Next week at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, Microsoft will hold TechEd Australia 2013. TechEd is Microsoft’s showcase for all things happening in the company. This appeals to everyone from IT Professionals to Developers looking to explore and execute on a broad set of Microsoft technologies, tools, platforms and services.
TechEd is split into technical tracks across a number of areas – Architecture & Trustworthy Computing, Data Platform & Business Intelligence, Developer Tools, Languages, Frameworks & ALM, Exchange and Lync, Modern Datacentre, Office, Office 365 and SharePoint, Windows Azure Application Development, Windows Client, Access and Management, Windows Phone.
There’s also hands–on learning, deep product exploration, and of the 7 years I’ve been going to TechEd, the most important is the networking opportunities. These relationships with Microsoft experts and the community can last a lifetime.
This year’s conference comes at an interesting time for Microsoft. Windows 8.1 has just gone RTM, Office 365 and Azure have turned into Billion dollar business. Xbox One is due for release in November, WP8 is slowly gaining momentum and Surface is almost due for a refresh. From the products to the services to the software, Microsoft is moving forward. We can debate if that’s in small increments or large steps, but the times, they are changing.
As usual, attendees of TechEd will have free WiFi for the length of the conference. This year Microsoft are bringing some serious internets, a speed test during the week shows 868.07Mb/s down and 905Mb/s up. The WiFi will be available on both IPv4 and IPv6 for those keen to live in the future. The advice is to use 5GHz for your wireless adapter if it supports it, this will give you significantly better performance.
While free open internet is awesome for convenience, there is something you should be aware of if you’re attending. TechEd is a big network full of casual users so we don’t enforce network log on or certificates like you might expect on a corporate network, therefore, you need to make sure you understand that your own information security is your own responsibility.
Wireless access points of any kind are not permitted at the event. This includes personal 3G or 4G wireless hotspots. Don’t even think about using BitTorrent or other P2P file sharing services while connected to the network, network admins will ban your mac address. So with your connectivity sorted, you can now focus on the keynote and sessions.
While some workplaces think conferences are a junket, this couldn’t be further from the truth. This week days will be 7-10pm at best, sneaking in a few hours of sleep before doing it all again the next day. If you see me at during the week, please say hi or buy me a drink (probably a red bull), It’ll be a long, hard, awesome week of technology.
More information @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/teched/default.aspx
Disclaimer: Jason is attending TechEd as a guest of Microsoft Australia which are covering flights and accommodation.
