Well, it's a little past Friday last week - in fact it's closer to next Friday. Sorry for the delay - been busy taking care of sick children, and then I damaged myself.

But anyway...

The opinion for this week is about how TechEd could be made better - especially for developers.

It all started with Frank and Dave. It seems that this year there's more IT Pros than Developers coming to TechEd - and people are starting to wonder if there's something wrong. Many people have provided feedback, but it's time to get opinionated and come up with some answers of my own.

The two biggest things people mentioned were cost and availability of information.

The first is obvious - it's not cheap to go to TechEd. The tickets cost a lot, then you've got travel and accommodation, as well as time off work.

The second is probably where things have started falling down over the last few years.

As developers, we have access to a shiteload of information. MSDN is online, there's a squillion blogs that all talk code, mailing lists, forums; there's CTPs, webcasts, podcasts, recorded sessions from US TechEd - if you take the time to sit down and read it all (at least, the bits that are relevant to you), how much new information can you get from TechEd?

I know in my case, not actually that much - but that's not why I want to go to TechEd. Of all the talks that are on that I want to go to, I could learn most of it myself. But I want to see the speaker. Or just make sure I'm doing it right. Or hunt down that extra little tip that I haven't discovered yet.

To be completely honest, I haven't really pored over the session list that much yet, figuring out exactly which ones I'm going to go to. It's not really that important to me.

What's important to me is catching up with friends, meeting new ones, having the chance to talk to some of the experts, having a chance to talk with fellow geeks.

I actually think they've actually got a lot of good offerings for developers this year - things that could have pushed the developer count up a lot - but they haven't really been marketed too well. I know about them, but I've got a bit of an insiders view - I've been hunting down as much information as possible so I could publish it here, I'm a speaker, so I know a few other things too.

I haven't been able to push as much of the information out about this stuff as I'd like, simply because the people organising it are damn busy and haven't been able to get back to me yet (that's not a complaint - I'm holding no grudges!).

So what is there for Devs?

There's the Ask the Experts dinner. It warrants a measly 2 paragraphs on the TechEd website, and only goes for 2 and a half hours. There's the Hands On Labs - not easy to find within one or two clicks on the site, and unless you delve deeply, seems to be only about gadgets and tablets. And I can't find anything on there at all about the DevGarten.

What I see when I go through the site is a lot of session information (some of it relevant), and a lot of gumpf. I'm not saying it's a bad site, but there's nothing there to advertise it to developers - or to convince their employer that it's worth the expenditure to send them :)

From past experience the vendor stalls (which have been a big part of the event) might have some cool swag to grab, but as a developer I'm not actually interested in what most of them are selling. So many of them I start a conversation with them to either discover for myself that what they're selling is a complete package that has nothing to do with me (but they try to sell it anyway, because they're salesmen :) or the moment they ask what I do tell me that they don't really have anything for me. Yes, there's exceptions, but most of them I only talk to to get a pen or a football.

But the Hands On Labs will have a lot more to it. It will be a great place to learn some of the things in nice guided steps what would take much longer by reading blogs and downloading buggy CTPs. It just isn't that obvious.

And the Ask the Experts dinner is just the primary focus of getting a lot of knowledgeable people together - that 2.5 hours will actually be spread over the entire event. The DevGarten is going to be the place for devs to hang out. There's going to be computers galore, all with VS installed with a TFS server present. I know that the (dev) speakers have been asked to spend as much time there as they can to be available for chats, help, etc.

Bugger the sessions, just hang out in the DevGarten the whole time. You can still hear your favourite speakers talking about things you're interested in, but it will be in an environment where you can talk back, interrupt to ask questions, run the samples for yourself in front of them...

And that's my idea for making TechEd better for Developers.

I would love to go to TechEd next year and not sign up for a single session. Instead, a nice comfy (big) room filled with computers and couches and a whole lot of people who have a clue (all the speakers that won't be speaking because no ones going to the talks), all the MVPs, just sitting around, geeking out, talking shop, running examples, showing tricks, and us attendees can just come in and sit down and join in a conversation. All the 'speakers' have large badges on that lists their favoured topic areas (so i can find the VB guys and sit with them, for example, but still find a SQL guy to ask a couple of those hard questions).

And we just sit and geek out. The IT Pros can go off to their talks, and us devs can just sit and get to it. The rationale for your employer is higher, because it's now pretty obvious that all the problems you're having and all the things you need to know are discoverable, and in a pretty short span of time (3 or 4 days). The party can be dropped, the Ask the Experts dinner can be dropped, hell - the hands on labs can be integrated with the couches too. Surely the ticket price could come down in a big way then?

So that's my opinion of the problem. The advertising for TechEd this year really does (in my opinion) look very IT Pro focused. I think it's just assumed that the devs will know it's worth it (and they often do) - but the devs can't afford it :)

At this year's TechEd in the US they did a lot of 'chalk talks', which from what I can tell were informal smaller gatherings to walk people through different things. Make TechEd for devs one massive chalk talk.

OK, I'm done. Do you agree? What do you think it should be? Let us know - leave a comment here, or on Frank's or Dave's blogs. Or contact anyone that you know is involved. It's important to find out what people want.