Today marks the official start to Microsoft’s TechEd Australia Conference on the sunny Queensland Gold Coast. With over 4 days of talks, product launch education, hands-on labs along with device and software manufacturers spruiking their wares, it is sure to be a great week – if you are around shoot me a tweet so that we can try and cross paths during the week.
I did say today is the official launch as today is the day the majority of delegates arrive - nearly 200 sleepy souls started their conference early yesterday by making it through the 24 hour straight Windows 8 AppFest for the chance to win a $1000 Windows 8 device. Finishing up at 11am this morning most are probably back at their hotels catching up on some much deserved sleep.
Today is a big year for Microsoft as it releases a whole bunch of updates to products that many developers and IT admins alike spend most of their days with. Their will be the new server line releases with Windows Server 2012, a big push towards Microsoft’s Cloud services platform Azure, much talk of their new IDE Visual Studio 2012, as well as a ramp up towards the release of Windows Phone 8 plus much, much more. There are so many different things going on that the program for the week feels more like a music festival guide than a IT industry conference timesheet, with thoughts running through my head like “Which stage are we going to next?” and “Why did they have to book these two things at the same time…!”.
Swag time
When the tickets to Microsoft’s Build 2012 event sold out in 2 hours, many said it was the chance that they’d be handing out Microsoft Surfaces as part of the ticket. TechEd has a history of handing out the obligatory Tech Ed Bag and a few associated deals packed in, they have sometimes also included devices along the way (such as the HP Mininote in 2009). This year the inclusion of a pretty epic Targus bag is no exception. This bag rivals “The bag of holding” with the amount of pockets included (I counted 12 zip pockets. Someone even thought they could get an extra one on the product sheet by including a zip pocket on the bottom of the bag?).
The inclusion of a water bottle to hydrate after any 24 hackathons along with a padded laptop section for yours truly to cart around my ThinkPad are definitely appreciated.
The TechEd 2012 “Swag bag”
On with the show
All in all I'm pretty excited about what is to come. I’m also looking forward to touching base with a number of others in the tech community and sharing ideas – if you follow me on twitter, or subscribe to my blog, shoot me a tweet or email and come say hello.