Today starts this year's Microsoft TechEd conference up on the sunny Queensland Gold Coast and I'm lucky enough to be up here for the week watching many top Australian and international developers and IT professionals working on the Microsoft stack, hacking on new frameworks and tooling, and perusing product wares. This is my second year at TechEd and I'm looking forward to more of the same awesome everything that we saw last year.
Awesome Sydney Developer Folk
One of the great things about TechEd is that you get to see some of the best Australian speakers educate you on what they've been up to. It's always interesting learning a bit more about how others are doing things, and any shared problems that they may have solved already – it's also great to just catch up. I made a lot of friends last year at TechEd that I haven't seen again until today, so it's almost like a reunion of sorts.
This year there is a number of fellow Sydney developers presenting so I'll definitely be showing my support for the home team – keep on rocking Sydney .Net Developers!
Some of the people who I'll be taking on the roll of sideline cheerleader for are:
If you haven't ever heard from fellow Sydneysider Troy Hunt before, you've probably been living under an insecure rock (with no Pluralsight membership).
While Troy has been as long time ASP.Net blogger, his presence in the .Net space from a security point of view over the last two years has risen remarkably high with lots of great content, and points of view on securing web applications on the ASP.net stack.
Troy's presenting a session on security Web API applications titled "Are You Securing Your Rich Client Apps on the Server?" and is definitely be worth a look.
Lewis is a pretty tireless Microsoft evangelist in the Sydney scene specialising more in the devices and peripherals front – doing a number of talks over the years at TechEd with Kinect, Windows 8 and now Windows Phone. Lewis is presenting an impression three sessions this year (!!! – does he even sleep?)
"Building Your Giant Robot Empire with Win 8 & Win Phone 8"
"Working with Devices; Integrating into Peripherals for Win 8"
"Device Integration with Win Phone"
Brendan is a developer working at Readify in Sydney Gold Coast and has presented a number of great sessions over the past year at Aussie based conferences, focussing on the front end development and mobile part of the development universe.
Brendan is presenting on Signal-R the websockets framework for .Net
"Real-Time Web Applications with SignalR"
Monsieur Banks has become a bit of a staple in the Sydney .Net developer's diet, running Sydney's very own Alt.Net user group, long time MVP, author of Visual Studio 2012 Cookbook, presenting around Sydney as well as generally being a general menace on the Twitterz.
Richard is presenting a session on using the upgraded features in TFS 2013 for agile awesome "Scrum and Kanban with the TFS Service"
If you've ever attended webjam or SydJS, you've probably crossed paths with Lachlan. A dedicated Sydney based web developer with a passion for front-endy stuffs. Lachlan is coming close to 1.5 years or so into his role at Microsoft – a move that while surprising some, has been hailed by many (myself included) as bringing much straight-shooter web views to the .Net stack.
Lachlan is presenting "Windows 8/RT & JavaScript: Using Modern Web Technologies in your Apps"
What's TechEd without a bit of Swag?
Those who read my post last year saw that I gave you a run down on the the cool gadgets and swag given to attendees by Microsoft and other even sponsors.
This year's no different – I present you with the 2013 Microsoft Australia TechEd Swag backpack and assorted contents.
The 2013 TechEd Australia "Swag Bag"
Come get OnCheckin Freebies and say hi!
If you're attending this year, and we've only even spoken as Twitter friends come say hi! I'll be wandering around attempting to look intellectual and important, and while I'm at TechEd I'm also giving away vouchers that will give you 30% off any subscriptions to OnCheckin so there's even more of a reason to come say hi - if you don't find me please send me an email, or give me a shout on Twitter.