The penultimate day of Tech Ed was topped off by the Attendee Party at Universal Studios.  Holy crap, that was a blast!  The park was closed except for Tech Ed people and we had free reign over the place.  Everywhere you went there was people offering you free food and drinks -- basically whatever you wanted.

We managed to visit Shrek 4D, have a beer and a hotdog, go on The Simpsons Ride, have a pretzel, stand on a soundstage which recreated the drive-in scene from Twister, have another beer while sitting on the steps of a New York brownstone watching the Blues Brothers, and then rode The Simpsons Ride a second time.  (Guess what my favorite part was?)

As for the techie part of the day, I managed to learn the details of Kerberos, learned how to deploy Server Core using the command line and a bunch of other stuff.  Still didn't get to the vendor booths and many people were saying there were running out of swag, so those at home counting on getting cool stuff might be S.O.L.

Before the party we had dinner at Uno's Chicago Bar and Grill.  Great hamburger and ambience.  (Put me in the mood to see the Blues Brothers)

Last day tomorrow!

Two of the sessions today were very well done -- the hacker session (as I expected) and the Vista SP1 session (which I didn't expect at all).  The Vista session was presented by Mark Minasi who is a very famous (at least amongst Microsoft people) writer.  It turns out he is a very good presenter as well.  He had a sense of humor and kept everyone involved in the topic right through to the end.  And, as much as I have felt along in being a fan of Windows Vista, I guess when guys like Mark Minasi and Paul Thurott like it I can't be all wrong.

I still have not been through the vendor booths yet to gather swag.  That's OK because Shirley has had two days to shop while I have been attending sessions so there won't be much room.  Oh well, Dell doesn't need a fanboy in their booth drooling over the lastest R900 anyway.

These sessions have provided very good content.  I already feel I have material to keep our bi-weekly Windows Team sessions full of content for months.

I'll add some pictures of the conference floor.  They are poor quality because since they are inside and a flash won't help I shot them with a high ISO.  They give you some idea as to the size of the convention center, specifically the meal area which is HUGE.  (I'll also show a shot from the convention center entrance and from our hotel room.)

Whew, survived Day One!  I am amazed at both the size of the conference and how well organized everything is.  From the time I stepped out of the hotel until the time I returned I felt like I was never more than 20m from someone who was able to direct me where I wanted to go or answer questions.  There have been no moments of confusion at all.

I am also shocked at the food.  Breakfast consisted of the standard fruits, bagels and cereals along with sausage patties, applewood smoked bacon, scrambled eggs, french toast and all the fixings.  Everywhere you turn there are water coolers, snack tables and, my personal fave, coolers and coolers of Pepsi and assorted soft drinks -- just open the door and help yourself.  This place is great!

Lunch offered two types of chicken as the main course.  Normally I expect chicken at an event like this to be dry because the general tendency towards safety means everything gets overcooked, but this was surprisingly moist.

The keynote speech was presented by Microsoft's Bob Muglia, whose title is Senior Vice President of Server and Tools Business.  It was your standard marketing rah-rah presentation with a number of demos of MS products, but nothing particularly exciting.  Lots of focus on Microsoft's Hyper-V technology which looks interesting but will need to be priced VERY competitive if they want to get people to move away from VMWare.  (On a side note, the African drumming opening was very engaging and well done!)

The sessions were quite varied today.  "The Power of Windows Server 2008" sort of had a "bad infomerical" feel to it at one point. 

"So, let's say I wanted to go back and change this configuration setting.  I guess I'll have to click Cancel here, go back and make the change and then run through all this work again, right?"

"Not with Server 2008!  Now changing that setting is as easy as..."

There are some technologies which I think we can really use right away when we start rolling out Server 2008 such as Server Core.  Other things such as Read-Only Domain Controllers initially appealed to me but I now think will have limited impact in our environment.

By far the two best sessions of the day were "The Past, Present, and the Future of Security in IT" and the round table discussion for I.T. Pros working in higher education.  The Security session was presented by Rafal Lukawiecki of Project Botticelli Ltd.  His bio states the following:

"Rafal is a highly rated, frequent and popular speaker at Microsoft events having presented at prestigious Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer conferences mainly in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. His uniquely energetic speaking style should keep you engaged no matter how complex the subject."

This is no word of a lie.  Rafal is by far the most engaging and easy to listen to speaker I have ever heard at a tech conference.

The "Windows in Higher Education" session was introduced as "group therapy for Microsoft people at higher education institutions" and it proved to be true.  It was a relief to hear that our group is no more screwed up than other places!  In fact, we're perfectly normal.  Sure, some places may be further ahead than us but others are just reaching places where we were several years ago.  We're not alone!

Well, that's Day One.  I haven't even hit the vendor trade show for the free swag yet or taken in any of the product demo booths.  There is so much to see and to cover there is no way to cover it all in four days.

My schedule for Day Two is:

-- Deploying Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2008

-- A Hacker's Diary:  How I Can Hack Your Vulnerable Services and How You Can't Stop Me

-- Do These Ten Things Now or Get Own3d!

-- Windows Vista, Take Two:  Understanding Windows Vista SP1 from A to Z

-- Changes to Backup and Recovery of Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2008

-- Licensing Your Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Systems:  Everything You Know is Wrong

I expect that other than the two security focused sessions tomorrow will be a fairly "dry" day.  I still won't be done until 18:00 so I haven't had any time to see anything else in Orlando.  Thursday night is the attendee party at Universal Studios and Friday night Shirley and I are going to see SeaWorld but then we fly out Saturday morning -- and, no Johan, we will not be back in time for the company picnic that day.  :-)

OK, I better go to bed.  I was up at 06:00 this morning but at least I can sleep in until 07:00 tomorrow.  The time change is messing me up even though it is only a two hour difference from home.  My laptop says it is 22:36 but my body thinks it is only 20:36 -- of course in the morning it thinks I am waking up at 04:00 so that doesn't help!