I've never been much a LinkedIn maven. I suspect I'm like most people and I keep adding people to my LinkedIn network, but I never really use it for anything. But I got an InMail from Eric Aarts today that made me think I need to start poking my nose into LinkedIn (and Plaxo for that matter) a little more. It turns out you can post events on LinkedIn, and people can indicate whether they are going or not. I suppose you can then use that information to set up meetings and so on.

Eric pointed out that TEC 09 is on LinkedIn now. You can check it out here.

Pam Dingle made some nice comments about TEC in this blog entry.

Interestingly, there will be several shorter keynotes for TEC 09 Day 1, one from each of the product teams. I think this will work out better than the single 90 minute keynote we have done in the past.

The last couple of months have been a bit of a blur. Quest acquired NetPro towards the end of September, and since then I've been traveling and meeting other parts of the team(s), and gradually figuring out what my job should be. I'm officially part of Quest's Active Directory and Identity Management business unit, and I report to John Milburn who heads up the BU. John's a really great guy who came up through the systems engineering and product management route, and we get along just fine. My role at Quest is similar to what I was doing at NetPro, with the main difference that I now have more direct involvement with the product planning process, which is something I've been missing over the last couple of years. I will be working with a team of PMs and architects to investigate new technology opportunities for Quest, as well as act as the "public face" of the business unit. That means I get to continue meeting with customers, writing articles (and books!), speaking at conferences, and continue in my role as host of The Experts Conference.

I have had nightmares (well, that's overstating it a bit. Maybe "bad feelings" is a better term) that Quest marketing would take over TEC and turn it into a drivel-laden corporate megaphone event. But Quest marketing has held true to their word that they will leave TEC alone, and Christine, Stella, and I get to run the conference the way we think it should be run, as a community-building educational event. I can't tell you how happy I am about that. In fact Christine and I were working on the opening ceremonies today, and if everything works out according to plan, it's going to be hilarious.

TEC 2009 is actually two conferences: TEC for Directory and Identity (formerly DEC), which will be focused on Microsoft IdA technologies, and TEC for Exchange, which will be focused on Exchange and Unified Communications. Registrations for TEC/D+I are doing great; we're ahead of where we were this time last year, and the pre-conference labs are filling up quickly as well. A lot of the "usual gang" will be there: Guido, Laura Hunter, James Booth, Jorge, Ulf, Joe Kaplan, the Tribe of Brians (Puhl, Desmond, and Komar), etc. Dean Wells is a question mark right now given his new role at Microsoft, but I'm pretty confident I can make a good case to Dean and his boss that Dean should make an appearance, or even better do a session. joe's situation is perhaps more nebulous; HP (like a lot of companies) is clamping down on travel. But we go through some flavor of this drama every year, and I'm hopeful joe will be able to make it as well. TEC without Dean and joe would be like a baseball game without beer and hotdogs... still enjoyable, but not quite right. (The question as to whether Dean is the beer or the hot dog is left to the reader.)

Registrations for TEC/Exchange are a little light for my liking. I expected that would be the case; after all, NetPro wasn't really known in the Exchange community, but Quest definitely is. We've got a pretty solid lineup of speakers as well: Ilse van Criekinge, Michael B. Smith, Evan Dodds, Brian Posey, and Brett Shirley (yes that Brett Shirley) for starters. We've got a great keynote speaker for TEC/Exchange as well, but I can't say who it is till the press release hits. Hint: Think large scale, hosted Exchange. So pass the word on to your Exchange buddies. TEC/D+I has been one of the best conferences around since day 1, and TEC/Exchange will be likewise. Check out http://www.tec2009.com for more information.

Some of you have heard (or seen) that we've renamed DEC to The Expert's Conference, or TEC. Why? Well there are several reasons:

1. DEC is the acronym for the Directory Experts Conference. But DEC isn'just about directories, and hasn't been for several years. It includes ADFS, RMS, ILM, etc., etc.

2. We are also producing an Exchange expert's conference, along the same lines as DEC. But EEC and GEEC (for the Great Exchange Experts Conference) aren't great acronyms. OK, truthfully, I like them. Christine on the other hand just threw the back of her hand to her forehead and sighed dramtically. I've known Christine long enough to understand the non-verbal signal for "That ain't happening."

3. "The Experts Conference" has a good acronym: TEC. Sounds sort of, oh I don't know, technical. At least it does to a marketing person. Somtimes you have to go along to get along, know what I mean?

4. I got tired of confusing Wook. "Do you mean DEC my former company? Or DEC the conference?"

So we now have TEC for Directory and Identity, formerly known as DEC, and TEC for Exchange, formerly not known as anything, because, well, it's new. Make sense? No? Then start reading at the beginnig of the post again until you get it.

TEC/Directory and Identity and TEC/Exchange are separate conferences, but they will be colocated in 2009. TEC 2009 is scheduled for March 22-25 at the Green Valley Ranch Resort in Las Vegas (or Henderson for people with finicky travel policies) Nevada. So everyone who spent the entire year griping about Chicago in 2008, you can just shut the he** up .  We will also be hosting TEC Europe September 14-16 in Berlin (Germany, not North Dakota).

What are we going to cover? For AD, we'll focus more on real-world WS 2008 AD deployment and operational topics, what's coming in AD for Windows 7, plus the usual how-does-it-really-work type sessions. There will be lots of coverage for ILM '2' and ADFS '2' because both products will be just about ready to RTM. We will continue our coverage of RMS (which seems to be picking up a lot traction this year), and AD/LDS and GPO management will figure prominently as well. There will be 4 pre-conference hands-on workshops on Sunday, too.

For Exchange, the bulk of the sessions will be related to Exchange 2007, including Powershell, unified communications, architecting for performance and scalability, a MAPI deep-dive, and troubleshooting. We might be able to include some E14 content as well, but that will depend on the product team. We are planning on two pre-con hands-on workshops on Sunday as well.

The main TEC website is at http://www.tec2009.com, and the call for papers is now open for both conferences. Please get your session proposals in soon, because registration for the conferences goes live August 25, and I'd like to have the agendas pretty well firmed up by then.

If you have any questions, drop me an email.

See you at TEC!