Registration for TechEd 2006 is Open

Registration for Microsoft TechEd 2006 in Boston opened yesterday. They’ve made a few changes for this year. The morning keynotes, traditionally on Monday and Tuesday, have been moved to Sunday night, back-to-are the keynote speakers. Moving the keynotes opened up time for an additional 40 break-out sessions.

They’ve also added TechEd Connect, a way to identify other attendees with similar interests and give you an opportunity to interact with them. They offered this at previous conferences, but I don’t recall it being offered last year. I’m glad to see they’re making it available this year. Working in an academic environment, I find it valuable to find out what peers at other Universities are doing.

The Thursday night party is going to be at Fenway Park. I’m guessing there will be a musical guest. Not sure what else you would do at Fenway. Haven’t been there since the early 80s, so it’ll be interesting to go back, albeit not at a baseball game.

So not I’m trying to figure out where I want to stay. Hotel rates, even the TechEd rates, are pretty expensive, but that’s expected for downtown Boston. Last night I put together a list of all the hotels and identified which ones charge for Internet, parking rates, whether they have a pool, etc. It helps with the decision process I hate being surprised when you check-in and find out you thought you were getting one thing and the reality is altogether different. In case other people find it useful, I’m posting the list here. Since hotel web sites make it difficult to find all the details, I actually called every hotel, so the info should be pretty accurate. However, I don’t take any responsibility for any changes or errors. Use at your own risk!

Here is the map Microsoft provides showing the hotel locations. There are two hotels listed on the map that weren’t listed on the TechEd web site (and therefore aren’t in my list), the Seaport Hotel and the Ritz-Carlton Boston Commons: TechEd 2006 Hotel Map