I’m at TechEd EMEA again this year after missing last year’s EMEA event due to illness. I’m busy working the Visual Studio area in the Technical Learning Centre as usual, but for the first time as Microsoft staff rather than an MVP. The show so far has been great. We’ve been getting a lot of traffic by the TLC and lots of very challenging questions.
Having done a few of these events over the years I find it interesting how the questions change from year to year as the product and the market matures. Things have come on a long way from the days when people just wanted high level summaries of the product. Now getting a huge spread of questions, from the highly specialised point to broad architectural discussions. The conversations around the Visual Studio 2010 ALM area have been simply superb – and time has flown by.
I had a fantastic conversation today that I haven’t had for a while with a customer who had a small development team in house and was just wanting to learn more about version control in general. They were very smart and we quickly went from the fundamentals all the way up to branching and merging techniques in under 20 minutes – but it was probably the most rewarding conversation I’ve had so far this week. As the product matures we need to do more to make sure we reach people like this, rather than the temptation to always focus on the new and shiny features.
Also it has been great to see the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the Teamprise news from both inside and outside the conference. Thanks to everyone for your kind words and encouragement.
Tomorrow I’ll be joining the panel for the following session in Interactive Theatre 2 – be great to see you there especially if you have any questions about the cross-platform story.
DEV06-IS Microsoft Visual Studio Team System "Unplugged"
Wed 11/11 | 13:30-14:45 | Interactive Theatre 2 - Orange
One of the top 10 sessions from Tech·Ed last year is back even better. Join the VSTS Leadership team for Question and Answer discussion of the Team System past, present, and future. No topics are off the table and no question is too rude. Come loaded with your list of questions about what our Team System strategy is, why we've done what we've done and what's coming in 2010 and beyond. Also, please bring your favorite tales of customer challenges you face and be prepared to share them to make sure we understand what makes your job harder.
If you are at TechEd Berlin, please do drop by the Visual Studio 2010 ALM area at TLC 22 to say “Hi” or just listen in to some of the excellent conversations going on.
