Almost on a daily basis I notice that Windows CE is growing. The number of companies that start new projects and decide to use Windows CE as an operating system is definitely increasing. The operating system itself is definitely maturing. With Windows Embedded CE 6.0, Platform Builder is nicely integrated in Visual Studio 2005, we don’t have to struggle with a 32 process limitation and 32 (or 64, depending on the way you look at the OS) MB of addressable memory / process. Looking at technical conferences we are definitely growing as well, although I am not sure if I like the direction we are moving to. For the last three years we had our own conference, dedicated to Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile development. MEDC was world-wide definitely the place to be if you wanted to learn more about these products. MEDC was growing steadily, but still small enough to not be overwhelming. The last two editions of MEDC USA, nicely staged in Las Vegas were a pleasure to attend. On a little smaller scale, this was true for MEDC Europe as well. TechEd is a whole different story. This conference has grown tremendously over the last few years, with over 10000 people attending TechEd USA and over 6000 people attending TechEd Europe. Even though it is great to attend TechEd, the conference is overwhelming at the same time. Breaks between sessions must at least be 30 minutes to allow such huge crowds to move from one room to another, sometimes a 20 minute walk. At TechEd, choices are sometimes difficult, with 32 parallel sessions at the same time to pick from. Despite TechEd being split into a developer conference and an IT Pro conference this year, it still is huge, covering all technologies Microsoft is offering. On one hand, it is nice to have tons of technical sessions grouped together at one conference. Being especially interested in Windows Embedded products, I now also have the chance to attend some entirely different sessions, maybe an in-depth session about a language like C#, maybe a session around Windows Vista Internals or many other things. On the other hand, I will miss the sort of intimacy of a smaller conference like MEDC. One of the nice things about MEDC is that you probably knew most of the speakers and, with everybody interested in the same technology, exchanging experiences with attendees was very easy. This is going to be harder at TechEd. With many more people attending and a few of those probably not interested in Windows Embedded technologies, how do you find the folks you want to hang around with during breaks? I for one person, have very mixed feelings about us being integrated in TechEd. It seems that we are mature now, since we will have a complete Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile tracks at TechEd. However, I will miss traveling to Las Vegas for our own dedicated conference. Of course we have to wait and see how attendees are reacting on us being a part of TechEd. I hope that everybody who is interested in Windows Embedded technologies will find us in Orlando between June 3 and June 6. Once TechEd is over, I hope to write another column, informing everybody that TechEd 2008 has been the best Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded Developer Conference so far. Of course only time will tell. Until that time I will cherish lots of great MEDC memories.