TechEd - Day 3

Last day of TechEd and there were a few sleepy heads around - not sure if that was from brain fatigue or just garden variety after party fatigue.

The first session I attend was the The Hour of Power: 6 of the Best - Best of the Best in VS2008 which saw six presenters show their favourite parts of VS2008. I particularly found the debugging tips useful.

The panel session Web Futures - the next 18 months addressed what we can expect to see on the web in the next little while. There is a lot of talk about cloud computing - but at the end of the day I am not sure that corporates are going to trust the "cloud" with their data. There are still quite a few security and privacy concerns. It was asked whether touch technology would become a bigger part of the web in the next little while. The panel agreed it would, and one panel member thought that web cams and projectors would play a bigger part in the future. If the web cam interpreted gesture this could be quite natural.

Office Communications Server 2007 Security basically covered the architecture models for OCS plus the ports that need to be opened up to allow for OCS to work and why (there are quite a few).

Shh data mining works in Excel showed a SQL add in for Excel 2007 that allows data mining - looks pretty cool and I will be sure to check it out.

The last session was Upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Notes from Early Adopters and Best Practices and I could only stay for a portion before I needed to leave for my flight. However, the upgrade path for 2000 to 2008 is supported, so we might bypass 2005 all together. He made the really good point that a number of users simply upgrade but then don't review their databases to see how they can actually take advantage of the new features.

All up, Tech Ed was very useful and I met some pretty cool people. I am always happily surprised by how up for a chat everyone is. Most of the time you need to make the first move and break the ice, but after that people are really keen to talk.

Being a woman at Tech Ed does come with some unique challenges, one of which is handling some pretty inane questions from bloke techs. For women at Tech Ed (herein WIT) I recommend the following responses to commonly asked question by slightly ignorant male techs (here in SIMT).
SIMT: So you work in IT?
WIT: Yes, do you?
Seriously, why else are you going to be a TechEd? I got asked this so many times.
SIMT: There aren't many women here, I guess guys are just better at technical stuff
WIT: Actually, I have managed both male and female programmers and I have found that the female ones consistently out perform the guys, in particular in the areas of understanding user needs and managing scope creep.
No word of lie, I actually had a guy say this to me.

However, there are several benefits to being a female at TechEd:

1. Despite being a conference of 3000+ people, you never have to line up for the bathroom.
2. You have huge novelty factor and pretty much any of the guys are keen for a chat.
3. Apparently you get more free stuff (I never do the kiosk trawl for freebies because if I give over my details I have to field sales calls for the next fortnight, but I have this on good authority)
4. At the Tech Ed party guys will willingly bring your drinks etc. and you never have to leave the dance floor (more applicable when party not held on site)
5. You don't have to worry as much about appearance - you could turn up in your PJs and Ugg boots and no one would blink an eye - Us girls definitely dress for other women, rather than the guys!
6. You can play XBox games, totally suck and the guys will still think your great for giving it a go - if you happen to excel then the guys think you are the hottest thing out.
8. If you happen to be single, you are never going to see so many men in one place (apart from maybe Mt Isa)

Til next year Tech Ed!