The conference was fun and I had the pleasure to meet some great new folks as well as see and talk with some well known people in the Microsoft developer community, including Scott Hanselman, Carl Franklin, Juval Lowy, Marc Mercuri, and Ted Neward.
Bill Gates' last official keynote as a Microsoft "employee" (does he count as an employee?) was interesting as he slowly revealed the tip of the iceberg for Microsoft's latest vision for the Software+Services offerings and the newest additions to their development efforts.
This was my 3rd TechEd event, and I have noticed a pattern with attendees: newbies tend to want to attend every possible session, especially those with renowned speakers, while seasoned developers and architects stick to the TLC (Technical Learning Centers), hands on labs, and 1-1 meetings with the product groups.
I realized that when I noticed I'd only attended 5 sessions altogether, and had spent quite a bit of time talking with other like-minded individuals, networking, swapping biz cards, and interacting with Microsoft program managers and developers.
Below are some of the latest announcements from TechEd 2008 Developers (and I expect the IT Pro week to provide another handful of these):
- SQL Server 2008 RC0 - this means they're really close to shipping!
- Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2
- Microsoft "Velocity" CTP1 - distributed in-memory caching
