I’ve just finished my annual visit to the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas to speak at Windows Connections. It was a good trip, with the dual purpose of presenting sessions and catching up with my professional friends and colleagues – most of whom I’ve never seen outside of some hotel, convention center, or the Microsoft campus.
Windows Connections is a relatively small conference compared to a behemoth like Tech Ed, but that’s one of the things its attendees like about it. They get to hang out and talk to the speakers in between session, and there’s usually an attendee party where the speakers are specifically instructed to come hang out with the people that pay for them. Every year I recognize a number of returning folks. I presented three sessions covering various aspects of Active Directory troubleshooting and recovery, and shopped around version 1.0 of some AD troubleshooting flowcharts. I also did a nice little interview with Josh Hoffman for AppAssure on AD recovery. Last night I spend a little time with the Windows IT Pro crowd (a rowdy bunch!) at MiX, the nightclub at the top of THEHotel at the Mandalay. I’m not a nightclubber – this was the first time I’d been there in at least five years of coming here – but the view of the Strip from the north balcony of this southside hotel was simply jawdropping. Fortunately, a vendor was springing for the hideously expensive drinks.
On the downside, I won’t be seeing the gang at the spring Windows Connections in Orlando; the organizers had to cancel it due to the slow economy. On the plus side, I was invited to do a couple of sessions at a new conference in the spring, a virtualization summit, at the Bellagio in Vegas. So, on the road again for conference season (March and April) next spring – virtualization, (hopefully) MVP summit, possibly TEC, possibly Tech Ed. I’d like to do some European gigs like I’ve done in the past, but you never can tell what will materialize.
