Tech Ed, Schmeck Ed

A couple of my work buddies are at Microsoft Tech Ed this week as they have been every year for a while now. It's been a long time since I've been to a national conference. I just don't see the value in it--the signal to noise ratio always seems so low.

There's so much valuable information available online now. Don't waste your time at big conferences--if you boil down the content, most of it is really designed to get you hyped about the upcoming products the company wants you to buy (in this case, Microsoft). That tends to not be useful; it just keeps the fast train of technology speeding along. Slow down! You find out about those upcoming products once they really become relevant.

If you insist on partaking of the conference's content, do it online. Many conferences (especially Tech Ed) now offer videos, presentation slides, and blogs for non-attendees on the web. It's a lot easier to find the meat of a seminar by looking through the notes or fast-forwarding through the video than sitting trapped in a full day of sessions.