Good news .

All those who attended the Techdays 2009 in Antwerp and those who couldn't attend, you could view all the recorded sessions online for free.  Follow this link http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2009/about.aspx and choose the menu option MSDN tracks or Technet tracks.

Belux Techdays 2009 registration is open now.  The event willt ake place on March 10th,11th and 12th in Metropolis in Antwerp.

More info can be found here www.techdays.be.

Tuesday evening I arrived already in Ghent where I booked a hotel with several of my colleagues.  After everyone was arrived we went for some food and beverages.

During the two days I didn’t took a lot of photos.  But I will show you a few taken by Gill Cleeren, so all the copyright goes to him except for one.

Techdays Day 1:

Arriving around 8.30, the hall was already full with people.  We just go to the Ordina booth where you can do a fitness test. And waited for the opening keynote, which was done by Rafal Lukawiecki (One of my favorite speakers).  He has given a great openings keynote.  And I think for the first time (of all openings keynotes I have seen) this was not a marketing one, but a great vision about the future.  He was assisted by Alex Turner, the program manager for C#, with a great demo about the evolution of programming languages.

 
Pictures are copyright of Gill Cleeren

After the keynote, I didn’t attend any session, but I took some change to talk with a few people I haven’t seen for a while.  After Lunch I followed the session of Jay Schmelzer about VS2008:RAD for today’s Line of Business Application Developer.  The next session I followed was from Steven Wilssens about ALM and VSTS.  Although this wasn’t a great session, we got a great overview about what ALM was.   Followed by this session I went to the one of Yves Goeleven in which I learned several new things about VSTS and the ALM process in it.  During the last session I took again the opportunity to talk with several people.

In the evening we went out in Ghent with several of my colleagues.

Techdays Day 2:

Today I was there very early (7.30) together with Steve Keyen as we had to stand at the Ask the Expert.

First picture is copyright of Sven Cipido and the second picture is copyright of Gill Cleeren

A few days ago when I was ask for this, I took this opportunity as my colleague Gill already did this at Teched 2007 and he told me it was a great experience.  I will certainly do it again if I have the change.  It was fun and enjoyable.  I met several new people I was happy I have helped them with their questions.  The most asked question was about the licensing of Visual Studio, which was for me also a much unknown part.  But gladly the people of Microsoft who go over the licensing had a booth just around the corner.  So they helped out these askers.

Because I had to answer a few questions at the booth id didn’t go one of the first sessions.  But I was glad happy to help those people out with their problem.  In the second session, I went to the one of Jelle Druyts about DSL.  It was a great session and I learned a lot here as this is a very new domain for me in which I’m just starting out.  Then it was lunch time and I had to stand again at the booth.  After lunch I went to the session of Bart De Smet about how to create Custom LINQ providers.  This session gives a good start about this and I learned that it is not easy and a lot of work.

For the next session, I didn’t attend one, as I was working at the booth.

But for the last sessions I went to see the one of Serge Luca about running externalized Business Rules in any .Net application with the Workflow Foundation Rules Engine.  I left this one very quickly as I was disappointed by this presentation (although Serge is an MVP and has a great knowledge about WCF).  Given demo’s just with some screenshots in PowerPoint is for me very disappointing.
And the Closing keynote.  This was a great, given by Matt McSpirit one about how you can use Vista for your digital Lifestyle.  And Arlindo you’re one of the Guitar heros .
And it was done.  I went back to the Ordina booth, but the whole conference hall was just getting empty.  So I also went back home, happy but full of new information.

End conclusion

This year Techdays the sessions where not that great for me.  A few interesting (by Roy Oherove) I had already seen during TechEd 2007, others were good and a few where disappointing.

But, "Ask the expert" booth was just great and I will certainly do it again if Microsoft asks me.

Overall it was good and I had some great time in Genth.

Cu next year on Techdays 2009.

During the weekend I got the confirmation mail that I'm one of the guyus who will be at the "Ask The Expert" booth to answer your questions about Visual Studio.  You can find me there on Thursday between the sessions.  But also on Tuesday and Wednesday you will find some colleagues and friends of me who are willing to answer all of your questions.

Just like last year, the Visug user group is organizing a bowling on the evening of March 12th.

I can say it was fun, till the power went down.  But we had even more fun afterwards.  Just go to their website and register for the event.  Be quick as only 30 people can join it.

Place to be : Overpoort Bowling Ghent.

Starting hour 19:30

Ending time : .... Depends on how much fun you want to have.  Last year it was somewhere after 3 o'clock in the morning .

BTW : First we eat a whole bunch of pizza's with the whole group

March 11 is the official launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 in Belgium.

On 12 and 13 March Techdays will start with more than 65 technical breakout sessions.  So be there.  Click on the image to go to the website for more info.

The Company I work for is one of the Diamond sponsors.