So, another TechEd is over. Last TechEd I worked in the "Ask the Expert" booth, this TechEd I gave a lecture on developing for the Vista Media Center. The lecture was in the first day, so after that I have the time to go to sessions and most important to meet people. My session score was not high, but since it was my first lecture in TechEd Europe, it is O.K. Most of the comments that I have got were about dissatisfaction about issues in the Media Center SDK and tools, such as no tool such as Expression for Media Center.
Noam was busy; he was helping in the Hands on Lab. He had to be there every day for about 3-4 hours. But answering so many questions probably made him experts in all new .Net 3.0 – 3.5 and Silverlight.
Yochay has two great lectures on Speech Recognition, he made it so fun. We had to go and buy him a Pizza for the lecture. After his lecture we talked with the team that develops the various languages support. They said that they need many speech samples in order to add a language support. I hope that in TechEd Eilat Microsoft will take a "Voice Donation" to establish the needed database.
The highlight of the TechEd for Noam, Yochay and me was the football game – Barcelona vs. Glasgow Rangers. It is amazing, 120,000 people in one stadium, an experience not to forget.
Next event – Dev academy II, I will give two lectures on Windows Server 2008. I met Jason Olson. He was the expert in the Windows Server 2008 ATE, we talked a lot and I've got some answers on the more complex things about transactional NTFS.
Thank you for coming to my Media Center for Developers lecture. I hope that now you have a better understanding of the Media Center platform and its SDK. As I promised here are some links that you have asked for:
Windows Media Center SDK Download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A43EA0B7-B85F-4612-AA08-3BF128C5873E&displaylang=en
Visual Studio 2008 Media Center Project Templates:
http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/10/04/5281542.aspx
Information about some of the new Vista Media Center Extenders:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/hp-mediasmart-hdtv-with-vista-media-center-extender/
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9785957-7.html
If you are coming to Tech-Ed Barcelona and you wonder what to do in the first day at 16:00, then don't. Come to hear my lecture about Media Center development. I will show you what Media Center is and you'll understand why you should create a Media Center Client to your application or Web site. Then I will present the various ways to create Media Center Applications. If you are familiar with MCE development then this lecture is probably not for you.
See you.