Achieve The Unthinkable at Tech-Ed 2006

NEW DELHI: Tech-Ed

2006, the six city IT event from Microsoft kick-started today in the capital city. The theme of this year's event is 'Achieve The Unthinkable' and has an interesting line-up of technical sessions on developer tools, mobile and embedded technologies, WinFX, databases as well as specially designed sessions for software architects.

At this year's Tech-Ed Microsoft gave a preview of several new things in the pipeline like Windows CE 6.0 codenamed Yamazaki; LinQ- a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations; Windows Communication Foundation — next-generation framework for distributed computing; .Net MicroFramework — the

.Net Framework for very small devices; WSE - Web Services Enhancements for Microsoft .NET; Office 2007;

Windows Vista etc.

The attendees have the option of choosing from a collection of technical tracks as well deep-dive sessions being hosted by geeks from MS' Developer Platform

Evangelists (DPE) team. To give attendees a feel of new technologies being talked about by the DPE's an 'experience zone' has been set up at the venue where developers can take a look at the new technologies and can also try hands on putting together few lines of code to better their understanding.

To help the attendees' breakout from the rigmarole of these highly technical sessions MS has set up a 'Community Zone' where they get a chance to take part in small contests and win goodies. According to Deepak Rajendran, from Microsoft, "The community zone is set up to add a bit of fun element to otherwise highly technical sessions; we want developers to relax during breaks and get prepared for the next session. This place also gives them a chance to network and make new friends at the end of each day. There are a lot of small games, contests that give them a chance to win goodies." Attendees can also carry home memories of this year's Tech-Ed by getting a caricature from an artist sketching dexterously on a tablet PC using his light pen....tech here also!

In its tenth year in India and thirteenth year globally, this year's event has been well received; attendees are happy that MS is talking about a lot of new and interesting things unlike last year where the focus was mainly on

SQL Sever 2005. This year MS has added Pune to its list of cities and is expecting a registration of close to 7000 numbers from 4000 plus registered last year.

After wrapping-up with Delhi on July 7^th, the event will travel to Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, finally concluding in Bangalore on June 24. Starting with Pune this year, the company may target more tier 2 and tier 3 in the future.