SQL Advisor

Missed TechEd? Catch Up Like You Were There

Many TechEd Conference sessions can be accessed online.

• By David Ramel
• 06/25/2012

The TechEd North America 2012 conference was so chock full of presentations, workshops, labs and informational sessions that many developers who attended probably couldn't cram into their schedule everything in which they were interested.

And if you couldn't attend, you might be feeling some information envy, afraid that you're falling behind the curve in learning the latest and greatest.

But fear not. Microsoft offered a great service by recording the sessions and putting them up online 48 hours later.

In fact, even though I couldn't attend in person, I signed into the TechEd site with my Windows Live ID and identified sessions I wanted to check out to develop my own little "virtual" schedule. (You can also quickly sign up for a TechEd account only). I checked off the events in which I was interested and they were added to "myTechEd Portal," from which I could download slides and watch videos.

For example, I just had to visit my portal, click on "My Content" and I was presented with the list of my chosen events, complete with links to the videos and slides. Being the Data Driver, of course, I was mostly interested in database-related presentations, so I watched "The 12 Reasons to Love Microsoft SQL Server 2012," "Business Intelligence and Data Visualization: Microsoft SQL Server 2012" and others. Not all sessions are available online, though. For example, I couldn't watch "The New World of Data: SQL Server and Hybrid IT," but I could download the PowerPoint slides.

Even though the event was held last week, I can still add sessions to my schedule and have them available for reference in one place. And the best part is, you can, too. One way to do that is to go to the site, click on the top-level Content menu item and then the Catalog item. That brings up a list of everything, categorized by Track, Speaker, Product/Technology and more. You can still check the box next to "Database & Business Intelligence" and get a list of 92 sessions. Each and every session is listed, with icons to indicate availability of videos and slides.

You also can see the sessions for Microsoft SQL Azure and Microsoft SQL Server under the Product/Technology filter. The former, for example, lists seven sessions, and every one has an accompanying video.

Don't forget that you can also find many (maybe all?) of these sessions on the Channel9 site. I actually prefer that because you're offered the choice of viewing the videos online or downloading them in a variety of formats and quality levels (and even audio-only) for viewing on different devices, such as your desktop or (gasp!) even an iPad (yes, that's listed on the site under the "High Quality MP4" option).

I'd write more, but I just found "Migrating SQL Server database applications to Windows Azure Virtual Machine" on Channel9, by Guy Bowerman and Evgeny Krivosheev, length 1 hour, 2 minutes, 29 seconds.

Happy viewing (hopefully soon on a Surface, not an iPad!).

What was your favorite database development video from TechEd? Share your suggestions here or drop me a line.