Thanks to Michelle Fallon, Susan Roper and Chris McNulty of 
What I Really Liked
- Not speaking. I know this might sound funny coming from me. For those that know me they know I typically speak somewhere every week. However, I have to say it was really nice. I was able to attend sessions purely as an attendee and really focus on the speaker, their content and their message.
- Not speaking allowed me the opportunity to get up close and personal with the speakers.
- And finally it was great to get spend time really soaking in the whole event. I have more than a few blog posts and ideas in the works from the people I spoke with and the sessions I was able to enjoy.
A few of the speakers I really enjoyed
I spent the lions share of my time in the SharePoint track. However, there were parallel tracks on other technologies. The speakers I mention below are people I have known for a while. I have read their books and blog posts, but I had never had the pleasure of sitting in their sessions.
- Ben Curry - He had a set of questions that were spot on for eliciting responses that will help shape a successful deployment. I'm benchmarking (aka stealing) a few of them.
- Mark Rackley .. As I tweeted earlier in the week ... Mark was engaging, interactive, and practical with 7 demos that attendees could start using immediately.
- Sadie Van Buren – She spoke about a Maturity Model for SharePoint. Which is a missing piece of the SharePoint engagement model and one that I believe every SharePoint enthusiast should be aware of and utilizing. I'd like to thank Sadie for sharing this with the community. Follow #spmaturity
- Chris Givens - He has a great ability to speak in business terms, yet dive deep (I mean DEEP) into the details needed to deploy some really slick SharePoint sites.
What I would like to see at the next TEC
- First off ... To see myself on the speakers list.
- Second, an All Up keynote. Where the people from the disparate tracks on Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, Identity Management, and others can get a chance to interact and hear a common message that all of them likely face. I see it as somewhat of a "soft" forced march to help all of the attendees connect a little more. Note: there were evening events that pulled people together.
- Third, I know this is the Technology EXPERTS Conference, but I would like to see more business elements mixed into the message. The SharePoint track had several tracks on Governance, Change Management and Social Computing. However, they were focused on the technical elements ...which is as expected. What I would like to see is a few sessions on the WHY businesses are doing these. Perhaps as a parallel track for the Business Experts.
I want to reiterate my thanks and appreciation for the invitation from Michelle. It was great to spend time with the Quest team and the speakers. I was happy to get to see much more than I usually do at the varied events I attend throughout the year.
Kudos to Quest and the whole team for making TEC a great event. I'm already looking forward to the next one.
Note the speakers for the Governance, Change Management and Social Computing were Susan Hanley, Erica Toelle and Shadeed Eleazar. Their Twitter aliases are tagged in the links above.
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