Technology Time - TechED '05 @ Mumbai

Finally, after one long month, the TechED leg of India was over on 2nd. I got a chance to be present at TechED Mumbai. It was fun-filled (along with the rains), technology crazy world for three days (still haven't been able to come out of that TechED-lag). So it rained at TechED Mumbai, and it rained like never before. However, the delegates (who love technology) made it a point to be at the venue on time. So huge was the response - that Microsoft provided a transport facility for all the delegates who came from Pune. In and all - TechED was a massive Hit.

For this year, I was looking after two stalls at Mumbai.
1. TabletPC Stall
2. INETA Stall

I would add that out of the two - the max time I spent was on the TabletPC stall. This was because I was more inlined to giving the demos on the various tablets kept for display. Top that with getting a chance to interact with two people from the TabletPC Team at Redmond, Subha Bhattachraya and Manoj Biswas. Both have a huge amount of knowledge as far as development in the Tablet Form Factor are concerned. It was really exciting out at Tablet Stall to demonstrate and prove that a Pen (read: Stylus) is always mightier then a sword.


At INETA stall (what we also called it as "Community Stall"), talked about the evolution of Mumbai User Group and Pune User Group, and how to become a part of the respective UGs. TechED India also saw the Launch of "Community Times", a newspaper for all people who want to know what's happening in the community for them. Along with that, we also had a "DartBoard" for people to play games.

TechED this year, saw over 50 speakers from various backgrounds. This was also the first time TechED had 6 different tracks, including a special track for the Architects. However I personally felt that they did not attend the right kind of delegates. Infact it became all the more difficult to choose which track to attend :). The sessions (which were on for 2 full days), were followed by a day of HOL (Hands-on-Labs) sessions. Not to be left out - I got a opportunity to conduct one of the TabletPC sessions along with Manoj. Here, we just gave the delegates a basic know-how of Tablets, including the use of "Inking", MS OneNote, Journal, Artex, and various other applications. This was the first time ever, that I was speaking at a HUGE Microsoft event.

This was also the year, where TechED launched the "Women in Technology Luncheon" - – a networking luncheon designed to facilitate one-on-one interaction between fellow women professionals from the industry! And what a time it was - all the women at one single place. (Just wondering how would the hotel staff, keep a check on the decibel levels :)). Lets hope to see something like "Men In Technology" in upcomming TechEDs

Overall TechED is usually considered as a time when most of the Evangelists come down to one place and have a gala of time. Having interacted with the likes of Abhishek, Manik, Vineet, Gaurav Khanna, Deepak Gulati, Tejas Shah, Ram, Ravi Sankar, Kevin D'Souza and many more, the memories of TechED are still fresh in my mind.

Waiting for a India leg of PDC.. Anyone listening??