http://www.AcehAid.org

Here’s one thing that always gets me at the big conferences. The people who go around the expo hall collecting as MUCH STUFF as they can with absolutely no regard for what they are even getting – just so long as it’s free. I remember at TechEd Dallas we didn’t have a proper banner for our wee INETA booth way in the back of the expo hall so I hung up some INETA T-Shirts. We didn’t have give aways, just shirts for the volunteers. What we did have was some of the real rock star .NET speakers who wer also INETA speakers in the booth as an Ask the Experts. That’s a pretty good deal. Free technical advice from some of the top presenters ni the .NET world. But no….. So many people came by asking for a t-shirt. They had no clue what INETA was and no interest in finding out. Just wanted the damned shirt. I actually had an argument with a guy who was demanding I give him a shirt!

I do like to get stuff to hand out to my user group. One year I brought back a box and just dumped it out on the table for everyone to take from. But I’m actually embarrassed to carry a bag around to get stuff. And if I do take something, I will end up spending a lot of time talking to the people at the booth. Rather than just do a drive by and grab fast.

And then there’s getting it home. LOL. Spendng all of that money to ship FREE stuff home. Okay so I got smart and brought an extra soft suitcase last time. Someone suggested a heavy duty canvas duffel bag would do the trick. We’ll see how it goes…

http://www.AcehAid.org

Last year, Rob Rohr created his TechEd session schedule in OneNote, but did it manually. This year he is dreaming up an automated way of creating his schedule with the OneNote API. He learned that the schedules will be out in RSS in mid-May so his plan will be doable. Sounds like something lots of people might want to leverage. Rob is another one of us Vermont geek, by the way.

http://www.AcehAid.org