Well teched 2006 is over and I must say it was great to go and see all of the stuff that is not ready for production. Seriously I wish there was more content on some of the current technologies.
I was lucky enough to catch up with some people who actually provide some very useful information. The guys from the Microsoft.com Operations team we awesome, talk about some honesty on what works and what to pitch... It was very refreshing. The patterns and practices team had some great experience to share as well. There were other as well, but in most cases I found myself talking to a microsoft employee that was trying to sell me on a product that is not ready for production and might be out in the next six months to a year and a half from now. Dont get me wrong I am excited about the upcoming releases of .Net 3.0, Longhorn server, and VS.Next but I really hate having to look at all of these beta demos which can barely run.
If Microsoft could at least provide 25% of the content of teched on technologies that are currently being used in production environments today, that would be great. I have a job to-do today. I can't explain to our business partners that we will have a solution for them in a year or so, depending on Microsoft's release schedule. I need to know how to push the limit of the technologies that are supported in production today....
Here are some links for some of the new technologies that are comming out.
All thinkgs IIS http://www.iis.net
.Net 3.0 http://www.netfx3.com/
MSDN Wiki http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com
Power Shell http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx
Here is a link to somthing that might help you today.
Microsoft.com Operations Team - http://blogs.technet.com/mscom/default.aspx