I've gotten lazy about blogging in the last few weeks, and it suddenly occurred to me yesterday that duh, this week probably merits some comment. I'm spending the week at Tech Ed 09, Microsoft’s main conference for IT professionals.
Attendance is understandably down; there are supposedly 6,000 attendees – about half of a good year’s population. The Los Angeles Convention Center is big, and though there are a lot of people here it definitely doesn’t feel as packed as in the past.
For the first time at a conference I'm wearing three different hats. Usually nowadays I’m at a conference because I’m presenting, and this week is no exception. I’m doing a session on volume activation. (It’s not my main area of expertise, but I had to do it for Intel, it’s confusing at first look, and people really need to know about it.) For the first time, I’m working with a Microsoft product team, Technical Audience Group Marketing (TAGM), to assist them in meeting with and talking to IT pros and IT managers in sessions and roundtables. Finally, I’m also acting as an attendee and trying to get in as many System Center and virtualization sessions as my other duties allow. So it's a busy week!
I also always try to take time to reconnect with my professional colleagues and friends - Gil, MarkM, MarkR, Rhonda, Brian, Ulf, Laura, Karen, Jeff, Sheila, Kim, Kevin - that's I'm lucky enough to know and new friends that I make while here. Probably the biggest, but least appreciated benefit of speaking at conferences is that you can develop a network of really interesting, world-class people you'd never meet otherwise. I'm a person that's perfectly content working without the minute-to-minute in person people interaction that happens in an office; I've been working from home full time for the last nine years. My circle of colleagues doesn't necessarily communicate a lot with each other in between functions. After all, they're similar personality types as I am: kinda schizophrenic because they do long periods of working by yourself, interspersed with bursts of very public presenting to hundreds of people and visiting with your friends. But we do have a great time when we get together!
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