If you are ever attending a BOF session and the moderator is pitching a product or delivering a presentation, call him or her on it...

Hunter in Roanoke, Virginia, has a few blog posts about Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions at the TechEd 2008 conferences. I love the humorously title of his post "Birds of a Vendor?" where he asks a great question:

A quick look through the Birds of a Feather voting area (for the IT Pro Conference) shows a lot of sessions that appear to be sponsored by vendors. I wonder if they will turn into a sustained marketing pitch.

Absolutely not!

I posted a reply in the comments. Here's one part that I want to share with everyone attending BOF:

I absolutely agree with you, and we have heard loud and clear from past conferences, that BOFs are not appropriate for marketing products or services. Nor are they presentations or lectures. We communicate that to all of our moderators. Okay, sometimes those old presentation and marketing habits are hard to break, and that’s where you, the good old community, come in. If you are ever attending a BOF session and the moderator is pitching a product or delivering a presentation, call him or her on it. Be polite, but be firm. You can say that all of you came to discuss the subject together, and you’d like to hear what other people in the room think about the subject. [More...]

And a minor technical correction: vendors don't sponsor the BOF sessions they moderate. They volunteer just like the rest of the moderators and hosts.

Proposals for Birds-of-a-Feather sessions are accepted through Wednesday, April 2, and voting continues through Monday, April 7, 2008. Use these links to propose a BOF session for TechEd Developer 2008 or TechEd IT Professional 2008.