Tech Ed - Who do you want to see in New Zealand?

I'm starting to think through speakers for Tech Ed 2007 and I'm interested in getting your help.  If you could get any technical speaker in Microsoft to New Zealand who would it be and why?

I'm expecting lots of requests for Bill Gates, but assuming we can't get him, then who'd be your second choice?

Either leave a comment, use the email link or respond in a blog post (linking to this post) to send me your ideas :-)  I'll put up a post with all the responses in about a weeks time.

Technorati tags: TechEd

UPDATE: I'm mostly interested in sessions, although depending on who it is we may also use them in the keynote.  Thus technical speakers are mostly what I'm keen for suggestions on :-)  Thanks for the feedback I've got so far - keep it coming :-)

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2007
  If Scott Guthrie feels like coming again that'd be great...he'd very good at presenting technical content and he knows his stuff. Steve Riley is one of the very few people I've ever seen who makes security interesting and entertaining, so that'd be another one... Ari Bixhorn just for shear entertainment value (or is it true that he's now Steve B's speech writer?). And if we're really going for a speaker wish-list...given that LINQ and C# 3.0 (and yeah OK VB 9) will be coming to a boil around then, any chance of luring Anders over to put everybody in the picture?

• Anonymous
  January 15, 2007
  I absolutely agree with Kevin's comment; even before I read who he chose I was going to suggest both Scott Guthrie and Ari Bixhorn.  Scott is a very smart man who works on the leading edge of some very good technologies.   I haven't seen Ari for a couple of years, but I was extremely impressed with his speaking style and his technical knowledge.

• Anonymous
  January 15, 2007
  Darryl Burling Steve Riley Ron Jacobs Pat Helland Nic Wise Andrew Dixon Lukas Svoboda Michael Howard Joel Spolsky Don Box Ari Bixhorn

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2007
  What about Bill Gates, has he ever spoken at any TechEds around the world?

• Anonymous
  January 22, 2007
  Hey Daryl, I'm up for it even though I am not on the list ;-(  Perhaps I could do an impression of Pat / Don / Ari in a 3 part comedy technical demonstration? -Ray

• Anonymous
  April 09, 2007
  Great news last week for those of you in the web development space, thanks to the great feedback from