{"id":331,"date":"2015-05-08T11:33:36","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T16:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nukeitmike.com\/blog\/?p=331"},"modified":"2015-05-08T11:33:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T16:33:36","slug":"the-good-and-the-bad-of-microsoft-ignite-imho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/2015\/05\/08\/the-good-and-the-bad-of-microsoft-ignite-imho\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good and the Bad of Microsoft Ignite (IMHO)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have been attending a Microsoft conference each year since 2003.&#160; (I think I missed one year because of a child being born close to the same time as the conference.)&#160; Until last year, the conference that I went to was the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS).&#160; I am an infrastructure guy so that conference seemed to be pretty relevant.&#160; TechEd would also have been relevant, but I didn\u2019t attend TechEd until last year when the combined MMS and TechEd.&#160; <\/p>\n<p>This year TechEd and several other conferences were all combined into one giant conference, Microsoft Ignite.&#160; This is the first year for this conference.&#160; As a first run, with a conference that has 23,000+ attendees, it hasn\u2019t been too bad.&#160; I am somewhat disappointed in the logistics.&#160; Chicago is a great city and the dedicated bus route between the hotels and the conference center is a great idea.&#160; Not running any buses for half the day isn\u2019t a great idea.&#160; <\/p>\n<p>With a conference that lasts a full week and covers such a broad range of topics, you can become mentally exhausted.&#160; Being able to go back to your hotel room, take a nap, make phone calls, answer natures call, etc. is a key factor in surviving the conference.&#160; With a conference of this size, in a convention center that is the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/McCormick_Place\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">largest in North America<\/a>, going to sessions an different topics can be a challenge.&#160; <\/p>\n<p>There are a lot of talented people at Microsoft.&#160; I enjoy going to the conferences and hearing what they are working on, what the plans are, what I should be focusing on to be ready for the next thing they release.&#160; I enjoy hearing about the successes, and how the non-successes are handled.&#160; I manage infrastructure.&#160; My interests span a wide range of topics covered at this conference.&#160; <\/p>\n<p>The good:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is Microsoft<\/li>\n<li>The presenters are very talented and knowledgeable people<\/li>\n<li>There is a lot of information <\/li>\n<li>They are getting better at working with customers every year<\/li>\n<li>I like the direction they are going with their products<\/li>\n<li>Closing party \u2013 I think for the number of people, and how it was laid out, the closing party was actually pretty good.&#160; <\/li>\n<li>Second screen \u2013 I did spend one afternoon, and Friday morning watching and listening to sessions from my hotel rom via the second screen feature.&#160; <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The bad:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Selling \u2013 I am at a Microsoft conference, to hear about technologies that I already believe in.&#160; Can we cover the technical parts a little more, and the sales part a little less?&#160; If there is a track for a technology, can we not cover the same sales information in every session, for 30 minutes (at least) of the 75, and focus more on the technology?<\/li>\n<li>Session length \u2013 Most of the sessions I went to could have been handled in about half the time if the sales part had been left out.<\/li>\n<li>Announcements \u2013 Most Microsoft conferences have announcements.&#160; That is part of the fun.&#160; This time, the announcements seemed a little less spectacular, and a little less fun.&#160; It seemed that the announcements weren\u2019t given the spotlight as much as in previous conferences.<\/li>\n<li>Food \u2013 I don\u2019t eat much conference food.&#160; This time I didn\u2019t eat any, so this next statement is strictly hear say.&#160; I spoke to a person who claimed to eat pretty much anything, and he said the conference food was very disappointing.&#160; Even for conference food.&#160; <\/li>\n<li>Crowded sessions \u2013 almost all the sessions I went to were very crowded.&#160; I went to a variety of topics, so it wasn\u2019t just a particular topic.&#160; With 23,000 people, maybe there needed to be more sessions.&#160;&#160; Although, we brought 5 people, and there were at least 2, maybe as many as 6 other people that \u201cshould\u201d have come.&#160; For us that is a significant number of people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All in all, I hope that some of the issues I have with this year are resolved for next year.&#160; I will come back next year, but I won\u2019t be as excited as I was in years past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been attending a Microsoft conference each year since 2003.&#160; (I think I missed one year because of a child being born close to the same time as the conference.)&#160; Until last year, the conference that I went to was the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS).&#160; I am an infrastructure guy so that conference seemed&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/2015\/05\/08\/the-good-and-the-bad-of-microsoft-ignite-imho\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Good and the Bad of Microsoft Ignite (IMHO)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,17],"tags":[68,120],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-info","category-microsoft","tag-conference","tag-microsoft","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcW544-5l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nukeitmike.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}