Ah Yu Blog: TECH-ED 2008

This was my second year joint TECH-ED – a year event organized by Microsoft. Compare with previous year, I was a guy newly to the IT world. A lot of session I attend was too difficult to understand. However a good thing of the TECH-ED event is to keep trap of all IT Man the newest technology developed by Microsoft. To me, this is the way how Microsoft conquers the IT world.

The first day and second day of event, most of the topic was quite interesting. Basically, most of the topics are within my knowledge area. I am not IT guys or graduate from the Computer science background. I am a civil engineer however involving in IT line. To me, I have basic knowledge of programming but those SQL, LINQ and so on is just no my field. These two days, I had attended most of the visual studio track. It provided a lot of information on how to do a good programming. The speaker use a lot of example to explain how this feature can be use. The problem here is, most of the attractive track had been arrange to a small room. 200++ people have to squeeze into a small. Before the track start, in front of the door was like pudu raya where everybody is waiting to get into a small room. When the door open, and everybody try to get in faster to get a sit, they have to push each other. I am one of them, although we are educated and taught to be polite. Finally, there is a session I fail to get any sit and I decided to go to another section which is SQL report. Well, I just cannot understand all. Fall in sleep one or two times.

The next third day and forth day was more to internet base product track. They introduce a lot of product like silver light and pop fly. Silver light was one of the new products by Microsoft. It actually likes adobe flash. Well it is simple to use (as per claim) and easy to debug. Furthermore, it is free to use. Wow, but to me, it is just too difficult to learn like flash may be I haven’t really get into it. The next feature I use was pop fly. Even seen slide shows in the page that make all picture keep moving in a circle. One the product done by this was using pop fly. Pop fly was just very suitable the layman like me to produce some nice feature in my web. You can try to put it in into you blog, just pretty nice. I like this section. You can try it, and I am sure you will easy to produce a very nice gadget using this feature. The cool things were It can debug like a studio with interlisence in the webpage. Another section I attend was how to hack. This was the most interest track I attend. It showed a lot of mistake done by the programmer until it cause their own web being hack by the other.

Food, compare with last year, this year I evaluate it grade C. still the same problem, a lot of people have not enough food. The hall was too big, and some of the people who enter the hall late have to walk from a counter to another counter to get the food. This is a international event and yet the major problem food was never satisfy the participant. I guess a lot people complaint about it. Hopefully next year, the organizer will improve this.

taken in the wash room

There was a good improvement compare with last year is coffee was provided. Last year, I need to go around the conference area to find a cup of coffee. This year the coffee section was just perfect. Almost anytime come out from the hall, we can get to the coffee stall to take a cup of coffee. The coffee taste no bad. The ladies who prepare the coffee were just sweet (not all).

The other section that was different than last year was no games section. My colleagues miss a lot of HALO game. These were the only section we join most last year but this we had to go to exhibition hall to hanging around. No much present gain this year, but the present was exchange using our name card. We wish next year the Microsoft can provide HALO to us for us to play around while waiting next section.