Henry Carter: Microsoft Tech-Ed 2007 (Monday)

My first impressions on arriving at TechEd were that it was very well organised registration was a doddle and no queues whatsoever. Once we had got ourselves registered and orientated it was time to watch the keynote. This was presented very well and was (at points) really interesting. This was the point where we were told that Visual Studio 2008 is going to be released later this month. OMG it’s early!!!!! They then went on to show some of its features like javascript debugging and intelli-sense, as well as new and improved support for CSS (which was desperately needed).

Having listened to the keynote I was psyched for the first session. Whats the Future of .NET? This was a discussion about the way Microsoft think application development is going and I think on this point I totally agree. There was much talk of SOA and BizTalk as well as SharePoint, federalisation of identity (among other things) using AD. They also looked at the future plans for workflow and modelling technologies, which seem to be a core focus of the .NET plan. In all a really good start to the sessions, and a really nice introduction to the direction Microsoft think we are all headed.

The second session however was not quite what I had hoped for. SilverLight is a technology framework which has always impressed and fascinated me and so I figured I would go along and let Microsoft show me how I should be using it. However this was not the case. Whilst the presenter was totally enthused by the technology, this session simply showed us what XAML is, what it looks like and how to code very basic javascript to handle SilverLight objects. This was not what I was expecting or hoping for. I think I was not alone in this disappointment as a full auditorium became half full before the halfway stage. The one redeeming feature of this session was that it did underline the fact that when SilverLight 1.1 makes it into the really real world it will make this framework much more usable and easy to manage.

A disappointing end to the first day but I guess these things happen. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.