Blog List

On the 22nd August John and I participated in Technology Take You Anywhere 2008, an event to help encourage school girls into Technology careers.  We were placed in the Multimedia space up against the dance mats, game bikes etc. We devised a bit of a game where we’d show the girls an image of a famous landmark and they had to find it using Virtual Earth, an XBox controller and help from their school mates.

Today we have so many choices for how we are going to share photos on the web, not only a variety of web sites but also many different display technologies. I took the opportunity to try a few of the new Microsoft products out: DeepZoom using Silverlight2, Photosynth, HDView and of course Windows Live Photo Gallery to stitch a panorama. Finally I’ve added a little YouTube video of the event itself.

28th of August we had our first Brisbane Girl Geek Dinner. We had some great feedback and will start planning the next event very soon so watch this space.

A few people have asked me how Teched NZ compares to Teched Aus. The two conferences share most of the big name session speakers. I thought I’d share my observations on the things that were most noticable to me:

1. “The Bag”
2. Venue Location
3. Exhibition Hall
4. HOLS
5. The vibe
6. The food
7. Locknote

Today was the final day of TechEd NZ. We did our session on our favourite bits of Windows Live. Unfortunatly for me, the internet crashed and burned which 1. makes it hard to show things and 2. Doesn’t give a nice story when everything grinds to a holt. Luckily I’d cached up lots of Virtual Earth tiles so that still worked but a lot of other services i.e. showing the IM control just wasn’t going to play ball.

Luckily the final prize draws weren’t till the closing party so other than food we only had 3 other v. interesting sessions to compete against i.e. Mobility smackdown giving away fancy phones. I counted 37 people in the room which I thought wasn’t too bad for lunch time.

Went to a bunch of sessions and it’s interesting to see who well the crowd here gets behind the local speakers!

Day 2 of TechEd NZ was pretty busy. For some reason at events we seem to present on the last session or near the end of the day so usually nobody knows who we are. Because I spoke at the Girl Geek Dinner on Monday night things were really different today. I ran into lots of people that had been at the dinner and had lots of good conversations which was very cool.

Went to a bunch of sessions today. Scott Hanselman’s lunch session on making your blog suck less was really good..but it was only 30 mins…I just wish I had seen the 2 hour version John got to see at the blogger's dinner.  Unfortunately I haven’t worked out how to be in two places at once yet.

Tomorrow we’re doing our session. We’ve got a lunch time spot competing against the Mobility Smackdown AND the marketplace prize giveaways for all the exhibitors so we may end up with a very small audience.

Today was a big day..Opening day – Keynote, lots of Scott Hanselman talks, Ask the Experts, and of course the Girl Geek Dinner.

The NZ keynote started with current and opposition parties talking about their broadband plan which were both well prepared and presented (and i’m not usually into watching political speeches). I must admit I was expecting to see a cool Live Mesh demo so was a little disappointed :(

I went to a bunch of sessions a couple of the “big ticket” ones -  MVC and Astoria – Scott Hanselman – both were well attended and went over very well.

Also went to Software as a Service – Anna Liu – I’ve not seen Anna present before and it surprises me because she is a REALLY good presenter.

Got up early for a MVP breakfast. Was good to meet a few of the local MVPs and Microsoft staff and of course catch up with Rose and Nick. Then we skipped out in the morning as it was a really nice day to check out the sky tower. It’s the tallest building in Southern hemisphere and has an awesome view. John made good use of my camera so there’ll be some pics coming soon.

Then it was off to Code Camp NZ. Good to see they made use of the international speakers for Teched like Scott Hanselman and Jonas.

Tonight there was a speaker dinner were I got to meet the Amanda, Brenda and Johanna who are all presenting at the Girl Geek Dinner on Monday night.

We flew out to New Zealand this morning. First flight on Pacific Blue. Somehow we got stuck at the back of the plane surrounded by families with small children and were seated in front of a family with a child that enjoyed throwing things, kicking the seat and smacking my head. There wasn’t any in-flight entertainment so good time to try to sleep. So it wasn’t the most enjoyable of flights.

First thing I noticed here was petrol is close to $2/litre!

After a long wait and no news the very cool Photosynth was released today for you to build your own synth. There is a great (40min) video on channel 10.

Here is some interesting links I found so far: