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1500 Conversations At Once!!! Tech.Ed 2007 in Oz!

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So I caught up with my Ask The Expert Amigas, Simone and Tania this week, to start putting together the first stages of the revolutionary, supagroovalastic, Mr Bombastic, infolicious, experienza, Putasouvlakiinyourear'arillo, Ask An Experts night, 2007!

Well, it didn't take Simone and Tania too long to get cooking, and I have to list two great calls from them:

1. Simone: It's like 1500 conversations under one roof!

Dave: George Clinton couldn't have put it better!

2. Tania: We need a "Call for Experts"!

Dave: Hand me my Duda! It's time to start the call! 

So what are we looking at?

Firstly, a real simple list, where anyone can register their own profile, that outlines some basics about who they are, what they do, and where they've been, and whether they are willing to talk, or just want to ask some questions. For example:

Who? Dave LemphersWhat? Dynamics, ISV, App Plat, BizTalk, SharePoint, Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, Team SystemBeen? A developer, software architect, consultant, business owner, Principal Consultant, EvangelistClick here to book a chat with Dave at Ask an Expert night at Tech.Ed 2007!

Then, when you want to schedule a catch-up, you simply provide a small comment on what exactly you'd like to talk about, and the request gets sent to the person, and if they accept, it goes into a list, again, something like this:

Expert Requestor Topic Status
Dave Lemphers Frank Arrigo Yum Cha etiquette... When to start ordering in Mandarin? Accepted

So as the request list starts building up, we will start to work out the ratio of requests to topics. What that means is that if there are 50 requests to speak to Frank Arrigo about getting a job in DPE, then we will compress all those into a small chalk talk/breakout, and for the 1:1 or 1:few, we'll assign them to a pedestal table in the main area.

I also want to think about having some way to record the conversations, if people are cool with that, and have those immediately uploaded to a central location/podcast server, so people can listen to conversations that happened during the night.

Closer to Tech.Ed, we'll also work out how to structure the night, as right now I like the idea of a dance card approach, similar to:

Role (Format) Meeting Topic Time Location
Expert Frank Arrigo Yum Cha etiquette 6pm-6:15pm Table 8
Inquisitor (1:1) Andrew Coates Migrating from Fox Pro to Cobol 6:20pm-6:35pm Table 4
Inquisitor (Breakout) Frank Arrigo How to get a job in DPE 6:40pm-6:55pm Breakout 2

But again, if there is a better way, I need to hear about it people! Need the info!

Anyhoo, will check back soon :)

P.S: Hope everyone enjoyed MEDC and the SharePoint Conference that just passed.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 24, 2007
    Dave Lemphers has put out the call We're doing something different for "Ask the Experts" at Tech.Ed this