Great Wireless in Theater 402 makes me happy.
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No coverage in room 150, but there is coverage in room 153. I think 153 is a bonus due to closeness to wireless lounge outside.
I found out today that all the Steve Riley sessions at TechEd 2009 had been canceled. I had only signed up for them about two weeks ago in building my schedule online so I was a bit surprise. I later found out the reason that they were canceled. Steve was apparently laid off last week by Microsoft. This is just amazing. Just look at the fact that he does multiple sessions at TechEds all over the world and think about how many customers he reaches in just those venues. He was one of my top two presenters along with Mark Russinovich. I guess I am glad I noticed this instead of showing up to an empty room in the next few days. I feel sorry for the person doing the one session in place of him, most likely a large part of the crowd will get up and walk out when they realize he isn’t there.
Here are my notes from Steve’s sessions at previous TechEds. I will really miss his sessions.
SEC320 - Anatomy of a Network Hack
SEC 301 - The Fortified Data Center In Your Future - Steve Riley
SEC303 - It's 11:00 PM, Do you know where your data is? - Steve Riley
The partner expo reception was good for getting free food and I got to talk to some Dell guys about what we are buying shortly. Otherwise the partner expo just doesn’t have much for our environment. Many of the companies there are selling things to much larger organizations.
It is almost sad watching some of the people at booths, especially the ones where no one wants to talk to them. Then there is the opposite where a booth is giving away some schwag and has a giant line even blocking their neighbor booths. It almost seems counterproductive to have those lines for schwag though, then all you get is schwag hounds who could care less about your company and its products. Several times the people looking for stamps or something were just in the way of people who actually wanted to ask real questions. I am just glad that I am over the whole schwag hound thing.
I doubt I will go back to the partner expo after tonight since I saw nothing else I wanted to further discuss.
No coverage in Petree Hall D, however according to the map of the conference this is on purpose. No sure why it is on purpose but oh well.
I saw the AP’s on the poles that look like outdoor propane heaters. I thought they might be Xirrus and I was able to verify it this morning. It seems so far the coverage is very good with setup they have at the LACC. I would think TechEd would be a good stress test since just about everyone has a laptop and will be fairly demanding network wise. It will be interesting to see how well it holds up through the day and week.
This post (and the last few below) are late due to server outage while I went to Disney (more on that in other blog). TechEd ended at 4 PM last Friday June 8th. I went to sessions up the end as did many in the sessions with me, more than I thought. It is unfortunate that some of the best sessions were on the last day since quite a few people probably missed them.
Another good TechEd, I probably won't be back until '09. See you then.
As some of you might have noticed there was a bit of confusion on the bus line this on Thursday morning. Apparently an unfortunate chap fell while getting off bus and broke his leg. From a distance I saw what looked like a Microsoft blue shirt, but I wasn't sure. Hopefully he isn't hurt too bad and I wish him a hasty recovery.
In the main expo hall there are two spotlight signs saying Best of TechEd 2007 over closed refreshment stands. Why are they there? It seems there should be something the lights should be drawing attention too?
HP is running a deal at TechEd that I just couldn't resist. They take $250 off a configured tx1000z tablet. Right now on the web there is already a $150 off instant rebate so it is actually only another $100 off. Also on the web they are running a deal for $50 off the 2 GB upgrade, free LightScribe DVD burner upgrade and free shipping. The biggest bang for the buck in the deal however is the free RETAIL copies of Windows Vista Ultimate DVD and Office 2007 Ultimate DVD. Right now on Amazon the pair go for $339.99 + 529.99 respectively and list for $399.95 + 679.95 so that adds another $869.98 in software at least. The machine itself also comes with at least Home Premium. I went ahead and placed an order for a machine and the total including tax was $1222.19 for the below config. This config is about as low as you can go since it has to start at $1399.99 to get the $250 off. If you are interested in laptop / tablet it is worth checking out.
HP Pavilion tx1000z CTO NB
- Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
- AMD Turion(TM) 64 X2 Dual-Core TL-56(1.8GHz/1MB)
- 12.1" WXGA BrightView w/Integrated Touch-screen
- $50 off upgrade from 1GB (2 Dimm) to 2GB (2 Dimm)!
- NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 6150
- HP Imprint Finish + Microphone + Webcam
- 802.11b/g WLAN
- 80GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
- FREE Upgrade - LightScribe DVD+/-RW w/Double Layer
- 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
- Microsoft(R) Works 8.0
I thought Tuesday that started with sessions at 8:30 AM and the last session ending at 5:45 PM was long. On Wednesday though the TechEd organizers wanted to top themselves. Wednesday also started at 8:30 AM but the last session isn't ending until 6:45 PM. That is a long day by anyone's standards. On Thursday they split the difference by starting at 8 AM and ending at 5:45 PM. I remember previous TechEd's being long days, but this seems to be even more so. Maybe cut out a little of the junk in the middle of the day intended to force people into the partner pavilion next year?
There is a wall of fabric to allow those who have been here for previous TechEd's to sign the wall. I signed all my years. It is interesting to see how the list shrinks the farther back you go.
The interactive projection wall near the store is fun. It is 2 or 3 projectors wide and it detects people in front of it. As it scrolls through various pictures each one is interactive. There is one with butterflies following people around, another that makes splashes that appear and lots of others. Just fun to watch and also funny when people don't realize it is happening and are surprised by it.
There are (at least) four people walking around in suits like the Channel 9 Guy for pictures and other fun. They are advertising Vista, Visual Studio and few other things.
One of the parts of TechEd I always enjoy is finding old friends and co-workers from years past. I will update this as the week goes on.
First Session - Steve Simmering (I always spell it wrong) from JDIS (Wordlink)
Second day at MS IAG Booth - Paul Edlund (He also was in that first session and asked question, just didn't realize it was him then) from Planet Technologies (Equest)
Third day at MS Compute Cluster Booth - Jeff Wierer (Again I never spell right) from Microsoft (Wordlink)
Well another TechEd is over for me. I am really happy I blogged this year since it made me take better (if any) notes on every session. Now I can look back on my blog as a reminder of what I saw. I need to grad the session decks when I get home next week.
As far as content for me it was a really good week. The biggest focus was Security for me. I really have some good ideas and goals to accomplish once I get back. The second focus was patching and upgrading, especially WSUS. The last focus was Exchange and specifically SP2. I need to look at some of the stuff we do and decide if there is a better way.
The one thing I didn't spend as much time on as I might have was disaster recovery. I did get some good ideas but I still have a lot of work to do.
Thanks Microsoft for another great TechEd. I hope to get to be in Boston next year for Longhorn Mania.
Overall I must say it was a good time. I rode every ride / attraction except for Men In Black. Which is pretty good for 4 hours. Also the selection of food and drink was pretty good. From the standard Universal stands to the additional ones setup by TechEd. Later I will write up my review of each ride, I don't have my listing with my right now.
Sitting in my morning session I have a guy on one side bouncing his leg the entire time. On the other side I have a guy bouncing against the chair his pedometer. Just to win some trinket. Don't do this gag again please.
Up until this point I have spent the vast majority of my session time in S310, 320 and 330. Today I will be spending some time in the North Concourse. In N210 at least I actually have wireless access. Maybe the Denial of Service in other areas wasn't on purpose or it wasn't done as well on the North side.
Well I heard a rumor and I believe it is true that session rooms are specifically blocked on wireless. I am sitting in S330 and I can easily 6 access points. I also have a good strong signal. However I cannot do anything online. I think the AP's in the room are on but not really connected to anything. This way in the session rooms the strongest signal you get is a useless one. I don't really mind since the only thing I would do with the connection is blog. I am just doing that in OneNote and then posting later in the day.
This morning I had a nice discussion with a gentleman from Finland while waiting for the keynote to start. We talked about Nokia and some of the new Exchange features in SP2. Also chatted a bit about the Apple/Intel announcement.
At lunch I sat with a gentleman from Perth, Australia. He had been in the country for some other business and just decided to go to TechEd as well. He said he will be on a plane for 28 hours to get home. He will leave Thursday and arrive Sunday, amazing. Business class plane tickets were about $7000 dollars. Amazing.
I didn't go to a session immediately after the keynote this morning. I had signed up for a focus group. I signed an NDA saying I wouldn't talk about it, so I guess that is all I will say. One more thing is I got a nice pad and pen, swag for someone else. I also got a voucher for one of about 50 things from Microsoft. Some quite valuable.
Well I almost made it a full day with out running out of battery on my M200. That is even without using the long life setting I modified yesterday. I forgot that the Toshiba app resets after being plugged in or powered off. Tomorrow I will try the different setting and see if I can make it through.
Tonight I went to my first geek dinner. It was organized by Chris Haaker. There were about 10 people who showed up. I can't remember everyone's name but a few of them were Gretchen and her husband, Kevin, Adam from Iowa State University, Chris (another one), Rich and two more whose names escape me. One I wish I could remember since I knew I had heard it before.
Anyway is great fun meeting others who you have read from or about. Also just sharing conversation with those who understand similar things, even if the conversation centers on those things. If any of you are ever in DC/Balt look me up.
Again I was lazy and rode the bus back to hotel. This time however as we got going the bus driver asked us, the out of town visitors, how to get to the hotels. Luckily there were some resourceful people who got out maps and told driver where to go. Hopefully tomorrow is better.
At about 4 PM today for some reason I had a total energy crash. I got a headache and really tired. I think I may have even nodded off a bit in the last session. This seems to happen to me every day at some point while at TechEd. It isn't the normal reason for me which is not eating, since I do the exact opposite here. I think it is all the time spent sitting.
I must say thus far the track cabanas rule. I talked to some people from the WSUS team about my strange non-reboot problem. They hadn't heard of it and they took a card from me and said they would get back to me. Then I talked to someone from the Exchange group and asked them about my borked hoyty.com OWA situation. They suggested a reinstall of Exchange RTM and then SP1. Maybe I will do that sometime this summer and figure out if it works.
The wireless at TechEd seems to have two states great or non-existent. In the common areas it seems to be really good and have sufficient bandwidth. In the session areas it is mostly not there. I imagine this is on purpose to stop people from surfing the web and doing email during the sessions. I can't verify that however.
I can't imagine managing a wireless network of this size. I have seen some of the access points and they are Cisco based. Not sure if the whole network is.
For Ballmer's keynote this morning the crew was much better at moving crowds around, even if they weren't terribly efficient at it. They did their best to maximize area utilization and getting every seat filled. It is just a huge facility and with 10,000 people it takes some work to get them where they need to be. The keynote should be starting in a few moments.
I don't think the crew here in Orlando were quite ready for the crowd this morning. There wasn't the normal drill sergeant mentality of routing people to a particular buffet line and then table section. I am sure they will learn and improve as the week goes on. At least for their sanities sake I hope so.
Last night after I got back to hotel I decided to look through the bag from registration. As for the bag it isn't my favorite style, I am more a backback than satchel type guy. However I must say it seems to be well made and has lots of neat storage pockers. I will stick with my MTB '99 bag though.
As for the contents they were pretty good too. I would say it was highlighted by the free copy of the full version of Windows Server 2003 x86-64. There were some other handy CD and DVD's as well. I don't have an optical drive with me so I can't check them out until I get home.
There was of course 30+ one page or wacky shaped ads. Somebody has to pay for this stuff I guess. They have quickly found the trash.
Overall I give the bag and its swag contents a thumbs up.
