Microsoft put on a show this year in Winnipeg on December 4th, 2008 by bringing the TechDays Tour to Winnipeg!  It was awesome to see so many people out at the event.  When I first heard about TechDays from John Oxley, I was pumped!  An EnergizeIT conference that would hit all the major cities? Nice!

What was TechDays going to be?  A cross-country technology conference that didn’t cost thousands of dollars.  A conference that came to the developers, and didn’t require travel and hotel accommodations.  Anyway, I was freaking excited!  I was able to send a bunch of guys from our team at Anvil Digital, and it didn’t cost that much at all!  Better yet, they got a box of Techie Crunch!

What was in Techie Crunch you ask!?  Well, the ingredients included:

• 6 Month Full TechNET Plus Subscription
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional
• Microsoft Expression Web 2
• TechEd 2008 DVD Set
• $100 Discount Coupon for Dev/SQL Teach
• Virtualization Kit
• Black TechDays Toque

What were attendees saying about TechDays 2008?  Pretty much everyone I talked to or heard talking at the coffee or food stands were amazed at how well the conference was put together.  Sessions were awesome, logistics were awesome, speakers rocked the house, and the simple fact that you could network with people that were working on similar problems and projects you might be working on, was wicked.

I’d like to thank Microsoft for giving me the chance to speak at TechDays 2008 (Deep Dive into ASP.net AJAX Extensions),  and more importantly I’d like to thank Microsoft for coming to Winnipeg.  It’s a known fact that Winnipeg has been passed on a couple times in the past for the big tours.  I think Winnipeg stepped up and showed up to the event in huge numbers for Winnipeg!  Also, since the buzz was so great, I would expect even more if Microsoft comes back next year!

Conferences like TechDays are a fantastic idea!  It really shows that Microsoft is committed to developer community, and making us successful!  A special thank you to John Bristowe for making TechDays awesome from the developer side of things!  TechDays 2008 was a highlight for me this year, as well as many of the guys that came out to TechDays 2008 from our company.  It’s one of those events that makes you proud to be a software developer!

Pictures courtesy of Barnaby Jeans