Editors' Thoughts

TechEd Aggregation Day One Thoughts

Editors' Thoughts — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 10:40:00 GMT

1. To start, my first observation about TechEd Day 0 and the evening keynotes is not very many people are blogging about their experience. This leads me to think we have an issue with Wireless in the keynote room, you guys aren't blogging, or you didn't attend. In our case, we didn't attend. Every year in the past the Keynote has been the biggest event for bloggers, but that was when it was scheduled in the morning and people were excited about the day. Maybe we will see more session coverage this year instead.

2. This is the first year I have sat in the Hands-on-Lab area with WiFi!!!! Amazing, the CommNet team and done an amazing job. On every table here they have a switch just incase the wireless gets spotty, and I believe that was the number one complaint about TechEd Orlando.

3. Outline Blog posts! During aggregation, our approach is to find the best and most unique quote in a post to make sure we don't republish the same information over and over, but instead publish your thoughts and drive bloggers to you. When you publish an Outline blog post (I, II, III, 1., 2., a., b.), we don't have too many options for quotes and your readers only get a skeleton of the event and not your actual thoughts. What I suggest is to give at least 2 sentences of your thoughts about the event before going into your outline.

Flickr Account for the TechEdBloggers.net Editors

Editors' Thoughts — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 23:39:00 GMT

John and I launched a TechEdBloggers.net Flick Account so you can see what we do during our aggregation of an event. Off to bed so I can wake up at 3:30am to leave for Boston.

- Jeff Julian

Packing for TechEd - Swag Happens!

Editors' Thoughts — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 22:57:00 GMT

I thought I would share a TechEd tip while I am packing for the trip. Always remember when attending these events that SWAG HAPPENS. Right now, most of you are filling your bag with 10 pairs of clothes (4 you will never wear), swimming trunks you will never use, and an endless supply of dress socks that will stay folded the entire trip. You then lay on top of your bag to get it closed hoping the security at the airport won't open it and go through your stuff because it will be impossible to shut unless you do it yourself. Then you arrive in Boston and spend a week in the Expo Hall, roaming for meaningless pieces of marketing materials, but you can't get enough. Before your flight home you visit the magnificent Company Store where you buy every member of your family a Microsoft shirt they will never been seen wearing. Shorting after you arrive back at your hotel you start packing to go home, but wait, you don't have any room for the new stuff you acquired!!!! Now you can go to the airport and buy a bag marked up 4x the retail price or do what I do, take out 4 of the outfits and pack an extra bag. One that will fold up nicely and can be filled with Swag, books, shirts, and whatever else you bring home from Boston.

In Summary (for you lazy readers), pack an extra bag!

- Jeff Julian

Welcome to the TechEdBloggers.net Editors' Thoughts

Editors' Thoughts — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 09:14:00 GMT

Hello and Welcome to the Editors' Thoughts Blog for TechEdBloggers.net. TechEd is next week and we can hear the excitement from the registered bloggers attending TechEd. Since April, John and I have been working with InDepth Technology again as the Aggregating Editors for TechEdBloggers.net and this year is definitely one of the most exciting. Today we are at 277 registered bloggers and we plan to see that be near 400 as the event is closer and begins. If you are attending, you need to register your blog to get your voice out there and let the world know what you think of this event and these sessions.

So what does an Aggregation Editor do? We read posts! Reading takes up at least 75% of our time. John and I go through over 1000 posts a day each and our job is to pick the best and most relevant posts to aggregate to the TechEdBloggers.Net site. The products we use are RSSBandit and InDepth's Aggregation Utility. After many trials of aggregators, RSSBandit is the most stable and performant aggregator we used. At different times during the day at TechEd, we import an OPML file for MSDNEventsBloggers.Net, TechNetEventsBloggers.Net, and TechEdBloggers.Net. This file is quite large, over 500 feeds, and is broken up for feeds that I read and feeds the John reads. We need to upload these files to find bloggers that register after our last aggregation to make sure everyone is getting an opportunity to speak if they are registered. RSSBandit does this very well! Here is a screen shot of Bandit in action during aggregation.

- Jeff Julian