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13th June 2006

ComNet Changed for the better? You tell me.

posted in TechEd2006 |

Follow up below…

 ComNet has been a staple of TechEd since TechEd ’96 (The beginning of the [MS] internet era).   A means for attendees to communicate with each other and the outside world.   Now the focus is more on the outside communication.   Gone this year is internal email and a a list of attendees.   This makes it much harder to hook up or find people you know at the conference.   It is now literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack.  I wish I knew why they stopped this, did it have something to do with Privacy?.   Also gone are the MS Exchange public folders and discussions – Didn’t Microsoft like what they saw there?.  

There is a new approach this year is distributing the computers all over the place.   This is a really one GREAT new idea for TechEd. One of many clusters of 20 – 50 PC’s all around the convention center.   Here is a shot of one such group.   You can see they get plenty of use.

061306_0946.jpg
Follow-up…
Specifically this is what doesn’t work with TechEd Connect 
  1. There is no overall list of attendees
  2. There is no way to find attendees from a specific company
  3. There is no way to find attendees from a specific geography unless they manually edited their profile.
  4. There is no ad hoc communication ability

As I think of other reasons they should bring back Exchange, I’ll update the list.   In the meantime I did find an obscure link to a TechEd discussion forum here (requires login)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 6:55 pm and is filed under TechEd2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 3 responses to “ComNet Changed for the better? You tell me.”

Why not let us know what you think by adding your own comment! Your opinion is as valid as anyone elses, so come on... let us know what you think.

  1. 1 On June 13th, 2006, Rich Hintz said:

    Does Tech-Ed Connect give you the contact sharing functionality that you are looking for?

    http://techedconnect.leveragesoftware.com/Default.aspx

  2. 2 On June 13th, 2006, webguynj said:

    No TechEd Connect does not provide the same functionality as the old global address book that was in the Exchange environment. I can’t look and get information on real people and companies, nor is it easy to use.

  3. 3 On June 14th, 2006, Scott Ladewig said:

    Attendee discussions are available. Logon to msteched and look on the menu on the left. Attendee discussions is at the bottom.

    I never used the internal email and don’t miss it. Now you don’t have to take the time to logon to the PCs like we used to have to do. Instead just walk up and go.

    As far as having PCs scattered around the convention center, that isn’t anything new. There used to be clusters in various areas at previous TechEds. I miss having a single large CommNet area where you can sit down and spend a longer period of time to look things up or check email without worrying that you were keeping someone else from using the system. With fewer workstations available now, there are frequently people waiting to logon to do evals, get slides, etc.

    I think TechEd Connect worked fine for locating people. I’m sure privacy was the reason why it is an opt-in system.

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