I'm currently at Tech Ed in Berlin, and enjoying it very much. I have been a regular attendee to Tech Ed Europe for the last decade (Lots of thanks to SDT for seeing the continued value in this ), and have always come away inspired. This year is no exception.
Long gone are the days when I attended conferences such as these to have a peak of new technical features or gizmos. Of course this is still part of it, but my focus nowadays is to zoom in onthe thought patterns and genius of industry thought leaders. From these guys I get some ideas and inspiration - and in the rare circumstances where my thought processes seemed to have been synchronised with these guys, I also get a sense of "internal pride". Unfortunately not something you can share with the big wide world without looking smug (or idiotic), but at least I can be proud of myself ;-)
Stepping away from the sadness of geek-pride, who where the geeks I enjoyed listening to this year?
Reflecting a bit: In the past it was guys like Don Box (The bathtub session in Spain !!), Steve McConnel (thought not at Tech Ed), last year Rocky Lhotka gave me a lot of that geek-pride feeling ;-) , Kalen Delaney always excites my SQL optimisation sensors.
And 2009 then? Well, an all-time favourite of mine is Rafal Lukawiecki. Event thought he some-times goes over my head, any talk by him is in inspiration, even if you just go to hear him delivering his talk in his typically passionate fashion. This year I enjoyed his talk on Predictive Programming - for me the highlight of Tech-Ed 2009. Another guy that I really enjoyed was Jim Wilt. Unfortunately I missed Udi Dahan's session, but could catch up with him later with a beer in hand. Always a good thing in Germany, I can assure you.