Michael went to TechEd in 2003. He didn't go to the whole event, just the free student day that they had.

1. Name rank and serial number.
   Michael McMullen, I'm a Microelectronic Engineering and Information Technology double degree student at Griffith University in Brisbane. Except this past semester I've been doing a project at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg, Germany. I'm actually heading back home on Sunday so I'm writing this while taking a break from packing. I haven't gotten around to starting a blog yet, I've thought about it several times and I do plan to start one eventually, but it hasn't happened yet.
2. What TechEds have you been too? Why did you go? If you've been to more than one, why do you keep going back?
   It was the 2003 one in Brisbane. I had planned to go to the 2005 Tech.Ed at the Gold Coast as well, but it clashed with the Google Code Jam 2005 (http://www.google.com/codejam/ ) and I've never missed a Code Jam that I've been eligible for yet (as I mentioned on the aus-dotnet list, I even competed in the Europe Code Jam while I was here and visited Google's European headquaters in Dublin). To link that back to Microsoft and Tech.Ed a bit, I always compete in C#, and they also allow VB.NET at the world wide competitions.
   Why did I go to the 2003 TechEd? Well it was not long before that big PDC in America, and there was a lot of information about Longhorn coming out and for one thing I thought the stuff was cool, but I also knew it would probably be coming out around the time I finished university and it would be useful for me to already know a lot about the latest technology and to have experience with it when I finished. Yeah, I knew in 2003 that Vista would be out around the end of 2006, hehe. Anyway, I saw a poster up at my university advertising a free student day at TechEd which sounded like it would be a good place to learn more so I went along with a couple of friends.
3. Once it was over, were you glad you went? What did you get out of it that you consider valuable?
   I'm definately glad I went. The technical presentation part was a little disappointing for me because, being student day, it was just introductory stuff which I already knew - I'd bought Visual Studio Academic edition over a year before and had been using it and teaching myself C# for that time and I'd read all the information I could find online about the future products. What was good about it though was seeing some of the things that Microsoft were doing for students, meeting some other Brisbane students who were interested in the same things as I was, and meeting a couple of Microsoft 'Academic Developer Relations' people (to quote from their business cards which I still have with me today). One of these guys was especially friendly, giving one of my friends a free copy of Office simply because he asked for it and he also helped me out with a couple of queries I had over the next couple of years.
4. What were your favourite parts of TechEd?
   Being only one day, there wasn't much to the student day. One technical session, one session about the academic side of things, a free lunch and a bag of freebies :). They also had a little quiz where we were all asked a series of yes or no questions with only the people who got each question right moving on to the next question. I won a free book on C# out of that for being the last person left which was pretty nice too (you can probably see by now that I love to compete). My favourite part would've been just getting to meet all those people and talking to them in person rather than online.
5. What could have been done better?
   The only complaint I have is that the one technical session was too basic, but there's not really a lot they can do about that since most of the students wouldn't have much or any experience with the products and technologies unlike what I assume it would be at the main event where many of the attendees would be people who regularly use the sort of things they're there to see so there'd be a lot of more advanced sessions as well.
6. How much of it was relevant to you personally? Did you get a big enough benefit that the expense was worth it, or would, say, someone else from your workplace have benefitted more?
   I think this is one that doesn't really apply to me, since it didn't cost me anything, I got a free lunch, free book and a few other things, plus several new contacts - it was definately worth the expense :)
7. Would you go again if you had the chance?
   I probably won't get a chance to go to another student day, but I'll definately go to at least one full TechEd event to at least see what it's like. I'm sure it would be great but weather it would be worth the expense to go again after that is something that, as a student who doesn't make much money, and as someone who hasn't been to a full TechEd before, I can't say at the moment.
8. Where was the party? Did you have a good time?
   We didn't go to the party, as far as I know students weren't invited.