Review of TechEd 2012 - so far
- by Stefan Barrett
Disclaimer: probably going to next years TechEd.
(but not 100% sure)
As with most TechEd's, this is not one of the best - but it's not bad.
Some impressions so far:
The food is not bad, through perhaps not as much choice as in previous years.
The snacks, while a bit limited, are at least available.
The alumni lounge is ok, through perhaps not as good as last years.
Wifi is a bit worse than previous years - not really working in the big room, and a bit sporadic in the rest of the building. The device seems to make a big difference - the iPad seems to connect the easiest, while the iPhone & Lumia 800 are really struggling.
The real problem is the content - not as developer focused as in previous years.
This shows up in a number of different ways, for example while there is a visual studio booth, there is not much sign of anybody from the language teams.
This is one of few TechEd's where I don't feel very surprised about anything - seen most of the developer stuff in previews. One example where I was surprised was the pre-conf on c++ - its been years since I did any c++, but based on that session perhaps I should start again.
While there are sessions, I'm not finding my schedule very challenged. For each time-slot there only seems to 1, or rarely 2, interesting sessions.
The focus seems to be on windows 8, Azure and the phone, which while interesting (might give win8 a go), are not enough.
