Billy Hollis as John Keating Day one of TechEd was a bit light for the developers in the crowd. One of the stalwarts of TechEd speaking is Billy Hollis and he’s here in 2012 with two sessions. I went to his first #Creating User Experiences: Unlocking the Invisible Cage#. Billy was an inspiration to me last year at TechEd 2011 and convinced me to get off my chair and start thinking about design myself, instead of waiting for someone else to do it.…

I Need One of Those For My Office Kicking off TechEd 2012 was a DJ on stage manipulating a SmithsonMartin Emulator DJ Touch machine. This translucent large panel multitouch display runs only on Windows and filled the big room with soothing grooves to get the show off to a nice start. We won’t take too much mention of the fact that he was using his iTunes library to supply the tracks.…

This is the ninth time I’ll be attending TechEd and what I carry around the conference center has changed from year to year. When I started going, I lugged a heavy laptop. Last year, I mostly went unencumbered. This year, my every day carry (EDC) looks like this: ASUS Zenbook I’m planning on blogging throughout the conference and the 13” Zenbook is a super lightweight Ultrabook that can handle the job with aplomb.…

Orlando, Florida If there’s any city that could be thought of as the home base of TechEd, it’s Orlando. Since its start, the show has moved to Orlando (with New Orleans a close second). In 2008, TechEd returned to Orlando for the 3rd time in 4 years. I had missed the show in 2005 and 2007, so this was my first TechEd in Orlando (I had been to the PDC in Orlando, so it wasn’t my first visit).…

Boston, Massachusetts I missed TechEd 2005 in Orlando, so we skip forward to 2006. The show moved north to Boston and hasn’t been back. The city was still in the midst of its “Big Dig” project and as such there were a few more challenges with respect to transportation. Then again, I didn’t even know who they named the Ted Williams Tunnel after, but I used it at least twice a day in the shuttle buses.…

San Diego, California Microsoft, I beg you. Please have TechEd in San Diego again. It was by far the most enjoyable from a weather perspective I’ve ever been to. 2004 was a big year in the technology front because we started to move into SQL Server 2005 (Yukon) and Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey) and there was a lot to talk about. .NET 2.0 was the upcoming version and there was so much for developers to learn about including partial classes, nullable types, generics, and anonymous methods.…

Dallas, Texas Anybody remember this phone? It was in the hands of many 2003 TechEd attendees at the Dallas Convention Center because Microsoft and Sprint were loaning them to use during the show. Of course, they took your credit card information in case you wanted to keep it. I kept it (although they never charged me the $600+ it should have cost) and it went in the history books as my first smartphone and my first with a full qwerty keyboard.…

Follow @kenstone !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=“//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,“script”,“twitter-wjs”); “You want me to stop at the drive through liquor store?” Thus began my experience at TechEd 2002 in New Orleans. The cabbie’s question was only my first experience with the city’s open liquor container policy. It was my first visit to New Orleans and my group took in all the sights. Acme Oyster House, Mulate’s, Harrah’s casino, Café Du Monde, Pat O’brien’s in the French Quarter, and the, uh… rest of the French Quarter, if you know what I mean.…

Follow @kenstone !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=“//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,“script”,“twitter-wjs”); TechEd Virgin My first TechEd, Atlanta in 2001, was the first of many to come. I’ve been to 8 so far, (not including 2012) and this was my first. I’ll always remember her. The venue was the Georgia World Conference Center and I noticed immediately how I hated people calling it “Hotlanta”. But, yeah, it was hot. The day 2 keynote speaker was Bill Gates (honestly, nobody cares about the Day 1 Keynote, Paul Flessner).…