NZ TechEd 2006 - Good Points Peter
Peter,
I want you to know I read your blog, this response is a little late however - sorry ;)
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TechED – It’s starting to get on my mind again – for those of you who don’t know I’m ultimately responsible for the event and my team (a little out of date) support me in making it happen. I loved the event last year TechFest1, TechFest2 and Student Day pity I don’t have a good link for the main event.
I’d like to address Peter’s comments and I welcome any other feedback ;)
but first off - SAVE THE DATE - TechEd 2006 will be help from August 21-23 in Auckland.
Scrap the vendors hall as they add nothing to the content of the event (except the vendors with Segways).
Actually, if you just get rid of the vendors hall then Sky City would probably be big enough for a few hundred more attendees.
Certainly SkyCity would have more capacity if we scrapped the vendors hall but TechEd is not only about Microsoft and our Technical Audience (Developer and IT Professional) it’s also about our partner channel and our partners value the Exhibition hall and TechEd as a way to get close to the market.
Now we may have gone too far and given up too much space but that’s another discussion ;) We also do regain some of the event costs (which are very significant) through the sponsorship and hall.
Scrap the party - the cost of this must be getting ridiculous. I heard the rough cost of the 2003 TechEd party. 2005 must have been more. You could buy a warehouse apartment in central Auckland and have a non-stop year long party for less!
I don’t get out a lot so personally I do like the party (see 1, 2) – I’m not sure what we will do to top last years party but we have to try. I have a simple point of view that there are really three reasons people attend TechEd:
Learn about our roadmap and hopefully know more than the person sitting beside them ;)
Network with there colleges and build additional perspectives
See inspirational speakers and great presenters.
There are obviously other reasons but I think those three are a big part of it and I think that the TechFest is part of that. Besides I think it’s a good way for Microsoft to give something back to our audience.
Splitting it will make things go a little quicker - maybe 2 days will be enough for each event.
I should give more though to splitting the event up – our biggest constraint here is our (read my) time to organize the event and ability to attract US speakers (albeit different ones) to two events.
I also want to stay as aligned with our Australian colleges as possible – TechEd ANZ IS the second biggest TechEd in the world and IS biggest per capita by far!
Scrap the hands on labs and just give people the VPC images instead.
This year I’m toying with the idea of running the labs for a day before the event – people find it hard to skip sessions and do them. People seam to love them however and distributing the labs on CD/DVD’s like we did at the launch is hard for legal and support reasons. We do have on-line labs however…
Intergen did a great job supporting us in these labs last year and the biggest problem is finding 100 good PC’s ;)
Make people pay for internet access. I know what this cost for one TechEd a few years ago (2003?) and it's just horrendous. Most people just need to check their email occasionally or surf MSDN. They can save the p0rn downloading for their hotel rooms.
I’ve managed to reduce the costs of this now from the heights of a few years ago so it’s less of an issue. However I hope people don’t expect 100% uptime form the service we offer. We always do get a little abuse of the service on P2P and other services.
Reduce the full ticket price by $400 and increase the corporate price by 50%. Business can afford to pay more and send less people. I know for some organisations that this is a junket for the staff.
I’m planning to review the prices a little this year but not quite as radically as you have suggested ;) I’d like to change the balance a little however and ensure that we get a wide variety of people to the event so there will be small and not major changes…
Peter – thanks for getting me to do a post it’s been a while!
I ASSURE YOU TECHED 2006 WILL ROCK! But in the current format it cant’ really get a lot bigger, you are right…
Sean McBreen
Platform Group Director – Microsoft New Zealand
Comments
- Anonymous
February 23, 2006
Thanks for the reply Sean. It was my intention to get some discussion going on the subject - which I know you always welcome. I'm not sure how serious I was with some of the ideas. I imagine that getting balance is the real trick to a successful TechEd. You guys have done a very good job in the past and I'm sure this year will be no different. - Anonymous
February 23, 2006
It's amazing how thoroughly I disagree with Peter on virtually all of those points.
If the aim is solely to save money for Microsoft (poor struggling startup that it is), then they might make some sense, but if you want to create a positive experience for attendees, no way. Following these recommendations would frankly make Tech Ed boring (just never, ever repeat the oompah band experience from a couple of years ago. Please).
Even the gruntiest hardware needs something soft and bouncy for packaging, and the same is true of technical content (unless we want to spend all our time sitting around looking serious and showing how intelligent we are. Yecch).
Even the vendors add a bit of variety. And some people actually find it useful to have contact with them in a setting like Tech Ed. - Anonymous
February 27, 2006
Wouldn't it be better to run the labs for a day after the event?
I know I only go to the labs to check stuff out I have seen in the presentations. I suppose before the event is a sunday rather than a work day... hmm. I do not envy your job. But thanks for doing it :) - Anonymous
March 01, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
March 07, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
March 07, 2006
Peter - great to get the feedback and discussion started - TechEd is for the community and it's always nice to share some of the thinking with you all.