Whew. I’m finally home from TechEd 2008. It was an incredible week. First off, it was quite lucky for me in terms of swag. I came home with: XBox 360 Elite; Office 2007 Ultimate; Book on Sharepoint Web Part Programming; 2 games for the XBox; 8 Gig Zune; and more extra large t-shirts than I could carry.
I also got to meet a lot of great people, and find some speakers to add to my favorites list. Having heard them on Dot Net Rocks I knew Kimberly Trip and Paul Randall were good speakers, and just as friendly off stage as on. Matthew Roche, Buck Woody, Dan Jones, Donald Farmer, Peter Ward, Allen White, Maciej Pilecki, well I could go on with the list of great speakers but these were among the ones that stand out.
The InBetween weekend event was outstanding. The user groups really did a great job in a short amount of time putting together an awesome weekend. In addition to presenting my own session I also enjoyed attending ones by Barry Ralston, Andy Warren, Brian Knight, well there I go again. It is well worth staying over, or arriving early and getting in on the weekend event if you are going to TechEd.
By far though, the most important thing I came home with was knowledge. I learned an incredible amount. That knowledge will make me more valuable to my employer, who invested their money to send me. It will also make me more valuable to my coworkers, as I share the knowledge and have more answers to their questions. I’m also more valuable to the community, as I go back to user groups and share what I’ve learned there in presentations.
All in all I’d say TechEd was a great investment of time, money, and brain power.
Arcane Code 