Today, day #4 of the main TechEd conference I had more energy that I thought I would. Usually by this time at conferences I’m running low in that department. The sessions I went to today were:

• Connected Systems: Using Web Services Enhancements v2.0 for Messaging Over Multiple Machines and Networks
• Smart Clients in a Service-Oriented World: Thomson Financial Case Study
• SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services: Managing a Reporting Services Implementation
• Improving Application Performance and Scalability

I think one of the reasons we all could keep our energy up was that throughout the day and throughout the conference area there were always coffee, snacks, soda and bottled water available. So any time we wanted, we could fuel up!

I made an effort at TechEd to not go to any Whidbey talks. Why? Easy, it’s a year away. Sure I want to learn about it, but it’s not even in an alpha release. I thought the conference focused too much on future technologies and not enough on the current ones.

They gave us two hours for lunch, so I spent the majority of that time doing what I call “slumming” for the user group that I help run (San Diego .NET Developers Group). What I do is go to all the vendors that I think could help out with the group by either donating software or come speak at a meeting. All of the vendors I targeted seemed into it… we shall see.

After the session I was invited to a private party thrown by Microsoft for people they call “influencers”.  They rented all of the Dicks Last Resort bar/ restaurant and the billiards hall above it for three hours. It was a lot of fun. After that, my friend Stan and I went over to his hotel, the W, and hung out at the upstairs bar which is mostly a sand beach type of thing. That was pretty cool too.

Business Card Count = 6

For more pictures click here.