MSDN Flash Volume 9, Number 17 - September 5, 2005

Jarvis Cocker, epitomised Tech.Ed New Zealand 2005 for me in the following simple verse:

"The dust has settled,
replaced the bulbs in all the lights.
A revolution happened.
Oh, sorry you haven't heard?
They say the future's beginning tonight.
The revolution begins & ends with you."

Maybe this is being a little dramatic but this is exactly what it felt like for me. Others have their own opinions... what is everybody else saying?

The week before Tech.Ed I setup SmartRss on my phone so that I was able to read blog posts in real time during the event. Here are some of the great summary posts from Peter Jones (Day 1,2,3), Rod Drury (Day 1,2-3), Betsy Aoki (Student Day 1,2 & Tech-Ed 1,2) & Jeremy Boyd (Day 1,2,3).

Pocket Journalism is really changing how we are getting information. Chris Auld blogged this live from the Tech.Ed keynote. Computerworld released this article on the same day then the New Zealand Herald followed on Tuesday with this and this.

I have uploaded my pick of the Tech.Ed photos to here... A special thank you to Andrew MacKay for taking some great photos at the TechFest party!

A point that resonates with our American guests is that "New Zealand & Australia is all about vegemite!". Ari talks about it here (59MB) and Betsy partakes in her own Vegemite Demo.

We have collated the evaluation forms from 80% of the session. Here are some preliminary statistics...

The highest ranking session with an average satisfaction of 8.5 was "Debunking Security Myths - Jesper Johansson/Steve Riley (16MB)".

The most useful session with an average of 8.5 was "SQLCLR Internals: SQL Server 2005 CLR Runtime Host and Best Practices Vs T-SQL Development - Greg Low".

The best presenter again went to Steve Riley with an average of 8.8 from 312 evaluations.

The best demos with and average score of 8.6 went to "Anatomy of a Network Hack: How to Get Your Network Hacked in 10 Easy Steps - Jesper Johansson".

The session that made you feel most confident about Microsoft technology was "SQLCLR Internals: SQL Server 2005 CLR Runtime Host and Best Practices Vs T-SQL Development - Greg Low" with an average score of 8.0.

We have collected a group of PodCasts from Tech.Ed NZ... thanks Chris.

XNA - Tony Goodhew (.wmv, 119MB)
Windows Communication Foundation ("Indigo") - Ari Brixhorn (.wmv, 59MB, 16 mins)
Blogging - Betsy Aoki (.wmv, 10.7MB, 14min)

Also we have some footage of the Feelers from the TechFest Party... thanks Sean.

Venus - The Feelers (.avi, 6MB)
Stand Up - The Feelers (.avi, 4MB)

Overall thanks everybody for a fantastic event! If you would like to download the slide decks/ code samples/ and Hands On Lab manuals from Tech.Ed go here. We will be adding more throughout the week.

In addition to Tech.Ed we reached some other key milestones last week. We launched the Visual Studio 2005 launch site... here you will find the latest MSDN webcasts, virtual labs, and e-learning courses. Also anyone that saw Ari Bixhorn present at Tech.Ed will be familiar with the Windows Communication Foundation ("Indigo")... we have released 3 free chapters from Programming Indigo a book written by David Pallmann a key member of the Microsoft "Indigo" team.

Last week we also managed to "surprise" computerworld by releasing a test version of WinFS (Windows new file system beta) well ahead of schedule.

Next Sunday I am off to my first PDC in LA! Paul Andrew is very busy preparing for his sessions at PDC. If you are awake at 5am on Friday 16th September make sure you check out the webcast "Introduction to Workflow in Windows Applications".

As always feel free to drop me a line with any questions: nzeditor@microsoft.com

Nigel Parker
.NET Development Advisor,
Microsoft New Zealand
https://blogs.msdn.com/nigel

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Comments

• Anonymous
  September 04, 2005
  Hey, I'll be going to PDC too :)
  
  By any chance, would you know how many from NZ going? Should try to organise a get together for delegates from NZ.
• Anonymous
  September 07, 2005
  The comment has been removed