Frustrating

I’m dead keen to go to TechEd this year… but not until I know what it is I’m signing up for.

An email arrived in my inbox today from Darryl Burling, a prominent personality in the Microsoft New Zealand development arena. In a nutshell, the message was “buy your TechEd ticket now, or you’ll miss out”. The problem is, if you go to the TechEd site, you won’t find any information about what exactly it is that you’re signing up for.

Considering that Microsoft are charging either $1860.00 per person or upwards of $6000.00 for corporate packages, I think that the very least they can do is tell you what to expect for that spend. I can’t think of any other service or product offering (online or in a shop) that asks you to “buy now, find out what you’ve bought later”. Given that my company is paying for me to go, I don’t want to come back and give a review along the lines of, “Meh – it was ok”. Also, what happens if a discipline is over-represented in subscriptions? You don’t want to have (for example) 1000 DBAs signing up to find that there’s only one SQL Server session and it’s already fully booked. What are they going to attend instead?

Now having said all this, it is also fair to say that TechEd is always well-run and has interesting content. Invariably, you come away knowing a bit more about a certain topic than when you arrived. So it is good value in that sense. However, I want to be sure about the topics being offered so that I can know I will get at least as much out of the event as someone else on my floor who might have missed out on a spot this year.

Another frustration this week: power outlets. Apparently, while the bank approve in theory of my new electric scooter, they can’t provide me with a power outlet to recharge the bike while I’m at work. In fact, I can’t find anywhere to recharge in town. If you know of somewhere that won’t mind 1 or 2 cents of power being siphoned off each work day, let me know. It’s getting annoying having the scooter conk out on me on the last hill before home.

(On the upside, I’m squeezing 30km per day out of the bike, at least half of which is all uphill. Not bad, all considered).