Recently in Keynote Category

This year there is only one keynote.  In previous years there was usually two.  I guess this one will be focused on Server 2008, SQL 2008 and the next Visual Studio.  The room setup especially for the keynotes still amazes me.  Seating for everyone, even taking into account people don't like to sit near each other.  Then a half dozen movie screen size projectors.  The stage this year actually isn't too elaborate, just a dual screen podium.

The keynote started about 5-10 minutes late.  It began as usual with a comedy sketch.  This time it was based around Back to the Future and stared Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown.  Bob Muglia and Doc Brown went back to visit failed promises of the past like Halestorm and WinFS.  If nothing else Microsoft seems to be able to admit mistakes and laugh at itself in these skits if not the rest of the time.

The majority of the keynote was about better responding to needs and clients, especially with what you already have.  There was also a focus on flexibility and adaptability to changing needs.  The second half of the keynote was all demos.

Unfortunately the majority of the keynote was beyond my scope.  Since I only have 10 servers and 1000 clients I don't really need to run 20 virtual servers and be able to move them around.  The most interesting one was using VS 2008 and Outlook 2007 to rapidly deploy new forms.  Even though I am not a developer and can't quite do what they showed.

It wasn't a bad keynote, but it wasn't great (for me at least) either.

Due to space constraints in the seating area of the keynote I didn't get to write this up until about 1:30 PM. I am going off my memory and will probably just have some highlight comments.

Today again the Samantha Bee sections were hit and miss. I could have easily done without about 50% of it. The battle bot was pretty cool, even if the smashing bit was a little more flash and fluff than reality. I was hoping it would use the circular saw to cut the switch in half. I didn't win a Portable Media Player, however I was 3 off from one of the winning numbers so almost.

Paul's keynote was mostly about SQL, VS and BizTalk (BT?). For SQL there were a bunch of details showing how it is faster (especially on x86-64), has better availability, and easier to develop for. For VS there is a more unified and simplified interface. Development should be quicker using the new tools and especially the available snippets. BizTalk just kind of glues it all together and helps to develop and manage business flow logic.

There were some good demos. One showed the performance of SQL 2000 vs. SQL 2005 32 vs. SQL 2005 64. In that same demo that tied in with the finalizer battle bot it showed automatic failover. The other demo showed the development of a report, then how to post it and how to allow a user to modify and create their own report. I need to investigate SQL reporting services this summer, may have some good uses.

The last nice tidbit was that every attendee was getting a free copy of SQL 2005 Standard Edition. This combined with my free copy of Windows 2003 server is pretty cool. Now I just need a copy of Exchange and I am all set.

Another good keynote, with some really good info.

The sheer mass of people at keynotes still amazes me. The show started about 10 minutes late. As usual the stage was a very professional setup.

The keynote started off with a skit by Samantha Bee from the Daily Show. I don't watch the daily show myself so I have no idea who she is. She did four different skits at various points in the keynote. I would say she was hit or miss, some worked really well and others not so much. The whole "Yes Ms. Bee" bit just didn't work as well as they would have hoped.

Steve as usual is a great presenter, even though it sounded like he had a bit of a sore throat. If you can't get energized listening to and watching Steve do a keynote, nothing will get you going. He didn't disappoint this time either.

There were a couple of announcements. One that I had heard rumored but was good to see was the Thinkpad Tablet. This will really help the tablets grow since there are a lot of companies that are standardized on IBM Thinkpads. The only big boy left is Dell, once they jump on the tablet bandwagon it will be over for standard laptops. The other announcement that was big for me was the idea of Exchange 2003 pushing email to Mobile PC's. It is about time, I was selling and using RIM Blackberry's more than five years ago.

There were a couple of demos. My favorite for content was the push email and longhorn glimpse demo for content purposes. My second favorite was the MOM and Sun demo. Partially due to content and the true glee that Steve had when talking about Sun and ripping out the fans. The other demos were a little too developer focused for me.

My only commentary on the setup is about the projectors for the front four screens. I was sitting almost on the right edge so I was primarily looking that the right pair. There were two problems that I could see. It seemed that the brightness was too high on the right pair of screens. Compared to the left pair that seemed to have better contrast range, this might have been my off axis viewing but I don't think so. The other problem was the right screens were slightly out of focus, I could tell this in comparison to the left set even from as far away as I was. I could look at the left screens and see it was crisper even though it was a couple feet farther away. The last problem was the picture kept moving on the right side. I don't think the screens were moving since they seem to be mounted well. The projectors themselves are mounted on a hanging flying rail (yes Heather oh theater goddess I am sure that is wrong name). The rail was wobbling or blowing in the wind, not sure which and was causing the picture to move of screen and be even worse focus.

Overall a very good keynote. As usual for TechEd it ran long by 30 min and officially the first breakout sections began the instant it ended. Welcome to TechEd 2005.