Behind the scenes at TechEd 2008 Australia - Prep Day 2

I have had a unique insight into the setup of TechEd 2008 here in Sydney. I've been helping Breeze, one of Microsoft's integration specialist and training partners, in setting up RFID - a world first for TechEd.  Its an ambitious effort that belies the size of the team (Approximately 22 doors, 90 antennas and about 200 readers).  Since building the original prototype 2 years back watching this come together has been the realisation of an idea.

 

Despite multiple challenges the team (Microsoft, Breeze and Kinetics) have come together with an area of technology that covers the spectrum of technology infrastructure, business productivity, application development and support. The day I arrived the bunker room was setup and a wealth of DHL boxes littered the room with promise. Thanks to some carefully orchestrated planning from Breeze each room began to take shape.

Here are a few snaps from day 2. I am working in the background on a collage of videos from covering most of the pre-days.

Scott bolting the antenna to the truss  at just the right angle to read tags on entry.

Mick and Alex configuring the room/gate computer (running BizTalk RFID) to accept local reads, which then will be replicated to a central server.

The exhibition room gate with multiple antennas, readers and trusses.

 

Shannon, back at HQ configuring yet another new machine, in front is a manual breakdown of the configuration of the gate (passive active, cable lengths, adapters, usb hubs and computer network setup details). All need to be setup exactly or the array of technology wont function as intended. Fortunately Shannon has built images of the various machines on a private network and has his Windows Server 2008 Hypervisor images ready to run..