The last week has been spent in Madrid at the annual Microsoft TechEd conference. This was my first time at the European version of the event having previously attended the north american version 3 times in the past. so I thought it might be interesting to compare the events.
I first attended TechEd in 2008 in Orlando followed the year later in Los Angeles, these were both paid for by my employer and returned last year to Orlando but having to pay for my own flights, hotel and food. this year was the same setup as it worked out significantly cheaper to go to Madrid than New Orleans.
Venue
Overall the venue in Madrid felt significantly larger than the convention centres in the USA, but the in use space was smaller, such as where we had the keynote, the breakout sessions and especially the tech expo. The conference venue in Madrid was also much more isolated from the city and hotels compared to the us, but thinking about other cities I think this is just a USA thing to have them more centrally located.
I had taken a hotel in the near by in the suburb of Barajas so was only a 20 min journey via the metro, but most other attendees I talked to seemed to be 40+ minutes away and as everyone seemed to arrive and leave at the same times the metro trains heading into Madrid were very crowded.
Keynote
The main feeling of the event is one of after the lords mayors show, with almost nothing that could be announced as these had been made at the US event 2 weeks before, and even some details of windows 8.1 had to be delayed till a second keynote in order to happen after the keynote at //Build that had been scheduled to clash with this event.
The first keynote started with the same us centric video from New Orleans but without the Aston Martin actually being there in Madrid. This also gave the impression that bar the "announcements" of the R2 bits being available for download all the rest was a direct replay of the US keynote. The R2 bits did also hammer the WiFi network for the rest of the day making access even more strained for the first day, but this did seem to get better during the week.
Sessions and crowds
The breakout sessions seemed like a good mix of the US and European content and most sessions I attended were the same level of crowds as a similar session in the USA, with only the Mark Russinovic sessions on malware hunting and Case of the unexplained becoming absolute sell outs (I managed to attend the first but baulked at having to wait in the room for the whole break to also do the second) But overall the crowds were slightly smaller than in the US. But this is only really noticeable by the size of the keynote location and the meal hall.
Parties and people
For me this is one of the biggest differences as I did keep meeting people that I have met at other UK based events, where as in the 3 trips to the USA I had never had those interactions, the closest being last year when by being able to use the alumni lounge and in it they had a TV showing the euro championship which had a regular group of European visitors (and one South African).
The main attendee party was listed as country drinks, which took over a group of restaurants in the south west of the city (a good distance from the convention centre) and divided up these venues by country but everyone was able to wander between these. The differences between the 5 venues i popped into were minimal, which was a slight name that the major countries could not showcase their own culture more, rather than them all being Spanish tapas and drinks and just the voices in each venue being different. But this was still more entertaining than the beach party in the conference centre in LA, but not close to the hiring of a theme park that happened on both the Orlando trips.
My other main party of the week was the Krewe meet and greet, held on the Thursday night, again some good and bad points, It was in an official hotel but one that was a long way from any public transport, which probably lead to it being less attended than the number of people signed up, those that did seemed more welcoming and less insular than the american version, helped by the music being in the background so that we could talk to each other, especially with most attendee's not having English as a first language. It would be better at the start of the week, possibly the Monday night if we are going to continue with a Tuesday start, but overall I hope that this can go from strength to strength to rival the US version in future years.
Tech
One of my personal differences between this and previous trips was the technology I took, this was the first trip I can remember where I have not taken a laptop. I had just my phone (Sony Xperia z) and a nexus 7 tablet. This worked well, with the roaming charges being significantly lower than on a US trip, the WiFi was good enough in all the session rooms to be able to take notes using OneNote and have these sync back to the cloud. And I am writing this on the flight home, but I will need to edit on a PC when I get home.
we did have a similar surface deal to the US attendees apart from them being shipped rather than collected in the half, but this also seemed to smooth out the orders so the queue never got very long and both devices are now waiting for me when I land.
Conclusion
Overall I think I will be targeting the European version in the future probably with the exception of when the North American event is in Orlando or somewhere else I really want to visit but still has cheep hotels, to over come the more expensive flights.
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