I've spent a little time with Greg Low recently and one of the things he's involved in is the board directing the SQL Server Master certification.

This program is the elite certification program for SQL Server DBA's and consists of a rigorous three week training course delivered by guru's in SQL Server (Greg does a couple of days worth, Kim Tripp and Paul Randall are doing the first week).  This training is deep and technical - Greg spends half a day explaining tempdb.

Because the master certification is about to go through its first public Beta the team are offering a 50% discount on the first scheduled event in October.  The October course starts on October 20 and finished on November 8.  Given the fees are nearly US$20k, this is a significant discount.

For more details on the master program, start here.  To see what it takes to register, check this page out, register here.

There is going to be a bunch of stuff around the Windows Campaign come out.  Here is one that came out today :-)

I quite like some of the new stuff that I've seen on this - time will tell what everyone else thinks though.

Pride - I'm a PC

Update: Check out the updated windows.com site for more, also links to all the videos are now up on the press pass site.

I've just got the Tech Ed evals back in and thought I'd put up some of the results for all to see.  Before I do that - if you are a speaker, you should expect to see an email from me in the next 24 hours with full session feedback including all your comments.

Overall Averages

This year we seem to have done much better with the overall feedback than in previous years.   The average speaker and session scores are in the table below;

Top 10 sessions

One of the surprising things is the feedback on the lunchtime sessions this year.  The lunchtime sessions were a bit mixed this year - some technical sessions and some not so technical sessions.  The feedback overall - including the lunchtime sessions gives us the following top 10:

Its interesting to see Trika's session rate well - certification is clearly of interest to customers!  If we take lunchtime sessiosn out of the equation we get the following as the top list of breakout sessions.

Its great to see Ivan's session on Reactive Programming make the top 10 breakout sessions - well done Ivan!

Top 10 speakers

If we roll up the speaker scores to get the top 10 speakers for Tech Ed NZ we get the following list.  I hereby announce that these are officially the kings of Tech Ed!

The only session in this list from a lunchtime session is Trikas, for what it is worth the next top score in the list is Gary Gross who delivered a single session on Systems Center Mobile Device Manager and scored 8.27.  This was followed by the top NZ community speaker who was Ivan Towlson with an average speaker score of 8.21 from two sessions. 

My congratulations to all the speakers, but particularly to those speakers who scored in the top 10 with more than one session - this is particularly difficult and shows polished presentation skills that are consistent.  Having said that, dont underestimate how hard it is to be in this list - the average speaker score is extremely high - so well done to all those speakers mentioned above!

I've had a heap of emails asking about the availability of the Hands On Labs that we used at Tech Ed.

So, can you get hold of the HOL's at Tech Ed?

Unfortunately the answer is no.  There are a couple of reasons for this. 

1) Branding.  Many of the labs are branded with Tech Ed and we've been asked not to publish or give them out for this reason.

2) Expiring Evaluation copies of Software.  Most (if not all) the eval copies of Windows Server are set to expire today, which means you can't start them anyway.

However, it is not all lost.  A good number of the HOL's are also available as Virtual Labs, which means you can run through the material any time using Microsoft servers to run the VM's.  There are Virtual labs for both IT Pro and Developer content on a wide range of products (exceeding the ones we had at Tech Ed) and they are available free of charge from the Virtual Labs page.  Note that some of the very large labs (e.g. the Security lab with six VM's) may not be available via Virtual Labs.

Finally, if there is a specific lab that you are keen to get hold of, we can release the lab manuals for you to go through in your own time.  If you are keen on this, contact Mike using this contact form and he will give you details on how you can get hold of the lab manuals.

Every year we get various questions and feedback on Tech Ed and the way it is managed.

This year we took some criticism with regards to the tickets selling out in a short time (slightly less than three weeks).

Firstly I've heard/read/seen people asking why we don't lock down the content before Tickets go on sale.  It seems like the ideal thing to do, and I'd love to do it, however the reality is that many speakers are not organized and so can't commit to speaking sometimes until a few weeks before the event.  On top of that the last month before Tech Ed is spent dealing with speakers who have committed to come but for whatever reason can no longer keep that commitment.  So while we'd like to have the event locked down well in  advance the reality is that I was making changes to the schedule within a week of the event starting for a variety of reasons.

Then there is the issue of selling out so quickly.  I've dealt with this here, but it was disappointing that many who wanted to come to Tech Ed didn't even know that tickets were for sale until after the event had sold out.  We are already thinking through what to do next year.  Ideally we'd split the event between Sky City and the Aotea Centre (which is a short walk away) - however the Aotea Centre is closed for refurbishment and it causes other problems with things like the market place and shared sessions (e.g. Security sessions) which are popular with both IT Pros and developers.

There are a bunch of options on the table and you'll know more as we get further down the track.  Our goal is next year to not have the difficulties with selling out we had this year and to make Tech Ed available to more people. 

If you have any ideas of how we can make Tech Ed better or more accessible, feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment.

This was the last Tech Ed that I'll be organizing (unless Scott manages to pull of his threat of sending Tech Ed to the marketing team). 

We started organizing content in late January this year, and the first thing we did (as we often do) is consider which rock star speakers we should get in.  This year we asked ScottGu (as we always do) and Scott Hanselman.  Unfortunately ScottGu couldn't come, but Scott Hanselman did.  Interestingly when Scott Hanselman came back to us with his response he had just seen the "Bring Scott Hanselman to Tech Ed" facebook group (we hadn't seen the group at that stage).  Good to know we were all on the same wavelength.

Scott's sessions went well, although the typically conservative NZ audience took a while to warm up which is something many US speakers comment on.

One of the most rewarding aspects of Scott's visit was his accessibility.  He came along to some of the User Group Leader Summit that we held on Saturday, he also spent the whole day at Code Camp on Sunday (and presented) and made himself available in the market place for the Ask The Experts as well as simply being around the event between sessions.  The time Scott spent interacting with the community was greatly enjoyed by all, and something for which I personally am particularly grateful.  Thanks Scott!

The other Scott (Scott Cate) also delivered some great sessions on ASP.Net AJAX and JavaScript.  Scott has a great speaking style (speaking while he types out JavaScript code is a great feat) and has a huge amount of knowledge in his field.  It was great spending time with Scott (who was highly recommended by Scott Hanselman).

All the speakers have been fantastic to work with this year and I think they've all enjoyed it.  So, while I can't mention them all here, if you spoke this year - THANK YOU for your contribution.

If you came along this year, I hope you enjoyed it.  Personally, my highlights were talking to those of you I spoke to - there is something satisfying about spending all the time thinking through the tracks and sessions and then hearing the feedback of those who come along.  I also really enjoyed the blogger dinner on Monday night - there was a great atmosphere in the room and the conversation was great.  The User Group Leader summit went spectacularly well, which was also a highlight - and I know the community in New Zealand is going to have a great year over the next 12 months.  Code Camp was also great, but I couldn't spend the whole day there, nor could I go to the dinner.  Actually, the speaker dinner was also great fun.

Next year, I'm hoping to speak - nothing like a Product Manager who can present at Tech Ed - but I doubt I'll be involved beyond that.  Nigel will be the overall owner of Tech Ed next year, so he'll be looking for both a content manager and a keynote manager.

What did you like (or not) about Tech Ed this year?