Day 1 marked the official start of TechEd North America.  And while everyone else was in the keynote, I was scrambling slightly as I realized that our demo machine was completely empty, just a clean install of Windows 7 and Office 2010.  Fortunately, Brad Wilson came to the rescue, as he had been given a USB key with Visual Studio 2010, our demos and our rotating PowerPoint deck on it.  We snapped it in and got started setting up.

We took advantage of our large-ish screen and internet connection to stream the keynote live, even though it was happening right next door (though given the size of the exhibition hall, right next door is a long way away :)).  At the end of the keynote, the great voice in the sky (aka the announcer) told us the expo was open, and in came the swarms of people! Well, kinda. Of course, there were three “foundational sessions” (like mini-keynotes on more specific topics, like Developer Tools, etc.) going on soon after the keynote, and many people had sessions to attend, so it was pretty quiet in that first shift.

At 12:30, when my shift ended, Brad and I and a couple of people he knew from Patterns & Practices wandered over to the Meal Hall (Which is no small feat… the New Orleans Convention Center is 1.5 miles long! Granted, we’re only using 1 mile of it :)).  There we ate “food” (convention food is a close approximation of food in most cases… it was edible and likely had some nutrients in it… close enough) and then I trekked off to my first (and only) session of the day.  Don’t get too excited, I wasn’t speaking, just attending.  No talks for me this time around, but I do plan to get into speaking soon.  Also, it is notoriously difficult to get speaking slots at TechEd if you haven’t given a TechEd talk before.

I attended a talk on Windows Phone 7, which included a pretty good demo.  Aside from the demo it was mostly things I knew about already.  By the way, all the talks are going to be posted for FREE viewing by the general public on TechEd Online (http://www.msteched.com/), this talk was “WPH201 - Windows Phone 7: A New Kind of Phone”. It was only slightly ironic that every once and a while, during the talk, I popped open my iPhone to check the latest news from WWDC :). Still, WP7 looks nice, and I’m basically decided that my next phone will likely not be an Apple phone.  It may be a Windows Phone or an Android Phone, but even after the iPhone 4 announcement, I’m not really convinced… yet. I’ll save that rant for later though :).

That evening, the exhibition hall was open for a reception at which free food and beverages (read: alcohol) was offered to all attendees, while they wandered around the various booths from Microsoft and third-party Vendors.  It was basically all-hands-on-deck for that event, and we were definitely pretty busy.  A number of great questions from customers of all knowledge levels, from someone who was just getting back in to Web Development and had no idea what had been going on in ASP.Net, to some folks who used MVC and wanted to know about MVC 2.

After that, I basically just wandered back to my hotel and crashed. It was a long day, and I had another one ahead of me!

I know, it’s been many many months since I blogged.  I wish I could say it was because I was really busy, still getting settled in Seattle, or because I was working on lots of cool stuff I can’t talk about yet.  While those are all true (*wink*), the real reason is that I just got a bit lazy with the blogging.  Anyway, whirlwind update: I’ve been working on the ASP.Net team full-time for 8 months now, and I’m working on some cool stuff that I’ll be able to talk more about soon.

In the mean time, I can talk about the fact that I’m down in New Orleans right now, working as Staff for the ASP.Net booth at TechEd North America!  I’m going to try to blog a bit about the conference, starting with my first three days.

I left on Saturday, two days before the conference actually started (hence “Day –1”).  After my wonderful girlfriend woke up early to drive me to SeaTac airport at 5am for my 7am flight, I was on my way to New Orleans via Houston.  The landing in New Orleans was definitely the roughest landing I’ve ever been in (second roughest: major cross-winds in a Dash-8 on final approach into Ottawa airport).  Upon walking off the plane, I felt like I had just walked into a vat of pea soup.  Having never really travelled to this part of the continent before, I was unfamiliar with the intense humidly (though I had been well warned).

After a short taxi ride, I reached my hotel, The Hotel New Orleans, conveniently located right next to the Convention Center (thus limiting my time in the un-air-conditioned air).  It’s a nice hotel, with a cool inner atrium design:

After checking-in, I wandered over to Canal St. and the outskirts of the French Quarter

I made my way back to my hotel and decided to eat in the hotel restaurant.  I had been given a list of a few things to try while I was here, one of which was Catfish, so I decided to give it a go.  After eating that and washing it down with a glass of Sweet Tea (which is a very descriptive name, and a very tasty drink) I basically just crashed early.

The next day, Sunday, was also pretty relaxed. After a long sleep-in, I wandered over to the Convention Center to register

My only commitment was the staff orientation at 3pm, where we got to check out our booth, located in the Technical Learning Center, which is basically where all the Microsoft teams set up booths. 

Past TechEd attendees may remember that in previous events, this was a separate section from the Partner Expo (where all the third-party vendors set up).  In 2010, the TLC and the Partner Expo are all in one big Exhibition Hall.  After sizing up our booth and meeting the team, I wandered to a nearby restaurant for a Shrimp Po’boy and Hush Puppies (yet more things on my list of foods to try).  I also wandered along the New Orleans Riverwalk and snapped a few pics of the Mississippi (which almost form a panorama!)

Then, I crashed again, this time setting an alarm so I could be up in plenty of time for my duties the next day.

Next up: Day 1 – The first actual day of the conference!