Bytes Systems Integration sponsored me to go to Tech-Ed 2007. The planning for this started in August already and on Sunday morning shortly after 10:00am Craig and I was all set to head to Sun City. The GPS on Craig's Nokia N95 made easy work of directing us to the venue and we arrived shortly after 12:00pm, after a stop for refreshments and fuel. Registration was fairly painless and we received very nice shoulder bags filled with some magazines and the normal notebook, pen and event guides. We were informed that we will only be able to check-in to the Cascades at 15:00 and after a quick lunch headed to the Community Lounge were I had the privilege to meet Willy-Peter Shaub, Microsoft VSTFS MVP, author of 3 awesome books, the latest being Software Engineers on their way to Pluto and SA Architect Lead. I also caught up with Jean Pierre Fouche, one of the SA Architect Lead, who I previously met at Dev Days 2007 in Durban. Craig and I also ran into Angus Logan,  Technical Product Manager for Windows Live. The opening key note was brilliant and the opening party was well planned and attended. I didn't stay very long as I was tired after a rushed weekend, however heard many interesting stories the next day.

Monday morning started early with breakfast, and spending the first part of the morning at the Community Lounge. Craig and I were representing SA Developer and Willy-Peter and Jean Pierre representing SA Architect. My first session for the day was Chris Auld's awesome talk on Windows Communication Foundation, a primer into what's new and how it works. I found his talk entertaining and practical, allowing me an opportunity to discover some new concepts to implement in my next interoperability project. Afterwards I attended a talk by Brian Harry, Microsoft VSTFS Product Unit Manager and the father of Microsoft SourceSafe. He discussed the development methodologies used by Microsoft and how they use VSTFS to manage the development of Visual Studio. It was an awesome discussion and an insightful look at how to manage 2000+ developers working on one project.

I also met Pieter Germishuys, Microsoft DirectX MVP, who joined us in the Community Lounge. For his presentation he put together a Space  Invaders game featuring the Springboks shooting down English Roses using Rugby Balls. Brilliant tribute to the South Africa Boks winning the world cup the Saturday before. It was great to meet him and see him in action, and hopefully we will see more of this ex-durbanite in future SA Developer events in KZN.

Hilton Giesenow introduced himself to me at the Community Lounge. He is a Microsoft C# MVP and also SA Architect and SA Developer Lead for the Western Cape. We had a quick chat about the road forward for communities before he rushed off for a Chalk & Talk session, and I headed out to the Silverlight Talk presented by Eben De Wit, Development Advisor for Microsoft SA. I followed this up with an Introduction to Visual Studio 2008 for ASP.Net Developers awesomely presented by Hilton. After a quick dinner with Eben, Craig and I spent the evening relaxing at the Cascades hotel, discussing various subject we encountered during the day.

Tuesday I headed off to a few more sessions, the first being What's New in Visual Studio 2008 for C# Developers presented by Clifford de Wit, and directly after Hidden Gems in ASP.Net presented by Hilton. Again a brilliant talk which brought some powerful tips on improving ASP.Net application performance in ASP.Net 2.0. I spent most of the afternoon catching up with the Community, and digesting some of the information I received during the day. I also met Zlatan Dzinic and we spent a good hour discussing Microsoft SharePoint and the various implementation and uses of it in the industry. His work in community for SharePoint Server is brilliant and I hope to see more of him in the coming months.

At about 16:00 Hilton, Craig and myself was interviewed by Nicolas Blank, Microsoft Exchange MVP, for a Virtual Tech-Ed Video on Technical Communities in South Africa. Look out for it here in the next few weeks. VTE is basically covering every Tech-Ed being held worldwide and recording live interviews with key speakers and visitors to Tech-Ed. The first videos for South Africa started appearing last night.

The evening closed off with a massive after party. After dinner I headed back to the hotel, drained from a day of activities and ran into Hilton and Zlatan, and spend a while chatting to them about the community and development topics.

Wednesday we started late and after a quick session with Eben on optimising ASP.Net AJAX we finished off the day with a WCF Chalk & Talk by Willy-Peter and Hilton. Both sessions provided important and powerful information which will make every developers toolbox of tricks more powerful. Angus Logan amazed us all with some of the new toys in Windows Live during the closing Keynote. At about 14:00 we all started heading out, with a few people leaving with their new X-Boxes, Cellphone's and other sponsored prices.

I will be posting some more about Tech-Ed in the next few days and provide more detail about some of these talks. For more information on becoming an MVP can be found here. Also please visit the SA Developer.Net and SA Architect.Net website's to find out more about the communities in South Africa and what they are planning for the next few months. Also a special mention that Nicolas has started a Microsoft Exchange Community and information can be found here.