I was recently invited to speak on a pre-day for faculty and students at TechEd Australia, held on the Gold Coast. The plan is to write up a little bit about each day, although it might not be up the same day, depending on internet availability.

So today was Academic Day, in particular, for faculty members, who had been invited to hear about what students want, directly from students. (That was the theme)

A couple of weeks previously, Andrew Parsons (@MrAndyPuppy), the local Academic Developer Evangelist asked me to do a presentation on Windows Phone 7, with a split between the experience promised by Microsoft, and developing for the phone. After I learned that I really cannot do a reasonable phone demo in 10 minutes, I cut it down to a demo of pre-made code.

Either way, some big highlights arose today. I managed to get Andy to let me see and use a developer phone, and I must say, awesome, however I cannot go into specifics, nor can I take photos unfortunately.

The other highlight was the awesome keynote presented by Michael Kordahi (@delic8genius) with a special appearance by August De Los Reyos (@augustdlr) presenting his experiences developing User experiences on the Surface, and even the Windows key on the keyboard. Some awesome demos for a theoretical Foxtel experience (Cable TV in Australia) that uses all devices, including a Surface table (jeez they love that thing). They then showed off the big devices for this year, Kinect and Windows Phone 7, and seeing this in person was really awesome. I cannot wait for next week when I will get to try out a device. (Unfortunately they took the device back to Sydney right after the keynote.)

Photos will follow as I can sort them out, and maybe videos depending on what I’m allowed to post, and what connection I can get.

Exciting days remain ahead, I have to present Windows Phone 7 to students on Thursday, and of course I must experience the great TechEd sessions.