For most people, TechDays ends after the last speaker has finished his or her presentation, the requisite goodbyes have been said, the last of the cookies has been taken from the snack tables and everyone has shuffled out the door and back into reality.
For us, TechDays stretches on a little longer. Even though we’ve got support staff like Starshot, our event planning team, and AVW-TELAV, our A/V specialists, we do a fair bit of the legwork ourselves, which includes setting up and tearing down the demo machines in all the session rooms, the internet access stations spread throughout the conference and the “Ask the Experts” and computers and Xbox in the Collaboration Lounge.
For Starshot’s perspective of TechDays, see their article Microsoft TechDays 2010: Calm at the Centre of a Perfect Storm.
Pictured below are Developer Evangelist John Bristowe playing the part of “Teamster Foreman”, supervising new Developer Evangelist Frederic Harper and IT Pro Evangelist Rick Claus as they put the computers into their shipping cases bound for the next destination, TechDays Calgary.
Once the machines have been put away, it’s time for the Day 2 post-mortem meeting, which is attended by both the TechDays organizers (which includes Yours Truly) and the Starshot folks.
Here are Fred checking his mail before the meeting starts, as Jenna Prada from Starshot chats up the rest of us:
John captures the moment on his phone as Damir Bersinic and Fred do some last-minute social networking:
And so begins the post-mortem! Here are Damir, Rick and Fred, each listing what worked, what didn’t and what could be improved. We do this at the end of each TechDays in each city, because if you’re not getting the most out of TechDays, we’re not getting the most out of TechDays either.
Here’s Jenna throwing in her two cents:
With TechDays Winnipeg wrapped up, we’ve got one city left: Calgary, which we’re visiting next week. TechDays Calgary takes place on Tuesday, December 14th and Wednesday December 15th at the Roundup Centre in Stampede Park. See you there!
