made it to two of them - Greg Low talking about VSTS for DB, and Dave himself talking about threading and concurrency. They were both short, sweet, rand to the point - and as a result, very cool. I would have gone to more if there were more on I was interested in, but a lot of them weren't for me - which is fine, but next year I hope there's more that interest me. Oh, and you guys at MS that read this: let's get less of the commercial ones going on. I'm not going to go a session where all they're doing is trying to sell me stuff *cough*compuware*cough*.
- Higher geek content. There was very few sessions on that were level 400. If I'm forking out a lot of money to go to this thing, it better damn well be worth my time. I want advanced stuff. Yes, you have to cater for the average developer, but you have to be able to give people that already knwo the basics something decent to chew on too.
- Joel Pobar had damn well better be at every TechEd from now until the end of time. Damn he's smart :)
The important thing at the moment however is to get your voice heard. Nothing will happen everyone sits back and listens. I've heard a few people say they wish it was different - now is the time to get on your soapbox. Tell Dave! Tell anyone! Rise up in the cafeteria and stab them with your plastic forks!