My overall view of SoTec 2009 was that I was impressed! There were quite a lot of knowledgeable and approachable speakers setup for the two days, many well versed in their areas of expertise. The unofficial theme of the event was social and traditional networking, Project Management, and job-seeking. This last one is just a sign of times. What I liked most about SoTeC was the level of energy. Everyone was upbeat. It seemed all attendees expected a brighter future. They were also interested in many of the tracks and didn’t seem to waste much time outside of the sessions. I happen to be sitting in the halls when one speaker had to cancel on Saturday. What I noticed was that the hallways were mostly empty in between sessions: everyone was attending one in their preferred track.
My only recommendation to the conference organizers was to have an added track for purely technical discussions, like what Mark Kennaley presented on Saturday during the last hour of the conference, “SDLC 3.0 – Post-Agile Pragmatism for Lean IT Value Delivery” and Harout Katerjian’s, “Do’s and Dont’s of SharePoint.”
In the weeks ahead I’ll post my notes from the various sessions and share particular points of interests.