It's been a very busy week here down in Orlando at TechEd 2008 IT Pro, Microsoft's conference for IT professionals.
I gave one session on the new, deeply-disliked Volume Licensing methodology everyone has to use to deploy volume versions of Vista and Windows 2008. Despite the dryness of the material, the DISLIKE of the material, and the lateness of the hour (5 PM), the session was well received! 223 people (about an 85% full room) with an overall rating of 7.75 of a possible 9. (The top rated sessions are getting 8.4's and 8.5's.) From the comments, demos would have pulled it higher...but there's just about nothing to see in volume licensing. I'll have to work on that.
I spent much of the rest of the time running around doing odds and ends and occasionally hitting sessions in between. A few interesting (to me, anyway) anecdotes:
- Picked up lunch for Mark Minasi as the poor guy had been blowing and going all day; he had no time at all between his sessions. By the time I'd hiked out to his breakout room, the session - a roundtable on security with him, Mark Russinovich, Steve Riley, and a couple of other folks - was so full it was locked out. (They're the conference stars and get very high ratings on their talks.) So, I sat outside, did some work, until the session was nearly over. When it finished, Minasi bolted out for his next session before I could give it to him. Before I could chase him down, I said hi to Russinovich, and HE ate it!
- On MarkR's advice, I found and introduced myself to Michael Leworthy, the Windows Server Infrastructure session chair, to express my interest at speaking at IT Forum (Tech Ed in Europe), and it was a productive discussion. Who knows, maybe I'll make it over there...
- Got a Vista question answered. (The only way to turn hibernation back on after you've deleted the hibernation file is to run powercfg /hibernate on - works like a charm)
- Helped connect some people together, always a feel-good kind of activity
- Got to hang out with my friend Guido Grillenmeier a little bit, always looked forward to as he's based in Frankfurt.
- And of course, got to spend time with my MVP buddies Gil, Joe, Brian, Laura, and catch up with my Intel friends Derek, Alix, and Roy. Gee, this makes me sound like more of a social butterfly than I really am! You see, 95% of my time is spent working out of a home office where my audience is usually just two dogs :).
- Received a cache of uber-schwag for MVPs only, told by secret MVP word-of-mouth-net. I knew there was a reason I was an MVP!
Tonight is the conference party at Universal Studios; Microsoft rents out a large chunk of the place, and there's food, drinks, and beer & wine right out on the sidewalks (at least there was the last time I was at one of these shindigs). Plus the magazine is throwing something too. Decisions, decisions...
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