Looking back at TechDays 2009 in Antwerp, Belgium

The Microsoft TechDays 2009 conference in Belgium was held from 10 till 12 March. A little more than 1.650 unique individuals came to Antwerp to attend one of 83 different sessions.

• Want to see how it looked like? Here are some pictures of TechDays 2009.
• Added 26 March 2009: And here is the TechDays 2009 compilation video.
• Quite some twitters about TechDays: both on the Belgian TechDays as well as all TechDays conferences around the world. Apparently more developers than administrators are twittering. @unexxx and @aralves are hoping connect with more IT pro’s on Twitter.
• Did you know a Microsoft team in Redmond is organizing a “Virtual TechDays around the World” on April 1st during 24 hours? Don’t expect the same experience as attending the local conferences, but they signed up quite some great speakers.
• Katrien posted some info of the Brussels Girl Geek Dinner @ TechDays side event.

Here are a few blog posts from attendees and speakers:

• Martijn Spelt posts in Dutch on the TechNet track
• Danny Zeegers post in Dutch about the SharePoint preconference session
• Unexpected posted several items in Dutch about the TechNet track
• Laurent Bugnion shares some thoughts on TechDays
• Paul Lorena writes about the ASP.NET MVC presentation
• @martius makes fun of the power outage in the entire Metropolis complex in Antwerp. Luckily it didn’t last too long.
• Virtual Ief gives a short overview of things he remembers from the TechNet track
• Alain Hufkens writes about the MSDN keynote at TechDays
• Tommy Carlier would like to see some sessions of TechDays posted Channel9
• Jeroen Budts came to TechDays for the first time. 
• Added 23 March 2009: Gill Cleeren explains “the road to the keynote”

At this point, most of the evaluations are in. We listen to our attendees:

• 95% wrote that their time at TechDays was (very) well spent;
• Attendees were happy with the content delivered – almost all sessions scored above our the required minimum score;
• Also about the food and drinks:
  • Quite some people found the sandwiches too fancy and prefer more simple food;
  • Developers and IT pro’s are hungry after attending sessions – the caterer obviously didn’t expect people were so hungry;
  • We definitely must make all the rest rooms easier to find;
  • Attendees don’t like to get their drinks in a glass instead of the bottles (unfortunately the caterer ran out of bottles and had to give drinks in glasses on Thursday afternoon
  • Last year a lot of people asked for healthy food (fruit) instead of cakes and cookies - apparently people want to have both cookies and fruit.
• Many people like the infrastructure of Metropolis and the location of the venue in Antwerp; some commented that they prefer Ghent as location for TechDays.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 19, 2009
  please next year back in ghent

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2009
  Thanks for the referring Tom, much appreciated! And congratz on the event, because it was excellent. The few, small negative remarks (like the glass, the sandwiches,...) are serious non-issues when compared to all the positive that can be said about the sessions, the organisation... Techdays in short ;-).  

• Anonymous
  April 20, 2009
  This year, I was not in Antwerp because of the location. I found the location of Ghent better and it was a surprise for me that Antwerp was now chosen as location. Even Brussels was a better choice.

• Anonymous
  April 22, 2009
  Antwerp rules, great location and also accesable for dutch people (like me) :)

• Anonymous
  April 22, 2009
  One thing concerns me, they promissed to send a conference DVD of all sessions to attendees, but so far I haven't seen it, hope it's still send out.

• Anonymous
  April 22, 2009
  Don't be concerned, the DVD is in production and should be sent out mid of May to all attendees... ;-)

• Anonymous
  July 15, 2009
  Btw Tom, my Twitter link is wrong :-) I'm at twitter.com/unexxx, not /unexpected as that one was already taken by spammers :s

• Anonymous
  July 15, 2009
  fixed.