I arrived home this weekend after a trip to Barcelona for TechEd Europe. This year TechEd Europe was split into two events. Last week was the TechEd for developers; this week is the one for IT folks.

In terms of turnout and quality of content, it was the most successful TechEd Europe ever. The star of the show (IMHO) was ASP.NET AJAX, which packed the house for virtually every session. Several members of the ASP.NET AJAX team were there, including Shanku Niyogi, Andres Sanabria, Brad Abrams, Matt Gibbs, Eilon Lipton (father of UpdatePanel), and Keith Smith. Most of them delivered sessions, and all of the sessions were well received. I had the pleasure of copresenting a talk on ASP.NET AJAX patterns and best practices with Andres Sanabria, filling in for an ailing Nikhil Kothari, who got sick just before TechEd started and couldn’t make the trip. Nikhil had some killer content for us, including a sample UpdateHistory control that allows AJAX apps to define “virtual views” that can be stepped through with the browser’s Back and Forward buttons.

Eilon has posted some great mini-articles on UpdatePanel internals. You can read the first one at:

http://forums.asp.net/thread/1440058.aspx

And you’ll find the second one at:

http://forums.asp.net/thread/1445844.aspx

The second especially is a must-read for control developers, because it demonstrates what a control must do to be UpdatePanel-compatible.

Of course I snapped a few photos during the trip (see below). My favorite sightseeing trip was a visit to Montserrat, an ancient monastery perched high in the mountains above Barcelona. The clouds were low the day I visited, adding a misty ambience to the scene. Maybe next year I can catch Montserrat on a clear day and better capture the beauty of the setting.

Barcelona (1)Barcelona (2)Montserrat (1)Montserrat (2)