It was pouring the whole night yesterday and when my alarm rang at 7 am this morning (it has the sound of a rooster), it was the last sound I wanted to hear. So I snoozed it for another 10 minutes and hid under the sheets. When it rang at 7.10, I snoozed it again, and again and again. At last I got up around 8.10 and left home at 8.50 with couple of friends. When I reached Tech.Ed premises after breakfast on the way it was pretty late for any session.
But I got in to Vinod Kumar’s session on SSIS - Exploring Scalability, Performance and Deployment. He was really enthusiastic about what he was speaking about and demonstrated solid knowledge of SQL Server and related technologies. And he had pretty good control over the flow of the session as well.
My rating 3
Then I wanted to give a second chance to Janakiram in his session “Security Enhancements in Visual Studio 2005” only to be disappointed again. I believe he was not speaking responsibly and was not fully prepared for the session. I’ll just take one example where he made a wrong comment. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
He stated that if we execute an application which resides in internet or intranet domain by typing the address in internet explorer address bar it executes using the ASPNET user account. ASPNET Account is used for running the ASP.NET worker process (aspnet_wp.exe). This does not apply to code executed on client. There is a high probability that the ASPNET user will not even exist in the client side. If you execute an application in the above mentioned manner the application would execute in a partially trusted context under the currently logged in user of the client machine. You can check this out through the task manager. I have strong doubts about Janakiram’s preparations for these sessions.
My rating 1
Lunch - need not comment again on it. My rating 3
Next I went to the session “CLR 2.0 Internals” by Gaurav Khanna. It could have been a wonderful and productive session if not for the extensive and irrelevant questions from the audience detaching it from the course. I liked the style of Gaurav, he came to the session with no slide shows, and he had enough confidence to carry forward the session. From the very little time the audience allowed him with, he made it evident that he has an extensive knowledge not only of the internals of .net but COM, DCOM and host of other technologies. I just wish I had an opportunity to work with him. But unfortunately because the session was not successful I can’t give him a 5.
My rating 3
Yik Joon Ho was well prepared for his session on “What’s New in ASP .NET 2” probably after some rest. The session was really entertaining and organized with applauses every time he displayed a cool new feature of ASP .NET 2. Yik Joon Ho, being an architect adviser for sure knew what is behind the things he demonstrated. So he deserved all those rounds of applauses. If the objective of the session was to amaze the audience with the rich features of ASP .NET 2 and promote them to use it to gain high productivity and save time, it was really successful.
My rating 4
Next I decided to participate in the session “SQL Server 2005: A Technical Overview” by Vineet Gupta. This was the most productive session I ever attended in the Tech.Ed. Vineet handled questions really well, if the question was relevant to the session he answered it really well with full details; if it’s not, he quickly interrupt and requested to bring it up offline. I think this is what all other speakers should have adopted. And Vineet knew what he was talking about inside-out. He is the database guy in our imagination by looks and by knowledge. There was no doubt about his capabilities. Solid stuff from him, start to end. I Loved it.
My rating 4
The closing session was some what relaxed and all the speakers, MVPs and the organizers seemed to be really happy to have concluded the Tech.Ed successfully. They answered several questions receiving laughs smiles and applauses from the audience. After the closing session they hosted the Vista session again by popular demand.
My rating 3
I’m not the best person to rate the Entertainment Night as personally I’m not an out going or party loving person. But one thing I want to make a not on is that there was very little choice for vegetarians and few of us had to bear the thirst as we couldn’t find any non alcoholic beverages around. May be we were in the wrong place... so I’ll refrain from rating the entertainment night.
So my final rating for the second day at Tech.Ed is:
(3 + 1 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 3) / 7 = 3
As I was unable to register within the first 200 registrants I won’t be able to participate in tomorrows hands on lab sessions. So this would be my last rating on Tech.Ed. So as a concluding note I would like to thank the organizers for bringing Tech.Ed to Sri Lanka. This certainly could not have been an easy project but it was very well done. The Microsoft technical community owe a big thank to them.
But on my personal preference, I may probably not participate in future Tech.Ed or similar events. I have always been a reader than a listener and I feel classroom styled sessions doesn’t allow me to learn in my own phase. To be honest I hate when some one disturb the speaker to ask a question. It’s true that there were some very good questions asked and it contributed to the knowledge of others as well. But it disturbs the course of the session as it takes up time from the plan.
What I prefer about books is they cover every aspect of a subject unlike classroom styled sessions. Because of limited time and human factor involved in classroom styled sessions there’s a great possibility to forget and drop certain facts from the content of the subject. Since the authors of the books have enough time to review and revise the contents of the books, books are more consistent.
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