TechEd 2007 - Day 1

11:00 CET  ...as promised, this is my first entry to the blog from TechEd 2007.  We've arrived, registered and have begun to get a feel for what this week is going to entail.  We've been here for about three hours, and putting to one side the free food and drinks (tea and coffee, of course, but various croissants, bottles of Coke, sprite etc.) this place is huge, and very impressive.  The lunch areas have to seat about 5000 people, after all...

Having already gone through three virtual labs for Microsoft Performance Point Server (something that will appeal to those with an interest in BI and with exposure to dashboards, scorecards and business modelling) I've found my way to the "Communications Network" area - an approach and use area of about 200 PCs with Vista and Office 2007.  I logged in and of course, the logon that I was provided before the event for the TechEd website is the same for this PC, and my event calendar, email and all my settings are here.  I know Microsoft have been "eventing" for some time, but this is well organised to say the least.

17:30 CET  A busy few hours with more virtual labs, the keynote speeches and a session on SOA - Service Oriented Architecture.  The keynote speeches were kicked off with a group of drummers on the main stage and each of us with a differently pitched 'tube' on our seats as we went in.  A few exercises in timing later, the group was warmed up for the speeches and these were aimed squarely at the new wave of products - Windows 2008, SQL 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 - all of which have new features and services that will add value to most enterprises.  I'll try and add some photos later on of what we've seen so far.

My next session is aimed at IT lifecycle management helping to enable continuous improvement.  The session links closely with the SOA talk and looks a little more at what we can work on now - rather than in the future.