Microsoft's Session Leveling Guideline

Most of you know this since you've been to many Microsoft events but many times, different people have different interpretations of the Session Levels that run from 100 - 400. Here's the official guideline that we use internally for all our events. You can adapt it for external or other technical events.

Content Session Leveling Guidelines

The following guidelines were developed with input from the Microsoft Technical field, as well as, representatives from the Business Groups. Presenters will be provided with these guidelines and asked to keep them in mind when developing a technical breakout session.

Level 100 (Introductory) : Product/technology features, functions, benefits overview

- What are the new features, how will they benefit the customers and convince them that they need to buy this product

- What are the functions of the product and an example of how they are used in a real world environment

- What are the benefits of the product and any case studies that show how they assisted a customer

- Product requirements and other product integration points

- Where to find additional information

- Basic functions of IT organization

- Cost structure of IT organization

- Overview of Microsoft’s approach to helping customers to create and manage IT services based on MS products

- Introduction to solution accelerators and service offerings

Level 200 (Intermediate) : Specific Product/technology technical drill-down

- Drilling into architecture, integration, and configuration (what makes the feature tick?)

- Supportability reviews

- Code samples

- Best practices

- High-level troubleshooting techniques

- Known limitations/issues

- Where to find additional information

- Drill down into customer development, integration, deployment, management and operations challenges

- Detailed MSF and MOF drill down

- Introduction of consulting service offerings (including MSF and MOF components)

Level 300 (Experienced) : Product Migration, deployment, architecture, development

- Dig into how a Product / Technology is designed to be deployed, migrated to, etc. while focusing on how it is actually deployed, migrated to, etc.

- Real world examples examined as appropriate.

- Complex coding, known issues and work arounds (sample code/examples)

- Lessons learned, both positive and negative

- Sample migration plans including sample Project Plans

- Deployment case studies

- Architecture design best practices and case studies

- Where to find additional information

- Drill down into specific solution accelerators and consulting service offerings addressing engagement model, deployment guide, architecture guide, solution guide, operations guide and test guide

Level 400 (Advanced/Expert) : Custom Code, scripts, application solution development, architect infrastructure designs & solutions

- Architecture considerations/challenges

- Design considerations/challenges

- Advanced coding considerations/challenges

- Troubleshooting techniques at the debug level

- Where to find additional information

- Case study based presentations of key issues in using the solution accelerators and consulting service offerings addressing key blockers, TCO/ROI, short cuts and shared best practices.

- Detailed examples of implemented architectures, operations guides and test plans.