What They’re Saying About TEC
“I am pretty tough when it comes to quality standards, and in relation to events, TEC is the only event I attend. In fact, I paid for the TEC 2008 event out of my own pocket rather than miss it. Of course I didn’t want to miss the 2009 event either, so I would have paid for it myself if my company hadn’t been being willing to cover the expense in the end.”
–Victor Weenink [Engineer]
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“I’m definitely looking forward to The Experts Conference. I have attended before and it truly is the best Active Directory conference around. Glad to see the conference has been expanded to include Exchange and Sharepoint!”
Art Szczesiul
Customer Solutions Engineer
Unified Communications & Collaboration Solutions
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“I’m in the airport, exhausted after another fun-filled Experts conference. TEC (The Experts Conference), formerly known as DEC (The Directory Experts Conference) is put on by Quest, focusing on Microsoft & Microsoft partner technologies for directory, email (new this year), identity and access. … At TEC, you are riding elevators with people who are doing the same things you are doing. You are eating lunch with them. You see them over and over again in various sessions. Every conversation you overhear is about something that matters to you. You begin to recognize faces, enough so that if you see somebody later that was at an earlier session, you can ask their opinion on it. Small talk with strangers isn’t about the weather. It’s talking about who you work for, and what kind of deployments you have under your belt, and what your horror stories are.”
–Pamela Dingle, Bonsai Identity
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“For the first time in several years I’ve returned home from a conference completely brain fried – well done Quest!”
– Ian Murphy
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“The best analogy I have for TEC is the video for “No Rain” from Blind Melon where that funky little bee-girl runs around seemingly confusing people as she dances around dressed like a bee in tap shoes. Identity and Access is just like that, we spend all year telling people about it, customers eventually get it, relatives just smile, and spouses do their best, but at TEC we find ourselves surrounded by people speaking the same jargon even if their native language is different, our acronyms are harmonic.”
— Craig Martin, Oxford Computer Group
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“I think they are well on their way to putting on a TEC conf that will become well known to the Exchange community and definitely has the right things going for it to become a major conference for Exchange.”
– David Espinoza, Program Manager, Exchange, Microsoft
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“When Gil (Kirkpatrick) asked the audience who had to jump through extra hoops to get to TEC, several hands flew up. Those who went, however, had an excellent, varied and carefully balanced programme waiting for them.”
– Felix Gaehtgens, Kuppinger Cole
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“TEC 2009 is now over, and what a great week it’s been. This was the first year that Quest were running the show, and as far as I could tell it was very much business as usual for the conference, with the welcome addition of an Exchange track to the usual Directory and ILM tracks. This conference is well-known for emphasizing practical, BTDT sessions from consultants working in the field over marketing and “slide-ware”, and in that aspect it did not disappoint – and while the shock of the new ILM 2 release date did put a dampener on day one for me, at least the conference also gave me the opportunity to speak directly to Microsoft ILM product team people on the subject.”
– Carol Wapshere, LANexpert SA
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“I am sitting in a session at The Experts Conference (formerly The Directory Experts Conference), an annual conference that was originally started to support those who manage Active Directory. However, TEC has been expanded to include Microsoft’s identity and access management technologies, and this year it has expanded to include a complete Exchange-oriented track, as well. Lots of very good, technically-oriented content on managing Exchange and other Microsoft technologies, although I attended an interesting session on e-discovery issues that would be useful for legal counsel to attend. TEC is underwritten by Quest Software and has been assembled and managed very nicely. None of the sessions has a salesy feel in the slightest, but instead are run by consultants and Microsoft MVP-types. … All in all, a very good conference that should be on the short list of meetings to attend for anyone who manages Microsoft technologies.”
– Michael Osterman, Osterman Research
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“I just got back from TEC 2009, an excellent conference that I have the privilege of speaking at, where I always get into great conversations with a ton of incredibly smart folks.”
– Brian Puhl, Microsoft
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“What an event! This was my first time at TEC and I had very high expectations, all of which were surpassed. Three days in Vegas has really sparked a lot of new thoughts and ideas.”
— Marcus Walshe, Atlas Consortium
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“I gotta tell y’all – you are missing a great conference here. Brett Shirley has given two knock’em dead presentations on ESE. The AD Chalk Talk with the AD Team was worth the price of admission. David Espinoza spoke about the Exchange development process and is a heck of a nice guy. Evan Dodds speaks tomorrow morning and has contributed to several talks so far. Ilse gave a great talk on AutoDiscover and taught me things I didn’t know. I recommend you seriously consider it for future conference planning.”
– Michael B. Smith, MCITP:SA,EMA/MCSE/Exchange MVP
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“TEC was the best techie conference I’ve ever attended and it was great to chat with the SMEs on MS topics. It was great to have the ability to ask technical questions and get the answers on the spot without any miscommunication or re-explanation. I hope to attend every year, and given my role as the Active Directory lead, this would be the first conference on my list to attend every year.”
– Mike Dina, Active Directory Lead, BG-Group
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“Once again it was a very high quality conference, with a very nice agenda, high level content and presentations. Another important component of the TEC conference is the ability to access the product teams (in my case ILM) directly, which is extremely valuable to me. I enjoyed the “Chalk and Talk” and the “Birds of a feather” very much. Selecting the sessions wasn’t easy, because of the amount (simultaneous) interesting sessions on the agenda, but I look forward to get the slides and presentations of the sessions online. I’ve learned a lot!”
– Peter Geelen, Senior Consultant, MCSE:S, MCSA:S, CISA, MVP ILM, Traxion
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“The Experts Conference is the most worthwhile industry conference I’ve ever attended. If I only attend one conference each year, this is it.”
– Paul Rich, Microsoft / Senior Architectural Engineer
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“The speakers were superb – everyone I heard was an expert and WELL SPOKEN – it is nice to have presenters that are knowledgeable AND know how to present!”
– Heather Eikenberry, US Department of Defense
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“Good selection of speakers and sessions. … Thank you for keeping up the good work!”
– Tony Yoo, IKEA
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“It’s a great networking and knowledge sharing event. The sessions are very learnfull and meaning full to put in to practice on your job and to be able to look forward to the next few years as to what you should advice which direction management should take.”
– Alexander Visser, KPMG
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“I wanted to thank you for those 3 days which were remarkably organized, full of interesting content and with people as nice as they are passionate. I hope I will participate in the next one!”
– Yvan Kuntzmann, Alcatel-Lucent / Windows Systems Architect
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“This conference is for serious…administrators, managers and those looking to leverage the strengths of the directory.”
– Dave Kearns, Network World’s Directories Newsletter
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“Quest CTO Gil Kirkpatrick promises that every attendee will come away knowing more about Active Directory then they did when they arrived. That’s a pretty tall order, but one which Quest delivered on at last year’s event. I don’t foresee that it’ll have a problem doing that again this year.”
– Dave Kearns, Network World’s Directories Newsletter
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“I wanted to thank you and let you know that you put on a great event. The anecdotal feedback was absolutely 100% positive from everyone I talked to. The organization of the sponsor booths to the rooms worked well as it made the customers interact with the sponsors. The coffee kiosk was a great idea too. It kept us (especially the internationals who’s time change was more severe) close to the sessions and around the Quest booths. :I appreciated being a part of DEC 2008. It truly was an honor to be a part of such a great event. I can only hope I have the same feedback from the surveys of my session.”
– Mark Foust, Microsoft
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“I learned about DEC from a colleague in the Active Directory space, and have attended two of the conferences so far.
DEC is aimed at a much higher technical level than other conferences and is a great networking opportunity. In addition to having good access to the presenters, it’s even better to mix with other Active Directory colleagues in the trenches and trade information on what works best in real-world deployments.”
– Josh Russell, Volvo / Systems Engineer
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“Best conference I’ve ever attended! – looking forward to next year.”
– Paul M. Schulte, Medtronic, Inc. / Principal IT Technologist, Intel Server Architecture
