<p>This last week was quite exciting! I didn&#8217;t have much time to post stuff as I wanted, most of the times it was from my TyTn, others from a borrowed-for-one-minute laptop. I also haven&#8217;t included photos so the posts might be hard to read, but if you are interested, you can check <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/tags/mspptteched2007/">Flickr</a> or <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/susie.vilaca/">PicasaWeb</a>. This post contains my impressions and conclusions of this week that was pretty remarkable.</p>

<h3>About the city</h3>

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<p>Barcelona is a pretty nice city, with a lot of monuments, especially Gaudi&#8217;s art and lots of gardens. Metros every 3 minutes and <a href="http://lh6.google.com/susie.vilaca/Ry75LqY15uI/AAAAAAAAAFM/On6cSJB8CPE/s144/DSC04027.JPG">Starbucks</a> every corner astonished me! There was also a great cultural variety and that special people at <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/susie.vilaca/Mspptteched2007VisitaABarcelonaNoFimDeSemana/photo#5129311163287725954">Ramblas</a>.</p>

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<h3>About the guys</h3>

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<p>They were amazing company (excluding the fact they didn&#8217;t want me to return&#8212;) and pretty interesting folks! There was the <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/brunomiguelsilva/1886205266/">goodies girl</a>, the <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/brunomiguelsilva/1899506621/">always-on-the-pc geek</a>, the <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/susie.vilaca/Mspptteched2007VisitaABarcelonaNoFimDeSemana/photo#5129313233461963938">pervert</a> , the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/brunomiguelsilva/1900353402/">Responsible guy</a> and the <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/susie.vilaca/Mspptteched2007VisitaABarcelonaNoFimDeSemana/photo#5129314865549537714">girly socks fetishist</a>.</p>

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<h3>About the event</h3>

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<p>Microsoft did in fact organized a pretty good event! No logistic problems, there was a lot of sessions at the same time, so I always went to those I like the most and in every slot, a <span class="caps">HTC</span> touch was offered. Too bad I wasn&#8217;t one of the lucky ones!</p>

<p>The presentations were pretty good and they were managing them according to our feedback. They did thought about the &#8220;users&#8221;! They also brought independent speakers (from dev, blogging and communities). They didn&#8217;t brought from the competition, but thinking again, it wouldn&#8217;t be such a good idea, as I have experienced.</p>

<h3>About Microsoft</h3>

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<p>From TechEd I notice that Microsoft is really improving and upgrading into this Web2.0 age. Open APIs for live services! Popfly&#8217;s mashups for everyone! <span class="caps">REST</span>, <span class="caps">MVC</span> pattern, ActiveRecord, History support for <span class="caps">AJAX</span> and a bunch of things that developers want to use. They are also worried about Firefox and Safari support!</p>

<p>From what I learned from the experts they are also starting to worry about non-office end users (I might write about this soon) and worried about the <a href="http://alcidesfonseca.com/blog/137">experience they are giving the user</a>.</p>

<h3>About the After Event</h3>

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<p>One of the highlights of the event for me was the two nights we went out. The first one with all the MSPs from the <span class="caps">EMEA</span> and with some speakers and Microsoft staff. We went bowling and as we didn&#8217;t care too much about it, we learned a lot about other countries with each others. The second night was with <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/brunomiguelsilva/1918416992/">all the Portugueses there</a> and I met very interesting people and even from Coimbra!</p>

<p>I really want to thank Microsoft for giving us this opportunity to improve both technical and personal experience. There aren&#8217;t that many companies offering this trips!</p>