Day4 and 5 at TechEd Barcelona

Well this might come a bit late but this is the first time since my last TechEd update, I got more than 5 minutes of free time. A lot of things are going on that kept me pretty busy, I promise I’m going to blog about them at some point 😉 in the near future. Let’s get back on TechEd for now.

As mentioned in my last TechEd post, Wednesday night (Day3) was Microsoft’s regional delegates party. We ate at Red Lounge and if you notice the picture closely you’ll see that everyone’s plate is empty. That’s because although the food was tasty, the portions were very small. So small in fact, that at the end of the night when most of the delegates returned home some headed out to find more food ;-). Me and a couple of other guys though, were having such a good time drinking wine and chatting that we decided to stay there and have a few more drinks and ended up back at my hotel at 3.30 in the morning.

Next day, after having two aspirins for the terrible headache the previous night left me, I headed up to the convention center and had my final day on the Ask the Experts booths. I then had lunch (probably the best of the week – Hamburger and french fries) and attended the evening sessions.

The session that was really interesting was the one about the new Dynamic Data Controls by Shanku Niyogi. ASP.NET dynamic data controls are part of a powerful, rich new framework that lets you create data driven ASP.NET applications very easily. It does this by automatically discovering the LINQ data model at runtime and deriving UI behavior from it. A scaffolding framework instantly provides a functional web site for viewing and editing data.

After that I took the metro and walked around the city for a while and managed (thanks to my wife that gave me good tips) to see most of Gaudi’s work and get a glimpse of trully beatiful Barcelona before heading up for dinner at a great place called “El Asador de Aranda” where I had the dinner of the week.

The walk I had on Thursday, convinced me that I had to see more of the city. So on Friday Day5 of TechEd, I decided to skip all sessions and scroll around the city till 17.00 that I had to get back in order to catch my flight back home. I got to see more of Gaudi’s work, Camp Nu, Barcelona’s home football field, shop football T-shirts and had a tour at the city’s most interesting sights using a tour bus.

And that was it… just hope it could last a bit longer…