I am 99% with Kate on this one. I’ve always wanted to go to New Orleans and was excited about the added aspect of TechEd 2007 having a major impact on the city’s economy. The only thing Kate & I disagree on is that I’d like to see it in Burlington, VT. Of course, Burlington has no means of hosting an event even 1/4 this size. Oh well. Hawaii?

In a way that only Carl could do! He waited until people had had a few drinks then handed them his camera and said “make a funny face and take apicture of yourself”. We all know better than to trust Carl when it comes to someting like this, but everyone went along anyway and the result is hilarious! Check it out!

Here are a few posts I wrote on my DevLife blog but neglected to link to…

Hangin’ with Eric Sink

Back to the Future: Tuesday at TechEd

Microsoft has flat panel screens throughout the conference center with coverage of the World Cup for all of the international folks here. Most of them have 50-100 people planted in front of them throughout the day. I keep thinking of the money these people’s bosses have paid for them to come here and learn but instead they are watching the soccer matches. On the other hand, if it’s a non-American company, their bosses would probably understand! 😉

I satyed with Kate Gregory last night in the Airport Hilton where all of the TechEd speakers are staying. Luckily Kate and I are girls who know to where nice p.j.s when we travel! At about 4am what sounded like a really obnoxious alarm clock started very loudly buzzing in our room. It took a few seconds to realize what it was – the alarm. A woman’s voice over the speaker said to evacuate the building. So the entire hotel dumped out to the grass outside of the hotel. Luckily nothing terrible happened – some flooding on the 3rd floor. I was really unhappy to experience how long it took to exit the building through the fire stairwell as people were slowly and casually and calmly going down the stairs. The general assumption is one of “oh, it’s just an inconvenience, ha ha nothing important” but how can you really know? One positive sign was the calmness as people from each floor entered to the stairwell which indicated that nobody had seen anything upsetting on any of the floors. Luckily we got to sleep in a little late so it was just like a dream.

Surely there will be many blog posts and pictures about this around the teched blogosphere today!

Posted from BLInk!

While at the Marriott in Montreal for DevTeach, Kate Gregory blogged about the plethora of pillows that the hotel had made her bed with. I stayed last night at the historic Omni Parker House in Boston and I think that there must be a trend for making a bed with seven pillows!

I’m all ready to leave in the morning. I think my bag contains 1/3 clothes and 2/3 chocolate and vermont maple syrup (no, not for myself!). This is my 7th big MS conference and I have learned that (unless there is some spaghetti sauce accident) I end up wearing the same pants day after day and have even taken to wearing t-shirts that I pick up at the expo. Sure makes packing easy!

Okay, that’s just kind of a joke (and a bit of an attention grab!), although I do expect to be surrounded by about 10,000 men at TechEd. But truly the issue is "so much to do, so little time". Here are some of the gazillion things I am hoping to do during my three short days at TechEd this week:  [read more …]

[A DevLife post]

It seems everyone I talked to today was heading to the airport for TechEd!

I’ll be heading down Tuesday morning. My husband is laughing heartily at my idea of getting on the road by 6am. We’ll see how it goes!

Jonathan Bruce from DataDirect has organized a data access geek meetup with ADO.NET Technical Lead Pablo Castro (who’s name I must mention 10 times every time I do an ADO.NET talk!) and Bob Beauchemin on Tuesday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm. There is limited space at this event, so head over to his blog for details!