Who’s who at tech.ed

Now I’ve officially joined the tech.ed planning team, I thought I’d share with a little bit about them and what they do.  I joined the weekly team meeting the other day and took my camera along so when you see them at tech.ed, you can come over and say Hi.  I’ve also added a little bit about them  so you can understand how a tiny team organises everything at the event.  Well the story starts with a core team of 6 people who started work on tech.ed Europe 09 in Berlin  just after  tech.ed 08 in Barcelona is  finished.  This team goes through all of the evaluations for the event and looks at how they can give greater value and a better customer experience and builds and designs the event to Microsoft’s strategy for tech.ed worldwide.  Then about 8 to 12 weeks before the event the broader team are engaged  Here’s what they do…

Kim Matlock – Business Owner for TechEd Europe and Worldwide

As the WW TechEd Business owner – I’m responsible for the tech.ed experience globally and specifically the final throat to choke for TechEd Europe. 🙂  I’m in training for the 2010 Disney Marathon in January with my two sons.

Neil Evans –  Project Director

Neil has overall responsibility for the agency team, it’s broad deliverables and the budget for Tech.Ed.  Improving the customer experience and designing an event that offers greater value to the attendee and exhibitors / sponsors  is also within Neil’s remit

Aine McElwee – Project Manager

Aine (pronounced “On-Ya” if you’re unsure about Irish names) has overall responsibility for ensuring the successful operational delivery of Tech.Ed across all areas – venue services, IT, AV, registration, ground services

Roz Kara – signage and collateral

Roz produces the floor plan and design, produces all of the maps of the venue that are in your delegate badge and your conference guide, as well as all of the map stands around the Messe Berlin.  She also looks after the  advertising banners, delegate bags t-shirts, pens, badges and badge holders.

Sam Craig – Speaker logistics

Sam looks after all things relating to the speaker. She creates the speaker agreement for any non Microsoft speakers, she creates their contracts, books their accommodation and flights and she helps James answer all speaker questions related the event.  She also looks after the speaker registrations

Kristina  – Event manager

Kristina manages to make sure that the whole team stick to their deadlines- she  does critical path analysis and manages the site logistics and keeps us all in check

Rachel, Jo, Suzy – Sponsorship and exhibition and TLC Rachel, Jo and Suzy are the Sponsorship and Exhibition team.  They manage sponsors, exhibitors, Microsoft product groups and all of the excitement that creates the tech∙ed Europe exhibition Hall!

Nicola Bartley – Event marketing

Nicola looks after demand generation and works to drive registrations.  She works with 40 different audience  marketing managers across Europe to drive registrations in each country and runs the broad email messaging which goes out to about 2 million people throughout the event lifecycle and is localised into each European language

Neil Palmer – Community

Neil is the link to the community for example the MVP and User Groups and looks after the ways for attendees to connect with their community influencers.  He looks after the Facebook page, the meeting points for you to meet up, the community lounge so you can make long lasting valuable connections with the community from the online experience through to onsite conversation

James Dent – Content and speaker manager

James is responsible for the sessions, ensuring that we have all the rooms filled at every session slot, that we have the correct sized rooms and the correct level of great content, whether breakout sessions and Interactive. James also owns the budget for the speakers and keeps the track owners following the correct process

Kate Smith – Production manager

Kate looks after technical set up of the rooms by which I mean the AV, sound, room environment, lighting etc.  She also looks after all of the room managers and the sound technicians at the back of the rooms – everything to house the whole show in the breakout rooms and interactive sessions etc.

Claire Mosley – Logistics Manager

Claire looks after the hotel accommodation for delegates, food coffee etc, she also liaises with the venue for food and beverage provisions and works with local experts to ensure that you get the best experience, She also works with the event local onsite staffing assistants and the cleaning of the event location before opening and throughout the week.

Dan Coulson – Video Producer

Dan is responsible for filming the Tech Talks and panel discussions to be posted to Tech.Ed online

And there’s me – Content owner.

I’m responsible for the technical content for the breakout sessions, the Interactive sessions and the Hands on Labs.  I’m also responsible for making sure that you have a really great keynote, with some amazing announcements and some great technical content too.

So a tiny team considering what they do.  Do stop by at Tech.ed and say hello and thanks to them for putting such an amazing event together 🙂