TechEd Europe 2005 is on track

Planning for TechEd Europe 2005 is well on its way. I should know because this year I’m the overall Technical Content owner for the event.

 

In 2001 I attended my first TechEd. Starting from the year after I increased my level of participation. First as speaker then as content owner for the Developer tracks and now as overall content owner.

 

My job this year is to make sure we bring the content our customers want at TechEd Europe. The three audiences we see at TechEd are the architects, the developers and the ITPro’s. They each have their own areas of interest in which other topics or products are hot. ‘Hot’ for TechEd means that it is relevant today or in the near future (6 months).

 

In the developer space, I’m really excited that we are nearing Beta 2 of the .NET Framework 2.0 and of Visual Studio 2005 (codename Whidbey). With this beta 2 of the .NET Framework 2.0, Microsoft will release a Go Live license removing any legal barrier to take an application live on the beta bits. This obviously makes Whidbey very relevant and developers will therefore see a big focus on Whidbey technologies.

 

Also database aficionados will be happy to hear that SQL Server 2005 will be the highlight of the show. Beta 3 will be out by then and we want to take the opportunity to get the SQL developers, administrators and data analysts ready start using this major release of SQL Server.

 

For Architects we see other trends developing. SOA’s or Connected systems, software factories, domain specific languages… About 40 sessions – that’s almost 2 per timeslot – will be featuring information immediately usable by architects designing those agile solutions that have many characteristics like security, scalability, manageability, interoperability etc…

 

Half of the TechEd Audience are ITPros; people that administer, operate the complex environments at today’s corporations. For these people we’ll have special tracks featuring information on Exchange, management and operations, security, portals and core Windows infrastructure.

 

Each of the audiences will have a lot of choices to make in the main session agenda. On top of that there will be instructor-led and self paced hands on labs, panels, ask-the-experts areas, Microsoft partners presenting their solutions and many, many more activities to connect attendees to share ideas and inspiration.

 

I’ll be regularly blogging about our progress on the content so stay tuned if you want to know what’s going on behind the screens of the biggest technical event in Europe.