And I haven't even had a chance to look at any presentations yet.

Here's what's on my schedule so far.

• Monday morning - speaker training
• Monday afternoon - INETA User Group Leader Meeting (yay!)
• Monday evening - Speaker dinner
• Tuesday 1-2: Vista Ask the Experts Booth demoing Annotation in Silverlight
• Wednesday Lunch: Women in IT Panel (yay)
• Wednesday 2:45: Birds of Feather "Is Entity Framework right for your application?"
• Wednesday 7pm: Birds of Feather with Steve Smith: "Going Solo"

(and the real reason I'm going)

• Thursday 10:15 - 11:30 am  Advanced Entity Framework: Take Charge of Object Services
• Thursday 2:45 - 4:00pm Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Data Access Guidance

And then as soon as I finish my session I have to run to the airport to catch a 6:45 flight. (and miss the attendee party, duh)

So this is starting to look like one of the conferences where I don't get to go to sessions. Because all of the rest of the time, I'll need to be in a quiet place practicing my sessions and writing my book!

I'm used to seeing TechEd ads on many of the sites that I go to since they are developer sites. So it took a few minutes for it to register when I saw the ad on the website of our local newspaper, the Burlington Free Press.

I've been seeing them frequently for days now. This is a pretty small market and it's surprising to me that they would be advertising here, but perhaps it's part of a sweeping media buy and they didn't explicitly choose Burlington. If I didn't know better, I'd really wonder if they just weren't using spyware to detect that I have VIsual Studio on my computer and therefore serving up this perfectly targetted ad. There are also a few other Microsoft ads showing up there, for example, one for MS Online Services.

Is Entity Framework right for your Applications? You'll probably want to answer this question before you start digging in deeply to learn this new data access platform that will be released very soon. Does it fit into my architecture? Will my DBA allow it? How will it play with my existing solutions? This BOF is intended as an interactive discussion where there will be plenty of experts in the room to get you started with some important decision making.

It won't happen unless it gets voted for so go vote!

About 3 years ago I moderated a session at PDC (or was it TechEd, I can't even remember ) called Going Solo. The room was literally overflowing into the hallway and it was a great discussion. Steve Smith and I are hoping to host a repeat at TechEd this year but we can't do it unless you vote for it.

Going Solo
Have you ever thought of going independent? This session aims to bring together independent developers with those who have toyed with the idea to share advice, lessons learned and more.

VOTE HERE!

About three years ago, I noticed when perusing the speaker list for TechEd US (which is sorted alphabetically by first name) that there were a lot of Brians. Then I started counting and realized that there were more men named Brian speaking than there were women speaking.

I couldn't help but notice on this year's TechEd Developer speaker slate that there were only five Brians. Heck off the top of my head I can list more than 5 women.

1. Me
2. Kate Gregory
3. Amanda Silver
4. Sara Ford
5. Lisa Feigenbaum
6. Mary Chipman (SQL Server team)

There are more but I don't know them off the top of my head.

From INETA:

Since I won't be at TechEd, I want to make sure Eric Sink is well-entertained! Of course, he's a pretty entertaining guy, so do yourself a favor and go visit him, get a cool t-shirt, get a chance to win a Wii and see some awesome developer tools like my favorite source control program.

[The fine print: I was not asked, paid, cajoled, bribed or otherwise to make this post, but I admit that I was definitely flattered!]

I am 99% with Kate on this one. I've always wanted to go to New Orleans and was excited about the added aspect of TechEd 2007 having a major impact on the city's economy. The only thing Kate & I disagree on is that I'd like to see it in Burlington, VT. Of course, Burlington has no means of hosting an event even 1/4 this size. Oh well. Hawaii?

In a way that only Carl could do! He waited until people had had a few drinks then handed them his camera and said "make a funny face and take apicture of yourself". We all know better than to trust Carl when it comes to someting like this, but everyone went along anyway and the result is hilarious! Check it out!

Here are a few posts I wrote on my DevLife blog but neglected to link to...

Hangin' with Eric Sink

Back to the Future: Tuesday at TechEd

Microsoft has flat panel screens throughout the conference center with coverage of the World Cup for all of the international folks here. Most of them have 50-100 people planted in front of them throughout the day. I keep thinking of the money these people's bosses have paid for them to come here and learn but instead they are watching the soccer matches. On the other hand, if it's a non-American company, their bosses would probably understand!

Posted from BLInk!

I satyed with Kate Gregory last night in the Airport Hilton where all of the TechEd speakers are staying. Luckily Kate and I are girls who know to where nice p.j.s when we travel! At about 4am what sounded like a really obnoxious alarm clock started very loudly buzzing in our room. It took a few seconds to realize what it was - the alarm. A woman's voice over the speaker said to evacuate the building. So the entire hotel dumped out to the grass outside of the hotel. Luckily nothing terrible happened - some flooding on the 3rd floor. I was really unhappy to experience how long it took to exit the building through the fire stairwell as people were slowly and casually and calmly going down the stairs. The general assumption is one of "oh, it's just an inconvenience, ha ha nothing important" but how can you really know? One positive sign was the calmness as people from each floor entered to the stairwell which indicated that nobody had seen anything upsetting on any of the floors. Luckily we got to sleep in a little late so it was just like a dream.

Surely there will be many blog posts and pictures about this around the teched blogosphere today!

Posted from BLInk!

I'm all ready to leave in the morning. I think my bag contains 1/3 clothes and 2/3 chocolate and vermont maple syrup (no, not for myself!). This is my 7th big MS conference and I have learned that (unless there is some spaghetti sauce accident) I end up wearing the same pants day after day and have even taken to wearing t-shirts that I pick up at the expo. Sure makes packing easy!

It seems everyone I talked to today was heading to the airport for TechEd!

I'll be heading down Tuesday morning. My husband is laughing heartily at my idea of getting on the road by 6am. We'll see how it goes!

Jonathan Bruce from DataDirect has organized a data access geek meetup with ADO.NET Technical Lead Pablo Castro (who's name I must mention 10 times every time I do an ADO.NET talk!) and Bob Beauchemin on Tuesday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm. There is limited space at this event, so head over to his blog for details!

I've seen a few posts like Jeff, suggesting that you bring an extra bag in your suitcase to bring swag home. Heck TechEd is in my backyard this year and I'm driving. So if I were a swaghound - I would have the ability to bring home a lot of cubic yards of stuff! I'll definitely go trolling a little for my user group,but that will be about it.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I only just became 100% sure that I was going to TechEd. Hooray.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Here's one way to ensure I'll be hovering around your boot at TechEd! [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

This could be an endless post - shout out to so many bloggers I met in person for the first time at TechEd.

First and foremost is Amanda Murphy who I have known virtually for over a year and meeting her was like meeting a younger sister. Amanda runs a user group in St. Johns Newfoundland (practially out in the middle of the ocean). She won one of the INETA Scholarships to TEchEd (after a) the invitation to apply had landed in her junk mail box and b) after I got her to FIND the invite, still almost didn't apply becasue she thought she would never get it.) Ha. Watch this girl - I think she is definitely an up & comer in the .NET community.

Also, I loved meeting Chris Williams & Jason Olson, seeing a bunch of the guys from MAD Code Camp again (like Frank LaVigne and Jeff Schoolcraft). Lorenzo Barbieri seemed a little surprised that I recognized him - the value of a good blog, having your picture on it and a few years of Italian in college (plus some help from Google language tools). I am going to try to find a GURU shirt for myself.

Oh, of course there are hundreds more. You know who you are!

TechEd Speakers Charity Auction http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5587400881

I can't believe that I just found a picture on Kirk Allen Evan's blog documenting what had to be the BEST TechEd session this week.

I was sitting at a cabana table this morning with some of my favorite German and North Carolinian guys, and the topic of transactions came up. I am admittedly pretty light when it comes to distributed transactions, but have had to dig deeper into them as of late, for example in preparation for the MARS webcast which I did with Glen Gordon (who I got to meet in person this week!) and also in yesterday's conversations about DTC. Mentioning this, I suddenly found myself having a 20 minute private training session with Clemens Vasters, Rich Turner and Christian Weyer all teaching me about transaction resource managers. Just me. Three brilliant instructors, one student. 

Clemens walked me through a transaction resource manager that he has written and I was introduced to a whole new flavor of programming model. I have been limited to thinking about transactions only in the scope (ummm, no pun intended) of database transactions. I always feel that I am pretty much representative of the bulk of developers out there, so surely this is not an uncommon misconception.

Kirk posted a bunch of TechEd pictures and as I was looking at them tonight, I  was surprised, but happy, to see that he had captured the moment!

I think that we will soon all have our eyes opened up a little more about leveraging DTC to create transaction resource managers.

Also in the photo are Don Smith and Don Browning at the same table, and Robert Hurlbut (who also knows a thing or two about DTC) at the table behind us.

Posted from BLInk!

TechEd is many things to many people. During the day and evening, the choices are overwhelming. During each time slot there are 20 standard technical presentations and nearly as many cabana talks. There are dozens of ...

[A DevLife post]

http://www.AcehAid.org

Every year at TechEd it feels like a different experience to me - but always a great one!

In addition to attending some WSE talks today, the highlight of the day was the BOFs at the end of the day. But first was the CodeZone launch party which was fun to attend.

There were 30 BOFs last night! They have 3 time slots with 10 BOFs each. (You can filter on Birds of a Feather on the breakout page to see tonight's schedule.) I attended Keith Pleas' BOF to help people with migrating their VB6 apps to .NET (I'm lucky  -I only had to migrate my mind, not any applications), I co-hosted a BOF for women coders (who sometimes don't generally get a chance to meet other women in their field!). This was great fun as always and Cathi Gero helped me host it. In addition to Cathi, I was happy to have some notable women devs show up including Olga Londer who has authored three books and Ginny Coffey who is speaking at TechEd. It's nice to be able to have some really visible women to highlight. There were also some guys there including the affable Michael Kaplan (who had somehow temporarily evaded his stalkers).

After this I hung around for Tim Huckaby's rousing debate on "What the heck is a smart client, anyway". That one was continued at a hotel bar when the convention center closed down.

TechEd for me is more about catching up with people and meeting new folks. The cabanas this year are expanded but they have a different feel. Since they have a much larger space, the spaces set up for hanging out are segregated from one another, which somehow makes it different. Hard to explain.

Today will be a jam packed busy day. I'll be working at the MyCodeZone booth for a few hours, then to the Women in I.T. luncheon, hopefully time for some afternoon sessions and then working at the TabletPC booth from 4-5. I even have one of the blue shirts - which I guess I'll have to wear all day since it is a bit of a haul back to the wonderful hotel that I am staying at. Things are definitely spread out and the hotel for mingling is the Peabody - right by the convention center and it is the speaker hotel. But once I get back here, it's basically up to the room and done for the night. A little less partying for me this year. I must be getting boring in my "old age".

http://www.AcehAid.org

One of the more exciting things in a developer's life is going to a conference, especially a really big one. Microsoft's TechEd U.S. conference is starting on Monday and ..

[A DevLife post].

http://www.AcehAid.org

If you are not going to be at TechEd, and come on, there are millions of developers and only 10,000 or so attendees  so there's a chance you aren't  (although there aren't millions of developers reading my blog, so it does narrow the field a bit ) - prepare yourself for a week of torture. Once at TechEd, that's basically all that a blogger (attending) will blog about. Saw this session, met that person, went to this party.... But hey, it's the next best thing to being there....

The first year I was there I did give a blow by blow of all the people that I ran into. Now it is not possible because over the years I have gotten to know so many people. Anyway, I STILL have to pack and the clock is ticking.

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.AcehAid.org

Here's one thing that always gets me at the big conferences. The people who go around the expo hall collecting as MUCH STUFF as they can with absolutely no regard for what they are even getting - just so long as it's free. I remember at TechEd Dallas we didn't have a proper banner for our wee INETA booth way in the back of the expo hall so I hung up some INETA T-Shirts. We didn't have give aways, just shirts for the volunteers. What we did have was some of the real rock star .NET speakers who wer also INETA speakers in the booth as an Ask the Experts. That's a pretty good deal. Free technical advice from some of the top presenters ni the .NET world. But no..... So many people came by asking for a t-shirt. They had no clue what INETA was and no interest in finding out. Just wanted the damned shirt. I actually had an argument with a guy who was demanding I give him a shirt!

I do like to get stuff to hand out to my user group. One year I brought back a box and just dumped it out on the table for everyone to take from. But I'm actually embarrassed to carry a bag around to get stuff. And if I do take something, I will end up spending a lot of time talking to the people at the booth. Rather than just do a drive by and grab fast.

And then there's getting it home. LOL. Spendng all of that money to ship FREE stuff home. Okay so I got smart and brought an extra soft suitcase last time. Someone suggested a heavy duty canvas duffel bag would do the trick. We'll see how it goes...

http://www.AcehAid.org

Last year, Rob Rohr created his TechEd session schedule in OneNote, but did it manually. This year he is dreaming up an automated way of creating his schedule with the OneNote API. He learned that the schedules will be out in RSS in mid-May so his plan will be doable. Sounds like something lots of people might want to leverage. Rob is another one of us Vermont geek, by the way.

http://www.AcehAid.org