TechEd Amsterdam - Day 1
TechEd really got started yesterday at the pre-conference conference, with seminars on Server/AD Security, writing secure code, and patterns & practices (amongst others).
Today started with the keynote by Jonathan Murray, and we saw some really interesting work in visualization by the University of Stuttgart, the Global Telescope that some of you might have seen at PDC, and a timely reminder about building accessible applications. That's accessible in the original sense that IAccessible was intended to support - accessible to the less able, including blind and visually impaired.
Giving everyone a drum was a good idea - and once people got the hang of drumming instead of clapping, it became clear why this was introduced. Drumming is a really effective way of communicating - its surprising how much you can read into the volume/speed/intensity. Plus orange bags (and orange badges). Some people (the Brits, mostly, I suspect) looked a little sheepish walking back to the hotel afterwards, trying to look inconspicuous with their bright orange bags. Others are wearing them with pride. I think they're wonderful. Be proud to be orange, I say! Or is that oranje?
Sessions? Well, one of the highlights seemed to be when Don Box apparently laid to rest (or stoked up, depending on your view) the recent rumours about his haircut (and related issues), but I missed that one. There were, however, some good sessions on The Architecture and Building Blocks of Security (Fred Baumhardt), Services for Unix (Jason Zions), and SQL 2005.
The exhibition hall opened. Lots of partners doing interesting stuff. Plus girls with beer barrels. Plus the Visual Studio Tools for Office Blimp.
