Microsoft TechEd Concludes

I got to swing by the Microsoft TechEd for a couple of days. It was a great show - well run - attendance around the 9,000 mark.

I must admit that I was disappointed at the attendance of the web service talks. While excellent presentations like "Reliable Messaging with Web Services" were only drawing handfuls of people, talks like "Excel Macros" were drawing thousands. I guess this is the pyramid effect. Web services won't hit the mainstream until all those "Excel people" need to start using "departmental, service oriented macros" or something like that... who knows, maybe that's the killer app... Excel Macros as Web Services.

Ultimately, I do expect some mainstream app (like InfoPath or Excel) to be the driver for enterprises to get their Service Oriented Enterprise strategy figured out.