Category Archives: Tech Ed

TechEd 2006 pass, hotel and travel: $3000+, watching the World Cup: priceless

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! 😉


Posted from BLInk!

TechEd Speaker Hotel 4am Emergency evacuation

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!

My TechEd “suitcase”

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!