Conference Eve

We’re on the eve of the SOA & Business Process conference, hosted by the BizTalk Server team. What a long strange trip it’s been to get here. When we were just doing the BizTalk conference (as in years past) it was pretty easy to make decisions based on the preference of the BizTalk team itself. This year we’ve expanded the conference to address the larger cross company (actually cross industry) concerns of Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management. For an event of this magnitude to be valuable, input from many different product groups and other groups both inside of Microsoft and out had to be taken into account. Over the next four days only time will tell but I think we’ve put together a compelling line up of keynote and breakout sessions. It’s certainly the conference that I’d like to attend. :^)

Beginning with the opening reception tonight at Parlor Billiards in Bellevue and running through the next 4 days I’ll be reporting on events at the show here on the blog. Judging from the attendance numbers I think the lion’s share of the BizTalk community is going to be here but just in case you couldn’t make it this year stay tuned. I’m also happy to respond to special requests for information about stuff happening at the conference. Post your questions in response to this posting and I’ll get right to it.

One more thing to close out this posting; Kris Horrocks deserves a huge pat on the back for coordinating the conference this year. Based on experience in coordinating previous year’s shows it’s not the easiest thing to accomplish and this year’s show could not have happened without many tireless hours of work on Kris’ part. There are many, many other people who have put in hour upon hour of hard work to get it ready and I’ll leave it to Kris to mention them but if you are attending the show make sure to stop by and speak to Kris before the conference ends. I’m certain he’ll appreciate it.

Regards,

mike woods