Common Courtesy for TechEd Breakout Sessions

A couple suggestions for people attending the breakout sessions here at Tech Ed.

Set Your Phone/PDA/Blackberry/etc. to Vibrate — C’mon people, all of these portable devices have a vibrate feature. If you are smart enough to develop complex software applications and maintain corporate computing infrastructure, I think you can learn how to set your phone to vibrate. I find it to be quite disturbing, especially yesterday when one person let their phone keep ringing and ringing and ringing. If you can hear it, we all can hear it.

Take Conversations Outside — I’ve been in a few breakout sessions where people start carrying on conversations in the room while the speaker is taking questions. If you’re there to listen to the questions, then you shouldn’t be having a conversation. If you don’t care about the questions and want to talk to someone, take it outside. Some of us would like to hear what other people are asking.