Tech-Ed Eilat 2008 - Summing up Day 1

It's been a delightfully exciting day here at Microsoft's Tech-Ed Eilat 2008. Having left Tel Aviv on the 07:00am flight, I arrived at Eilat early and was able to quickly check into my room and prepare for the Bloggers' Briefing held by Microsoft.

The Bloggers' Briefing made it clear that Microsoft is taking its bloggers community very seriously and with great respect. Coordinated by Michal Nissenzweig, the logistics for bloggers included a sweet gift bag of schwag, a gift coupon that the bloggers can bestow on their readers (more on this tomorrow), a handful of flixwagon enabled 3G phones for some of us and a lot of much appreciated respect for all of us. Thank you MS.

The lectures that I focused on today were in the SOA and S+S track. The first, by Manu Cohen Yashar was an introductory overview of the relevant .net 3.5 technologies. Manu, as always, was inspired and driven to open our eyes to what we have to learn. Personally, I was disappointed by the brid's eye view in this lecture - but I should have known better as this was a 200 lecture.

This was followed up by David Chappell's discussion of "SOAP vs. RESTful" web services which showed us that it wasn't "vs" as much as "when to use which". Mr Chappell is a grade A speaker and listening to him was educational, fun and inspiring. I really need to give his talk a post all by itself and I look forward to hearing him again tomorrow.

I skipped the evening's meeting with partners party in favor of an excellent local French restaurant, and I don't regret it. I highly recommend Josephine's at 3 Eilot st. for your next dinner here in Eilat. The delicious entrecote accompanied by pistachio salad were a fit ending for an excellent day.