After a long week in the Gold Coast (it’s a hard life!) another Tech.Ed conference is over. Being a Tech.Ed virgin and given all the hype I have heard from fellow developers, I’d have to say my expectations for the conference were quiet high. So you can imagine how disappointed I am now having been to only find out that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Aus Tech.Ed 2009
Call me harsh but I’ve always felt that about 9 out of every 10 developers have below average public speaking and presentation skills. Sadly Tech.Ed proves the point. Out of all the sessions I attended only one was up to the level of quality and standard that I expect when paying $1600 for a ticket.
So if the money wasn’t spent on obtaining top notch speakers, what did the $1600 go towards:
- HP Mini laptop for all attendees,
- Food, food and more food,
- Coffee, coffee and more coffee,
- Random free goods,
- A party at Dreamworld; and
- A good Tech.Ed Expo and exhibitors
I don’t dispute that Microsoft know how to put on a good show (there is lots of “cool” stuff in the list above) but unfortunately the items in the list above are just superficial, “value add” items to get you in the door (with the exception being the expo and its exhibitors – good job done there). At the end of the day we are there to gain technical insights into Microsoft’s/Microsoft ISV’s products and services. I would have much preferred to walk away from the conference mentally exhausted from excellent content and speakers than with a free HP Mini laptop…
To top it all off there wasn’t any new SharePoint 2010 information provided at the conference (hence why there have not been any new posts in the last 4 days). There was SharePoint 2010 information but sadly it was just the videos that are currently available on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 sneak-peak web site. I guess we will just have to wait for the SharePoint Conference in Vegas (October 19-22) to get more information.
In summary, if you hadn’t already guessed, I was very disappointed with the conference. If you want to best utilise your conference attendance budget my suggestion is to avoid Tech.Ed and stick to the individual product conferences insted. They tend to be of shorter length, attract presentations from product MVP’s (Microsoft Most Valued Professional), have content of a more advanced level, are more engaging and are better for “people networking”.
Enough of my ranting… Did you attend Australian Tech.Ed 2009? Did you find the overall quality of presentations mediocre? I would love to hear experiences from other people who also attended to get a broader opinion of the conference.
Tags: TechEd 2009
I find conferences are more about who you meet and building contacts. They draw together top people from across the country into one place.
The content can be found elsewhere and after the conference.
Alex, I agree wholeheartedly. The expo at Tech.Ed was excellent for establishing contacts with Microsoft ISV’s. It was much harder though to establish contacts with fellow SharePoint portal architects and application developers/designers.
Microsoft had tables that were signposted with group names like “Premier Service Partners”, “Women in IT” (I think there were about 10 women in attendance!) and so forth but nothing at the technology level which was a shame.