Last week, Ritchie and I had a meeting with Gerd De Bruycker on TechEd Europe. During the meeting I remembered my plans to blog about the Speaker Idol initiative at TechEd: Developers, what I haven't done till now.

From time to time we get questions from people that want to present at one of Microsoft events. The expectations of our speakers are very high, since they have to be able to keep the audience's attention for more than one hour and deliver the right message in the same time. People with presentation experience know that it takes a lot of preparation to do a good presentation.

On the other hand, I'm sure that there are more good presenters than we currently know. If you are one of them, you should definitely consider to participate in the Speaker Idol at TechEd: Developers.

Short overview of Speaker Idol (refer to the website for all details and official statements):

• Prerequisite: you should attend TechEd: Developers (7-10 November 2006) in Spain.
• Record a 3 minutes presentation. While filming, focus on the person conducting the presentation. Convert the film to Windows Media Video (WMV) and keep the file under 5 MB.
• Submit your presentation. Don't wait to long to submit, as the organization will only accept the first 40 submissions. (Only one submission per person!) The deadline for submitting is Friday 13 October 2006.
• 12 finalists will be chosen by a jury. The finalists will be informed before the conference starts.
• During the conference, finalists give their presentation again on-site for a live audience. This will be done in 3 waves, where the best 3 finalists will be chosen.
• Final round for best 3 finalists during a break-out session. After this we'll know the winner.
• Winner and 2 runners-up are announced. The winner will get the opportunity to give a presentation on TechEd: Developers in 2007, the two runners-up will get a free entrance ticket for TechEd: Developers in 2007. There are also several other smaller activities planned for the winner and the 2 runners-up.

This is my personal interpretation and definitely a shortened and incomplete version of the rules. But it gives you a good idea of what the contest is. Don't be scared of the numerous rules and regulations on the official website. Just participate...

PS. If you're a Belgian or Luxembourger (or working in Belgium or Luxembourg) and want to participate, don't hesitate to let me know at tom.mertens@microsoft.com. I'd be more than happy to assist you through the process.

PPS. The same Speaker Idol initiative is organized during TechEd: IT Forum. Arlindo Alves also blogged about this.

Tags: Microsoft, Tech Ed, Tech Ed: Developers

Today we've announced that we moved TechEd Europe 2006 from July to November. Also the location was changed from Amsterdam to Barcelona. Why did we reschedule? For those that might think that it was because I didn't want to celebrate my 30th birthday on a geek conference, well, they are wrong.  :)  Actually, July was not longer the most optimal time frame for the event:

• Many developers indicated that they want to enjoy their well-deserved summer holidays and have a difficult time coming to a geek conference in July
• People from the product teams in the US wanted to spend their official national holiday - the 4th of July - at home
• The worldwide Microsoft Partner Conference is also held in the same timeframe

On top of the date change, the event is now fully split up between developers in the first week (7 - 10 November 2006) and IT professionals in the second week (14 - 17 November).

The TechEd Europe team created a nice Frequently Asked Questions section on the website that contains all the official statements about the change.

In short: yes, there will be a TechEd Europe in 2006 but it will be held in November in Barcelona, Spain.

Just saw the keynote at TechEd 2005 Europe with Andy Lees, Corporate VP Server & Tools at Microsoft. I'm sure several people will address the details, but there is one big overall theme that I remembered from this keynote: "the Microsoft platform allows IT departments to deliver the promise of enabling businesses without disabling/limiting the information workers".

Somewhat less marketing and more concord, this means having developers and IT pro's really working together. It also means really fulfilling the end user's needs without limiting them because of technical and IT related constraints. But in the end, it means enabling a business to run more succesfully.

Just one example (since there are a lot more examples): don't ask end users to use 6 applications (e-mail, CRM, sales, support, order entry, shipment follow-up, reporting, ...) to work with only 1 customer. It's time consuming, inproductive and frustrating.

Some companies don't use have a "Human Resources Department"; they have an "Employee Department" instead. Which "IT Department" dares to call itself the "Enable Department"? Anyone?

After Virtual Server 2005 and SQL Server 2005, we just announced that attendees for TechEd 2005 Europe will also receive a free* copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition (see Terms and Conditions on the TechEd Europe website). What a deal...

BTW: you can still register if you want...

I finally downloaded a copy of all TechEd presentations, demo files and hands-on labs. Because the filenames are very consistent (only the session number) I list the files in Explorer with the "Title", "Subject", "Author" and "Copyright" document properties. It's rather annoying that the authors (or perhaps the editors) didn't enter their document properties correctly. Many files just display "Speaker Name" and "Speaker Title" or "Slide 1", not very informative about the content. But sometimes you even see that speakers used a presentation from another conference (let's say Microsoft Mobility Conference) or that a presentation that was written by someone else (at least, it appears to be).

In brief: always make sure to double check the document properties before making a document public. Not only is this useful (indexing of documents for searching with Index Server or Google, exploring a folder, ...), it also show a slight touch of professionalism. Or am I being too picky?

Yesterday the Belux (Belgian & Luxemburger) attendees had their first party at the beach... It was a big success, and we even held an after-party in a small Spanish "discotheca". No pictures though. (forgot to take my camera)

Apparently it's going to be a very busy week... Microsoft Belux is organising 2 parties (Tuesday and Wednesday). On Thursday we have the great 10th Anniversary TechEd party.... Wish I could stay a bit longer in Barcelona to relax a bit and get some sleep. I know, every minute you sleep you are missing some interesting stuff in this world, but hey, I can enjoy sleeping from time to time :).

A few days ago, I also scheduled the sessions that I will attend... Whoohoo, sessions from 8.30 till 18.30 and afterwards parties...