Arrived at TechEd
I finally made it to TechEd 2004 shortly after 3pm this afternoon. Although it feels like I've walked tens of miles today (the San Diego conference center is huge), there is definitely a great buzz here.
Firstly, I spent some time at the Architecture Cabana (#4). Brenton Webster, a colleague in my team, was presenting on Smart Clients and (more importantly) was showing the 'Arch 5' video. If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out - it's pretty funny. I'm the 'fashion guy', which is hilarious as given my dress sense I don't think I could have thought of a more inappropriate role <g>.
The Hands on Labs (Rooms 6 and upwards) are excellent and well worth spending some time in. Kudos to everyone who was involved setting those up. I sat down for an hour this evening and went through the two WSE 2.0 HOLs (messaging and security/policy). Regardless of whether you've had any experience with WSE, you should definitely check these out.
Tomorrow is a busy day. I know there are a lot of parties on, but if you don't have a heavy night in San Diego tonight<g>, feel free to come to my Cabana session. Session code is DEVC35 - Web Services Interoperability, 8.30am in Cabana 6. I'll bring some code and a whiteboard. You bring the coffee. No powerpoint that time in the morning, I guarantee.
If the early session is just too early, join me instead for WIN325 - Microsoft and Interoperability, 1.30pm in Room 1AB. I'm going to be taking an in-depth look at all of the areas of interoperability that Microsoft plays a part in, covering what I call the 'interoperability and integration stack'. This is the first time that I've presented this deck publicly, so I'm looking forward to hearing feedback. For this session, I'll also be joined with David Bishop (another ex-pat). David works in our ISV adoption team and is what I can only describe as the 'father of the AS/400'. He'll be showing a great demo for exposing Web services from your existing green screen applications. If that's not enough, I'll also have some free giveaways - that you will not get anywhere else in TechEd.
More at the session... Hope to see you there.