TechED EMEA and Office System Track Planning

So I found out last week that I’ll have the huge responsibility *and honor* of being the Office System track owner for TechED EMEA.  I’ll be responsible for coordinating, collaborating, and developing the content and recruiting speakers for one of the biggest tech events in Europe!  Now that my excitement is slowly turning to fear as the realization that the satisfaction of the presentations rest solely on my shoulders, I thought I might give you all, the community at large, the opportunity to weigh in with comments and suggestions on what you’d like to see in the Office track.

What’s So Big About Office?

Some IT people still think of Office as PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook.  Many don’t know that the Office system comprises of fifteen client applications, seven servers applications, packaged through nine client suites, and a handful of server editions.  If you want to know where Ballmer’s business applications strategy from the 90’s has resulted in, one only has to go to https://office.microsoft.com and click products.

Microsoft Office is the end-to-end productivity and information management tool for anyone from small businesses to the “Who’s Who” of big corporations.

Why Should IT Managers and Administrators Care?

These days, it’s relatively trivial to deploy the software, but to actually integrate them with your back-end systems, line-of-business applications, and customize it for your organization still remains an intellectual challenge.  It is simply too much information to wrap your head around.  If you’re one of those techies that long for the day where systems were just systems and you didn’t have to worry about things like reporting, governance, and compliance—SURPRISE!  The world wants more from you and they want to give you less money to do it, that is unless you know what you’re talking about.

The good thing is that you don’t have to do it alone. By coming to TechED EMEA, you will have the opportunity to learn about the technologies and issues from a deep technical perspective while understanding the business impacts.  Discussions will be set at the forefront of IT thought leadership so you know that when you take an idea back to your organization, it will be one that is strategic and defined for long-term return.

Tell Me What Technical Topics You Want to See

Think about every technical conference you’ve been to.  If you think a session on "Deploying Information Rights Management for SOX Compliance” is a good topic, tell me.  If you want a comprehensive drill down around optimal Office Group Policy use scenarios, tell me.  If you absolutely don’t want to hear pseudo-technical sales pitches, DON’T tell me ‘cause there won’t be any :)

 

Sincerely,

Your friendly neighborhood TechED track owner

-VT

 

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Well it looks like I’ve missed a heck of announcements at TechEd yesterday morning during the Keynote.