Countdown To PDC2008 : Producing a Ginormous Conference in 10 Minutes or Less!

Posted By: Dan Fernandez | Jul 18th, 2008 @ 6:16 PM | 53,401 Views | 14 Comments
Welcome to the inaugural episode of Countdown to PDC, where Jennifer Ritzinger, the PDC2008 Event Owner, and Mike Swanson, the PDC2008 Content Owner, share updates and behind-the-scenes stories about what it takes to produce a ginormous conference like the PDC. Join them, along with other members of the PDC team, and see how much information they can pack into each 10-minute-or-less episode. After all, “at the ding, they’re done”…no matter what! Got a great question? Add your feedback to this post, and we’ll try to answer it on a future episode.
Tag: PDC08
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#Jul 21st, 2008 @ 12:59 PM
ivan_
ivan_
Very nice!

... However, it would be better if you look in the camera Wink
#Jul 21st, 2008 @ 2:03 PM
Kurt Brockett
Kurt Brockett

Great job!  This reminds me of the Signal for MIX which gave me a regular check in point to help plan our presence at MIX.  Can you maybe have a "review" of Hotels, Transportation etc as many of us are in that stage of choosing those items.   If maybe not a full show maybe add an "attendee tip" each week.

Looking forward to future episodes.
-Kurt

#Jul 21st, 2008 @ 8:16 PM
Bhowden
Bhowden
>>>What am I missing

I would be interested in the complete list as well.  The first was windows 3.1 in Seattle in late summer or early fall of 1991.  I think there were 2100 attendees and it was way way more than they expected.  The catered it out of a vacant lot in down town Seattle and got a parade permit to move everybody between venues at the end of the day.  #2 was July 1992 in San Francisco for NT 3.1 with about 5000 attendees.  #3 was November 1993 in Anaheim for Windows 1995.  I think February 1994 or 5 was Seattle for NT Server 3.51.  They started to blur together for me about then.  I missed Denver.

Brian
#Jul 21st, 2008 @ 9:46 PM
mswanson
mswanson
Seriously...I love it when non-Microsoft employees correct us! Great job, Bhowden and aldie_lab. I had someone pull the data from prior years, and here's what we came up with:

  1. 8/1991 Windows 3.1 (Seattle)
  2. 7/1992 Win32 / Windows NT (San Francisco)
  3. 12/1993 Win32 / Windows 95 “Chicago” (Anaheim)
  4. 3/1996 “Internet PDC” - ActiveX (San Francisco)
  5. 11/1996 NT5 tech preview - MTS (Long Beach)
  6. 9/1997 NT5 beta 1 (San Diego)
  7. 10/1998 NT5 beta 2 – Windows Distributed interNet Application (DNA) architecture (Denver)
  8. 7/2000 First “.NET” PDC (Orlando)
  9. 10/2001 “Hailstorm” PDC (Los Angeles)
  10. 10/2003 Longhorn / Whidbey / Yukon (Los Angeles)
  11. 9/13/2005 Vista / Longhorn Server (Los Angeles)

So, that would make this our 12th PDC. @Bhowden...I'm trying to see which one was the "controversial" one.

Thanks for pointing out our error!

#Jul 22nd, 2008 @ 10:00 AM
Bhowden
Bhowden
>>>official list of PDC's

So what do your records show that the NT 3.51 Server conference in the Seattle conference center was?  I have the shirt that says PDC (white shirt with a sort of greeny / gold design on the back shoulders).  That was where they admitted that they were a bit to hasty in the 1992 pdc by saying theads were cheap and we should use as many as we want.  They back peddled, said "not that cheap", and introduced completion points for waiting on an event instead of blocking a thread dedicated to that completion event.

A couple of speakers were late because they thought they could just drive across the bridge and got stuck in traffic.

Brian 
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