TechEd Europe 2009 Wrapup

I’ve attended my last session.  Actually I attended my last half session because I walked out at the 30 minute point.  This session was like the vast majority of the content I saw this week.  It was marketing slides presented by sales people.  There were a few exceptions but not enough to make me want to return to TechEd next year. I didn’t come here to Berlin from Ireland to attend sales sessions – I can do that at home.  But at least I didn’t pay €1,500-€2,000 to come here like many others will have done.  I would have been sick to my stomach if that had been the situation for me.

Overall there were maybe 4 technical sessions that I got to.  The keynote was a dreadful omen for the rest of the week.  They opened 2 doors to let over 7,000 people into a room.  The keynote was dreadful marketing drivel and the entire event continued much on that theme, unfortunately.  The coffee docks were limited to the 2 exhibition halls.  The main exhibitor hall became a bottleneck because it was the only route to and from the conference halls.  There wasn’t enough desks, power or seating outside of the halls for people who had to work between sessions.  I found myself sitting on the floor with a near flat battery on more than one occasion.  I know MS has to cut costs but the ticket costs didn’t go down for those who paid to attend.  It was only by Thursday that some coffee docks appeared in building 7 and some additional desks were put into the previously vast empty space in the front of the CommNet room.

On the plus side the swag bag was decent.  It’s an olive green laptop bag which I’ll probably use, unlike the turkeys of Amsterdam 2004 (remember the giant orange U shaped bags stuffed into bins and lying on the outside streets?) or the plastic waste of money from Barcelona 2008 that was a logo fest?  And the wireless network performed admirably under the load of 7000 laptops and twitterers. 

Overall, I felt the event was a disappointment.  Unless there is a marked change in the speakers and content that MS is providing then I have no desire to spend a week being sold to.  I came here to learn and am leaving have learned very little that I couldn’t have gotten from a 2 hour webcast.  I hope this changes but unfortunately there seems to be a trend towards rah-rah Redmond-sugar marketing speakers who we could all do with a little less of.