Tech-Ed Swag from the 1990s

In 1993, when Windows 3.1 was Microsoft's flagship operating system, the first Tech-Ed was held in Orlando Florida. The attendance of 3,000 surprised organizers who were ill prepared to handle so many people. Registration was paper-based and long lines ensued. Still the conference was a success and consisted of condensed classes in 17 major areas including FoxPro, Access, Visual C++, Visual Basic, Word Basic, Windows, and SQL Server. Of course there were plenty of festivities.

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The conference CD was a very nice addition as it contained content from the many presentations.

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The CD was powered by an application called Microsoft Viewer, which ran on Windows 3.x

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The presentations, while effective, were pretty primitive looking by today’s standards.

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Not sure if there was an official Tech-Ed briefcase, but based on the old business card in one of the pockets, this one came back from the 1993 conference.

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Inside the briefcase I found a notepad with the Microsoft Education Services logo on it. If you look closely, you can see the full page logo watermark.

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In 1994 Microsoft held the second Tech-Ed in The Big Easy. The next version of Windows, code named Chicago, was a very hot topic at a lot of the sessions as was Windows NT. Bill Gates provided the Keynote, which was hosted by Kevin Nealon of SNL, who did a technology-based version of his infamous Weekend Update gig. And, as you can imagine there were a lot of festivities on nearby Bourbon Street and at the huge Ernest N. Morial Convention Center where Microsoft staged an indoor Mardi Gras parade complete with floats.

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Again, the CD was packed with information and examples from the sessions. Only this time there were Word documents and PowerPoint presentations.

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Windows Chicago was a very hot topic at many sessions offered at Tech-Ed 94.

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The basic briefcase featured the Tech-Ed logo, which appeared to be a satellite.

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The pen/highlighter came with the badge and other conference material.

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As attendees left the convention center after one of the keynote speeches, Microsoft representatives were standing at the doors handing out free copies of the new Access 2.0. The software box was pretty hefty as it contained paper manuals and floppy disks.

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The third Tech-Ed conference was again held in New Orleans; exactly one year after the second. By this time, it had been revealed that Chicago was officially named Windows 95 although the actual release was still five months in the future.

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The conference CD provided slides from the 230 sessions that were presented at the conference.

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This slide was from one of the many a presentations covering Windows 95.

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This zippered CD case can hold a dozen CDs and came in the matching briefcase.

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Included in the conference material was the Developer’s Black Book, which contained pages and pages of information about various Microsoft services and programs.

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The pen/highlighter came with the badge and other conference material.

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I picked up this neat little Microsoft mouse keychain at one of the Microsoft booths in the exhibitor area.

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The neat thing about this mouse keychain was that when you squeezed the mouse buttons, a red light appeared—handy for finding a lock in the dark.

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One of the festivities at Tech-Ed 95 was the Neville Brothers concert. It was supposed to be an outside event and every attendee was issued a seat cushion to make sitting on the ground or on the bleachers more comfortable. Unfortunately it rained that evening and so the concert was held indoors at the convention center.

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The Tech-Ed 95 briefcase appeared at first glance to be pretty much the same as the 94 briefcase.

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However, a zippered pouch on the back revealed straps that allowed the briefcase to quickly be converted into a backpack. A nice relief for tired arms once the case was full of heavy conference material.

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The last day of the conference was the official release date of the infamous Microsoft Bob and throughout the conference center, Microsoft representatives were handing out free copies.

I never opened mine and it is still shrink wrapped—just like the day that I received it. (I wonder how much it would be worth to a collector.)

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The back of the box showed many of the characters that were a part of the Microsoft Bob Interface.

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By 1996, Tech-Ed had become so extremely popular that the conference sold out very quickly. To keep those who couldn’t get a ticket to the real event happy, Microsoft put together Microsoft at the Movies, which delivered two days of events and sessions, including the keynote address by Bill Gates, at neighborhood theaters in the US and Canada..

In the keynote Bill Gates stated that the Internet had become a real phenomena and that the Tech-Ed theme was going to be about how to take all the rich things about the PC - the development tools, the audio, the video - and apply them to the Internet world. 

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The Tech-Ed 96 briefcase was extremely sturdy and was made with heavy black canvas accented with high quality leather.

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Along with the briefcase, all attendees received these nice caps, which I remember wearing to the main entertainment event. Microsoft had rented out the Universal Studios theme park for an exclusive evening event which included free access to everything in the park.

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The pen/highlighter came with the badge and other conference material.

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This mousepad came in handy at the time because it made Web addresses and phone numbers easy to find.

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For the Tech-Ed 97 conference Microsoft returned to Orlando and put on a spectacular show with great sessions and exciting events at SeaWorld and Planet Hollywood. Microsoft talked about new features in Windows Memphis, such as multi-monitor support, support for broadcast TV, and the Windows Script Host. Bill Gates also declared that Windows NT was now a mainstream operating system.

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The briefcase was very nice and was built more like a suitcase in that it had light internal frame and could stand up on its own.

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The luggage-like ID tag for the briefcase was made of high quality leather.

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The notepad that came with the conference material was made from of heavy stock paper and featured the conference logo as well as a watermark of the showing the satellite image.

As you can see, a company called Synon was one of the major sponsors. In fact, there is a YouTube video by Synon showing highlights from Tech-Ed 97.

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The pen that came with the Tech-Ed 97 conference material was unique—it was made of recycled material. The main tube was cardboard and the clip was made of wood.

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At the end of the SeaWorld event, Microsoft representatives stood at the gate and gave out T-shirts to everyone.

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At Tech-Ed 97 Microsoft announced two new services for developers—the Microsoft Developer Network Online Membership and the Intranet Solutions Center. I still have the Microsoft Developer Network pin.

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At some point during the conference, I signed up to receive an Internet Explorer 4.0 CD. In the Fall of 1997, I received this nice Commemorative Edition CD in the mail.

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For Tech-Ed 98, Microsoft once again returned to New Orleans, but unfortunately I didn’t. However, from what I read, it sounded like a spectacular event. Microsoft showed off a pre-beta version of Internet Explorer 5.0 and announced that Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2 (the future Windows 2000) would be available in late July or early August.

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Even though I didn’t go, I still found a Tech-Ed 98 conference logo.

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The last conference of the 1990s, Tech-Ed 99, was held in Dallas, Texas. It was a huge conference with over 10,000 attendees. There were so many people that the main meals were held in a parking garage of the conference center. They put down green indoor/outdoor carpet and set up miles and miles of tables with white table cloths. It was actually quite nice.

Microsoft demoed a Windows 2000 Data Center Server running on an Intel 8-Way Pentium III Xeon System. Windows CE was another hot topic at Tech-Ed 99.

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This conference had so many sessions and so much information that it required 2 CDs.

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Being in Dallas and all, one of the main festivities was a county western concert featuring Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. You were supposed to wear this bandana to get into the spirit of things.

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Somewhere along the line, I lost my Tech-Ed 99 briefcase but I still have the baseball cap.

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The pen/highlighter came with the badge and other conference material.

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Also included in the conference material was a nice pin.

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Did you go to any of the Tech-Ed conferences during the 1990s? Do you still have any of the great Swag? If so take some pictures, post them on the Web (like at Flickr or SmugMug), and then post a link in the Discussion area. Even if you don’t have pictures, drop by the Discussion area and let us know what you recall about your Tech-Ed experiences.

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