I’m guessing someone blogged it last week (I gave up on catching up on blogs since I was almost three weeks behind), but there’s now a free home edition of xmlspy. Many of the cool features, including the schema editor, are available. However, the web services support, primarily the WSDL editor, remain only a part of the enterprise edition.

I keep wondering if someone in the community will build a WSDL editor with VSIP, esp. one that supports WSDL 1.1 and 2.0. I know CapeClear has their WSDL editor, but I find the explorer style view much less usable than the xmlspy-style graphical view.

I updated my theme to reflect the brand-spanking-new Tech·Ed 2005 logo, which looks suspiciously like the now-obsolete Tech·Ed 2004 logo with different text. Luckily, there are palm trees in Orlando and San Diego.

Kidding aside, I will be at Tech·Ed next year, again deeply involved in the Architecture Track.

BTW, I ended up watching the three episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! on the flight home from Tech·Ed. I made this a seperate post since I wasn’t sure how much the MSDN folks would appreciate the “foul” lanugage on Architecture Center. Amazon spells it “Bullsh*t” but I don’t get the whole changing one letter thing. I mean, if you’re offended by the word “Bullshit”, are your really going to be placated by a fucking asterisk? 😄

It’s been days, but I’m finally getting around to posting my Tech·Ed wrap-up. I had a great time as a speaker, track owner and attendee. My Data in SOA talk ended up with an 8.0 score and our track overall scored a 7.5. Not bad for our first time out!

My boss’s immediate reaction was to raise the bar for Tech·Ed 2005, which is fine by me as I have got some specific plans for an even better Architecture track next year. I learned a lot swimming in the deep end of the pool, such as:

• We could have been much better integrated with the other tracks, esp. the Dev track. Being involved in the planning from the start (Tech·Ed 05 content planning starts in earnest in the fall) should help out a bunch here, as will knowing the other track owners from this year’s event.
• We could have managed our track better. But hey, it was my first time! Things like speaker meetings, more content reviews and ensuring speakers go to training all help out here. Also, I’d like a little less churn on the management side next year. I took over co-track ownership duties when one of my teammates moved onto another team.
• I mentioned that several people commented that there should be “more code” in the track. Techie types like sessions that are heavy on the hands-on practical and code is about as hands-on practical as it gets. However, while I am on record as being an architect with a lower case “a”, I don’t think architects are just senior developers. It’s a different skill – one that I want to see broad knowledge of, but still different. Architects work primarily in models, patterns and process, not code. So for the Architecture track next year, I want to see “more models, patterns and process”, not “more code”. Watch for a focus on VS2005 Team System for Architects, Whitehorse and MSF.

What do you think should be in next year’s Architecture Track?

My session yesterday went very well. Current score is 7.95 which makes it the second highest session from the track so far – John’s Realizing SOA session currently scores an 8.17 and there are several other sessions in the high 7′s. It’s very interesting to watch the scores change. For example, the score for the Metropolis Discussion has gone from 6.8 to 7.08 since yesterday.

After the session, I had a full cabaña session that felt like it could have gone on for hours if I hadn’t cut it short in order to make it to SeaWorld for the attendee party. The party was fun. I spent the early part of the evening hanging out with the overall owner of this year’s Tech·Ed, next year’s Tech·Ed, the content owner for Tech·Ed and several of the other track owners. Then, a la PDC, I hung out with Peter and started conversations with whoever walked by. Not as many spontaneous conversations as PDC since the audience at Tech·Ed is only half developers, but still very interesting. Also, having the event in San Diego drew lots of families. Attendees could buy tickets to bring their family members to the SeaWorld party, and it looked like many people took advantage of that opportunity. (Something to keep in mind for next year.)

It’s amazing how much work goes into this event. Planning for Tech·Ed 2005 (Orlando, FL) & 2006 (Boston, MA) is well underway and they are just getting started on Tech·Ed 2007. Thankfully, content planning hasn’t started yet. There’s a big internal MSFT conference in July and many of the Tech·Ed track content owners also own content for the internal conference, so I think content planning won’t start until at least August or September. I was a late addition to the Tech·Ed 2004 virtual team – I’m looking forward to being involved much earlier with next year’s Tech·Ed. I learned a ton this year both by thrown-in-the-deep-end experience as well as observing my fellow track owners who have done this many times. I’m very happy with this year’s track, but I know next year will be even better for the Architecture Track!

Today should be a easy day hanging out in the cabaña, avoiding mail and having low-key conversations with customers. I fly out tonight – I get in late, but I just found out I’m got upgraded to first class so at least I’ll be comfy. The big question is whether I will watch a movie or start hacking around with the May VS2005 preview. Given my exhaustion level, I’m guessing I’ll go for a movie, but I’m setting up a new VPC for VS2005 just in case.