Slew of Microsoft Releases Means Busy TechEd Conference

Microsoft’s annual TechEd North America event kicks off Sunday in New Orleans with a full line-up of training aimed at professional IT staff and developers.

The conference offers a total of 1,018 sessions broken down into 22 different tracks from Application Server and Infrastructure to Windows Server. As usual, Sunday is reserved for the pre-conference seminars, with the main event starting Monday.

Special developer-related training on Sunday includes titles like “Multiparadigmatic C#,” “Microsoft .NET Framework from Scratch,” and “The Agile Methodology Demystified: Implementing Agile in Your Organization.”

Monday’s kickoff keynote speaker is Bob Muglia, president, Server and Tools Business. You can expect at least an announcement or two if this year’s TechEd holds true to form from previous years.

Following the Monday keynote is a new type of session Microsoft calls “foundational.” This consists of three simultaneous sessions featuring Jason Zander, Garth Fort, and Neil Leslie. Topics include “From Concept to Reality with Developer Platform and Tools,” and “Extending Business Productivity to the Cloud.”

With new releases of Microsoft Office and Visual Studio, you can bet that sessions with related content will be crowded. The key to getting into the better sessions is to know which ones you really want to see before you get there. Microsoft has an efficient scheduling tool where you pick the sessions you have an interest in and then prioritize them. You can search by keyword, speaker or track. Once you have your schedule set you can sync it up with Outlook 2007.

SharePoint developers will have many sessions to choose from. Searching the session catalog with the keyword SharePoint brings back a total of 145 possible sessions. You’ll only have six to cover if you’re just interested in the developer track. If you want the whole SharePoint story, catch the Visual Studio 2010 sessions (44), work through one of the 12 developer Hands-on-Labs, or maybe one of the 70 Office 2010 related sessions.

Check back to SharePointBriefing.com for news from the conference next week.