Simon Barratt

TechEd 2006 Roundup

This was my first TechEd, but I was sure it was not going to all that different from all the Lotusphere's I have attended in the past.  And in general it was not.  This year TechEd was in Boston, a city that I like, so I was pleased to be able to revisit it again.  Whilst Orlando is a nice location in the middle of winter, Boston is a much nicer destination in early Summer.  We had beautiful weather all week, and got to wander around the city in the evening by foot or short taxi rides.  But, the biggest problem with Boston was the traffic.  Getting from the Boston Plaza hotel to the convention centre each day was a challenge.  Trip times varied from 40 to 60 mins, and the route seemed to be different each time!

The keynote was, surprisingly, held on the Sunday evening.  This was a 2.5 hour presentation, which overall was not worth my time.  I had high hopes for Ray Ozzie's presentation (especially in light of the Bill Gates announcement that came out a few days later).  Maybe my expectation for Ray were too high due to my Lotus legacy.  I don't think many people in the (very) large audience really grasp what he has done.  Basically his presentation just summarised his view and role in past disruptive technologies (spreadsheets/Notes/Groove) and the potential for future disruption to come, which he hopes to lead with Microsoft.  The celebrity was an actress from the TV programme '24'.  She kept coming and going and injected some humour into the proceedings.  After a while we left early, along with many others.  This is where we bumped in Alex and Kevin.  Keeping track of other FMC attendees becomes an art at these places.  Mobile phones and text messaging comes into it's own.

Compared to Lotushpere, the breakfasts were a huge improvement!  Like CTC last year, you got bacon, eggs and sausage - very nice!

The size on the convention centre, meant you had to factor in walking time to get to the sessions (a bit like trying to get to the Boardwalk sessions at Lotusphere).  Until you got the layout clear, it was easy to make a miscalculation.

Overall the sessions were good.  The speakers did a good job of covering content, and they generally met my expectations, with the exception of one: they decided to swap rooms for the session I wanted.  No poster or anything obvious to let you know.  So after fighting my way into a busy session. I eventually realised that I was in the wrong session!  Still I learnt more than I expected to know about TCP/IP v6!!

The coexistance/migrate from Lotus Notes sessions were useful.  Nothing really new, but a good reminder of what is ahead and the complexity of it.  I bumped into Alan Lepofsky in one of the sessions, so we popped over and said hello.

The convention floor was busy, but spread out.  A lot of giveaways, including a $25,000 entertainment system!  Alas, I did not win!  Xbox 360 were also in abundance.  As this was a new move for me, it also gave me a good chance to develop some contacts and identify emerging 3rd party integrators.  Even bumped into an old FMCer from Princeton - Tim Campbell!

Off to one side, was the Microsoft Labs.  This was a great idea.  You could run any labs you wanted, apart from the Lotus Notes coexistance one!!!!  It wasn't working - typical!  The one I wanted to run most, was not available.  Apparently someone grabbed a corrupt image file for the VM.  Can't imagine it would of been that difficult to fix it.

If it wasn't for the large Microsoft TechEd logo, the conference T-shirt would of been the best ever.  It was a football inspired style, black with white piping on the sleeves and neck.  Speaking of football, this conference clashed with the World Cup, but in hindsight that turned out to be a good thing.  The times of the games coincided with breaks during the day, and there were a few large TVs showing the games.  Makeshift rows of seating could be found at each TV.  The Brazil, German and England games drew the biggest crowds!

Thursday night was the party night.  Held at Fenway Park.  This was good.  Rob gave me a guided tour of the park.  The weather was perfect and 'Train' were the live band playing.  Not into them, but they were pretty good live none the less.

All in all, a pretty decent conference.  The breadth of content dwarves Lotusphere, and I think you loose some value because of that.  Maybe a Microsoft collaborative applications focussed conference would offer more value.  Focusing in on Exchange, LCS, SharePoint, presence, mobility and building solutions on the platform.