TechEd 2008 - The WOW track

Lets get one thing out the way first. Heres an early peek at one of the bag options we are looking at....everyone likes a new bag.

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Ok now thats done. This year I am responsible for this one track so whats this WOW track and whats it all about?

For sometime people have been saying that they are sick of PowerPoint based presentations. Personally I hate them too. I like to see how it works and what I have to do to get it working.

People also want to see how stuff works together rather than in isolation - and this track delivers that starts with nothing, builds the base infrastructure and finally ends with applications deployed that you can use at the event!

Essentially the WOW track merges what an attendee experiences in technology at TechEd and what they want to learn about. What they see on the showcase floor and how they can interact with it has a dedicated sequential and solution oriented session that starts by showcasing the building of an enterprise class infrastructure from scenario based planning to execution. Real life examples including integrating a new acquisition, deployment of new SOE etc are included. Delegates additionally see live data on network performance, server utilisation status and other key performance indicators for the Tech Ed network. Delegates will see equipment and network data in showcase server room on big plasmas on the exhibition floor that they are interacting live with.

This is my early track thoughts - there's four sessions that need to be added on the end to show the developer side of things.

1. Hardware configuration

2. Base Server deployment and configuration (Windows Server 2008)

3. SQL Server cluster configuration and testing (SQL 2008)

4. Management tools (SCCM, MOM)

5. Security services (FCS, ISA)

6. Client application configuration and sequencing (Softgrid for client and TS)

7. Client deployment and configuration (Vista and BDD)

8. Terminal Services configuration, client delivery and scalability learnings

9. Provisioning your identities with ILMv2 (and dealing with acquisitions!)

10. Federating your identities with third party webservices

11. Implementing RFID with BizTalk server

12. The next four are all Mr Coates...:)

So what do you think? Is that something you would want to see?