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Tech Ed 2004

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Tech Ed this year is being touted as much more architecturally focussed than ever before with a special architect track so I though I would go and have a look at what sessions I would go to at Teched. First of all there are a terrifying number of breakouts / sessions / cabana’s etc (844 in total) so deciding what to go to is a challenge. I tend to like a mixture of architecture and high level developer tracks, mainly going on the speakers as the selection criteria. So here is my 5 top must attend talks:

DEV200 General Session: Developer Tools and Technologies by Rick LaPlante. Rick is the General Manager of the Enterprise Tools division of Visual Studio which is the part of Microsoft providing architectural tools. Rick is a great speaker and it’s always worth listening to what his group is doing. Rick did the demo of Whitehorse at the PDC and it will be interesting to see what he will cover at Tech Ed.

DEV300 Visual Studio 2005 by Lori Lamkin. Lori is a PUM (Product Unit Manager) working for Rick in the Visual Studio Enterprise tools division who I have not heard speak before. It is rare for a PUM to speak at Tech Ed so it will be interesting to hear this presentation

ARC400 Tools for Architecture: Developing Service Oriented Systems by Keith Short. Keith is the lead Architect in the Visual Studio Enterprise Tools division working for Rick. I have heard Keith present before on this topic but it always evolves and I always learn something new. This is the underpinning of what Microsoft is doing in the modeling space.

ARC313 MSF by Sam Guckenheimer. The whole area of frameworks is getting ever more important and it will be interesting to see what Sam has to say about what MSF are doing.

MGT200 Management General Session: Delivering a Connected Infrastructure: System Center and Dynamic Systems Initiative by Kirill Tararinov. I think that the operations area and SDM will be a focus in the next few years and this will give a good overview of what Microsoft’s direction is in this space.

Next is the 5 very nice to attend talks:

ARC312 Tools for Architecture: Designing for Deployment by Bill Gibson and Alex Torone; a great tag team. This is Whitehorse, the best demo at the PDC and just getting better. This shows how modeling should be done with a real implementation.

ARC304 Bridging the Gap Between IT and Application Developers by Jim Dial; a very smart guy working on MSA. This pulls together modeling and DSI so is on my list.

ARC300 Metropolis: Envisioning the Service-Oriented Enterprise by Pat Helland, an amazing speaker. I have seen Pat’s talk before but it is worthwhile going to again; a must if you haven’t heard it.

CTS400 Connected Systems: Using Web Services Enhancements v2.0 for Messaging Over Multiple Machines and Networks by Keith Ballinger. This is the intro to a massive demo that Clemens is building of services working in a heterogeneous environment and should be very interesting. From this I suspect that there would be a number of other connected systems talks that I would want to go to, particularly CTS 404.

So that is my top ten list of talks to go to, there will also be a lot of discussion and networking events that I would want to drop in on. What are your top ten sessions for Tech ed?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2004
    I'm intrrigued as to why there doesn't appear to be a ny sessions about the Microsoft Business Framework. Any idea?

    I'm interested in how this fits in with SOA, ObjectSpaces, and ShadowFax. It seems odd there's no mention of it.
  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2004
    Well in general when we don’t have large scale public sessions on something if they are further out than the scope of the event (eg 1-2 years).

    With regard to the specifics of MBF I have no idea why there is no mention of it in Tech Ed 2004 :)
  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2004
    It's my understanding that the first release of MBF is with Whidbey and the second is with Orcas. There was at least one session at the PDC.

    Thanks for answering though. Maybe I should ask Tim?
  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2004
    Orcas is Longhorn timeframe and so out of scope of Tech Ed.

    By all means ask Tim, I'll be interested to see what he says!
  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2004
    http://weblogs.asp.net/tims/archive/2004/04/16/114640.aspx#120946

    Thanks again!
  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    May 17, 2004
    Yes, Tim Brookings' post was what I was alluding too. I had heard that it was going to move into Longhorn but couldnt actually say that as I am not part of the group that owns MBF, hence the :)