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EDIT:
Thanks to Kevin Greene for the heads up.
Have you noticed the lack of sessions on things like Hyper-V and Windows Server? Hmm, that can only mean that there’s lots of session titles that cannot be announced yet *cough*
Speaking at TechEd has been one of my career ambitions for years – it is the pinnacle of speaking in the Microsoft world. I started of presenting at MSFT community events and had no such goal. But eventually I reached the point with my knowledge of Hyper-V that I felt like I could contribute and that I wanted to speak on the bigger stage; certainly presenting one of the sessions at the WS2012 launch in London (1000 attendees in the room) fired me up even more. I submitted sessions to TechEd, but never got anywhere. I gave up on my goal last year.
Then things fell into place at TechEd North America. I wasn’t going to do Speaker Idol. But when I was asked, I had an idea and I said to myself “frak it, do it! It’ll be fun to do”. And I ended up winning a slot in “TechEd” int he USA next year. I also talked to some folks and they gave me some advice about submitting sessions for TEE14. I submitted one session and …
Getting good news is always a nice way to finish the day. Early yesterday evening I received an email informing me that Microsoft had picked their sessions/speakers for TEE14. I followed the link to check the status of my submission and there it said:
Approval Status: Approved
Yes; I did my happy dance 😀 My guess is that we cannot talk about our sessions yet, but you can safely guess that I’ll be talking about Hyper-V.
Hopefully I’ll see some of you there when I present … at TechEd!
In a blog post on Channel 9, Microsoft has announced that TechEd North America is no longer … and has been replaced by Microsoft’s Unified Technology Event for Enterprises. Yes Microsoft’s Unified Technology Event for Enterprises. I had to copy & paste that cos it doesn’t exactly stick in the mind. So MUTEE replaces TechEd.
Huh.
Now we have proof that marketing people ARE actually paid by the letter.
The reason for the rename is:
You talked, we listened… The world of IT and enterprise development and your needs are rapidly changing. In a cloud first, mobile first world you need …
And they go on to list the stuff that was present at TechEd.
And who exactly (outside of Microsoft) asked for this? Let them stand up and be counted (and knocked in the head by a flying brick).
So they’ve “re-imagined” (sigh!) TechEd as [copy & paste] Microsoft’s Unified Technology Event for Enterprises [/copy & paste] for marketing Kool-Aid.
Anywho, MUTEE TechEd North America 2015 will be on in Chicago (direct flight for me with immigration in Dublin!!!!) on May the 4th (start the Star Wars puns about a bad character called MUTEE). Note that it’s a 5 day event, not a 4 day one? I like that.
The Office blog also published a post. It appears that this will be one IT super conference, instead of the lots of conferences. That is a very positive thing, especially for people who did MEC, TechEd, etc.
By the way, I’m using the tag #StillCallingItTechEd on Twitter. I think everyone outside of Redmond will stick with the TechEd name. It stinks of marketing speak with naming for the sake of renaming, without any imagination.
EDIT 1:
OK, that was quite a … sarcastic post. If we (I mean “If I”) think about this for a moment, it means that there is one big event for IT pros to attend. And hopefully, this will be BIG, not just TechEd sized (there are bigger IT events from Oracle, VMware, etc). That is a very positive thing; we’d have one thing on the calendar – one to plan for, one to travel to, one to be away from work/family for. And it would be one event to budget for! But I’m still not calling it MUTEE.
EDIT 2:
Here is a post by the Server & Cloud blog. Nothing new there.
Other than the fact that this might be the venue of the most important product announcements in Microsoft’s recent history … hmm … let me think …
Hear what community members say about TechEd at the TechEd Roundtable
I have also recorded a video (on Instagram) that discusess how to convince your boss that you need to go to TechEd Europe.
But honestly, traditional learning mechanisms can no longer keep up with sprint development, new features out every few weeks, and RTMs every 12-18 months. TechEd is like a triple espresso shot of learning … you take 4-5 days, depending on travel, out of your regular work schedule and get immersed in new tech, from keynote, to foundation, to deep dive … and maybe throw in some hands on labs and certification while you’re at it. I learn at TechEd (as an MVP I also am lucky to have MVP sources); a lot of what I write about is sourced from TechEd sessions or materials. TechEd sessions give me access to wide amounts of information … and I can chat with the Microsoft experts in the expo hall afterwards.
There is nothing else like this learning experience in the Microsoft world for the general public. And I’m pretty sure that TechEd Europe 2014 will be a very special education opportunity. We’re on the threshold of a very interesting time.
You might have heard of “The Hyper-V Amigos” podcast – this is something that has a history that runs back quite a while with a number of us European Hyper-V MVPs. Carsten (Rachfahl) and Didier (Van Hoye) asked myself and Hans Vredevoort to join them in their latest show to talk about TechEd North America 2014.
Assuming that the bronchitis and tonsillitis that I was diagnosed with at 1:15 am this morning clears up, I will be attending the TechEd Europe roundtable meeting in Barcelona on Monday/Tuesday. The Microsoft folks in attendance are some of the planners of this massive event. My role: give feedback and discuss any ideas at the table.
Here’s your opportunity:
Do you have any feedback or ideas that you’d like me to bring to the table for TechEd Europe 2014? If so, post a comment below.
EDIT: Please keep the comments relevant to the TechEd event itself.
A monumental change is happing in IT right now. You can fight it all you want, but cloud is a disrupting force that will effect our entire environment. IT pros are scared of “the cloud” … but is their fear justified?
This is why a bunch of us are presenting on the IT pro aspects of the Microsoft Cloud OS on June 19th and 20th. It’s a 2 day event in Dublin Citywest, where you can register for the Hybrid Cloud stuff (infrastructure as a service or IaaS) on June 19th, the Office365/etc stuff (software as a service or SaaS) on June 20th, or even register for both days.
The content on June 19th will span on-premises IT, building private clouds, automation, and mixing your on-premise infrastructure with Microsoft Azure. On June 20th we move on to SaaS where there will be lots of Office 365, Windows Intune, and Power BI. All presenters have been instructed to present demo-heavy “here’s how to …” technical sessions.
Now is the time to learn and evolve. Don’t be a dinosaur; get on board with the cloud now and be the person who is employable in 5 years time. You can choose to cover your ears and close your eyes, but you’ll be dug up from an IT tar pit in a few million years time.
IT pros that ignored the cloud as it made them extinct
This event WILL NOT BE REPEATED. This is a once-off collection of subject expert speakers. No roadshow, no Microsoft Ireland event, and no partner event will repeat what we’re doing at TechCamp.
And consultants … this message goes double for you.
Folks of the Bay Area and surrounding counties – if you want to learn about Microsoft commercial technology such as Azure, Lync, Hybrid Cloud, ADFS, OS deployment, and more, then you need to check out TechDays. If I lived in 49er country then I would register.
The speaker list is a whos-who from the west coast Microsoft community. The location is easy to find – it’s the MSFT office near the terminus of the Powell cable car. There’s loads of public transport routes in/out – I know this and I’ve only visited the Bay three times from Ireland.
So check out the agenda, register, attend, and learn something to advance your career.
I took a break from these posts last week while I was at TechEd, and then had work catch up to do this week. Let’s get back a rockin’. There is a distinct tendency towards cloud and automation in the news of the last week. That should be no surprise.
So I told you that I had qualified as a wildcard to the final of Speaker Idol in TechEd North America 2014. The judges also said I need to give them a tech talk rather than my tall tale based on photography. This would be a challenge. Other finalists would tweak existing decks that they’d worked on for ages. I had to start from scratch and get it right in less than a day. The most difficult thing is … it’s a 5 minute session and they time you. It’s one of the judging criteria. An hour long session is much easier to prepare.
So I got to the hotel on Wednesday night and started working. I knew what my topic would be: WS2012 R2 Live Migration. I had a demo script and a lab in Dublin … but there is no reliable speaker net at the podium so I would have to record my demo. VPN was too unreliable.
I built up my deck. No problem there. I knew the rules: the judges expect you to stick to a format. I went to build my demo but I had some problems with PowerShell modules in my VMM-deployed labs. It took some time, but I figured them out and got the demo ready. Then Camtasia did it’s thing … I remembered to record the video at eactly the screen resolution used by the big screen at the podium. One run through of the session and it was … nearly 9 minutes long. I needed to edit the deck, the demo, and me … brutally.
At 00:30 I was exhausted. I set the alarm for 06:00 and slept like a baby. It was the first morning that the alarm woke me. No jetlag on Thursday. I had a few hours to get myself ready for the final at 12:30. I rehearsed again and again, finally figuring that if I said certain things at the right time in the demo, and left out others, I could hit 4 minutes 45 seconds. Perfect!
So off I went to TechEd. I attended a session on Azure connectivity and thin skipped a fairly dull second slot, opting to go through my deck. I remembered something Mark Minasi told me last year – when he was not a judge. Speaker Idol judges and the audiences are a mixture of IT pros and devs. Give both audiences a hook. So I did: more service uptime and “your aps stay running while IT does stuff”.
The time came. I went to the area and waited. A crowd started to gather … and then people I knew started to arrive. The Hyper-V PM team from Redmond, the Irish MVP gang (John McCabe [ex-mvp, now MSFT]), Kevin Greene, Damian Flynn), readers of my blog and twitter followers, the gang from Petri, the Ferrills (father and son tech journalists, and so many more.
I was nervous. I do not get nervous when I speak. I really don’t. I’m comfortable speaking. I enjoy it – it’s a buzz when you’ve got something to share and you can see that the audience want to hear it. But damn I was nervous. I got on stage, and completely forgot that I had a clicker on the desk. I stood with Richard Campbell (the organizer, and famed for things like RunAs Radio) as I was introduced to the crowd.
I realized how much of the audience were people rooting for me. I was amazed. These people took the time to come and support me. The view from the podium was so cool.
My plan might work. I had 5 minutes to impress … starting now!
First thing: “How is everyone? Is everyone enjoying Speaker Idol?”. And they whooped. Thankfully! That got things going well. I did my intro slides and completely let the fact that I had a clicker slip out of mind. I like to get out from behind a podium so I was walking back and forth, pressing the keyboard to progress. Yuk! I did my demo and screwed up my timing and included stuff that I shouldn’t have. I included the “It does stuff” line and people laughed. Damn, this was going OK.
I wrapped up and waited for comments. I went over 5 minutes, nearly hitting 6 minutes. Argh! I was toast. Maybe I should have trimmed the intro slide. Some comments about font and bullet points. But overall, great comments about delivery and inclusion of the audience. The dev outreach worked.
I thought the guy that did the Azure talk would win. I liked his pace (I was a bit rushed) and he seemed very polished to me. I was sure I was not winning. We were all called up for the results. The judges said this was a tough one, tougher than it used to be in past years because people know what to bring now.
Mark Minasi (who recused himself of voting because we are friends) announced the results. It was a non-American (there was a presenter from Finland who also did a good job). And the winner of a speaking slot in TechEd North America 2015 is …
…
…
Aidan Finn.
Instantly pressure slid off. And the lack of stress left me … I was shattered. I think the stress was holding me up. Afterwards I talked for about an hour with people from all over. When it all died down I was ready to drop.
A few beers were had to celebrate 🙂