Sprawled across the US Route 75, adjacent to Highway 121 in Texas, is the small, yet growing community of McKinney. This little town is of interest, because Ballie (pronounced B'uh'llie), my dad, lives there.

My return flight from Orlando to LA, en route to Sydney, hubbed through Dallas-Fort Worth. So I thought, seeing as I'm in the general area, haven't seen Ballie for over a year (the last being at Stu's wedding in the UK last April), I'd drop in for a visit.

Small, quaint, quiet, hot, all words that don't quite describe McKinney. We spent the morning having a look at the awesome church that Dad is affiliated with. Their worship hall, coffee lounge, and multi-function centre has to be seen to be believed. We also popped into town, stopping by the local farmers market, then browsed through the (not so) thriving metropolis that is the CBD.

Antique. If you love antique's faux or genuine, this is the place for you. Unfortunately, not for me. Still the major attraction was catching up with the old man, and that I did. We had coffee at the Backstage Coffee Shop (awesome White Chocolate Mocha), lunch at the Londoner (I know, I know a British Steak & Mushroom Pie with Mash and me in Longhorn country....), and a malted chocolate shake at Herbie's Soda Fountain. Only in America do they drive Hummer's, flagrantly ignoring Environmental considerations. Only in Texas are those Hummer's pink...

Throughout the day, however, dad & I spoke. What's up, how're things, merits of relationships, all those good things and more. I also have some great "Beekeeping for Dummies" video footage, as this is another hobby that dad has taken up.

It was a nice, quiet respite from the extreme commercialism that is Orlando, and a welcome break in the 30 hour trip back home. Always good to maintain the tenuous, yet vital, connections that make up my family.

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In the US they went Back to the 1985, to come back to the future, with guest star Christopher Lloyd for the TechEd07 Keynote. Whilst Christopher, and the intro video were funny, the appearance was nothing more than an introduction to a std exec keynote riddled with demos.

At TechEd07 at the Gold Coast in August, we're doing something entirely different, and have invited Michael Twig, of Animal Logic fame, to open our Conference.

You do remember Animal Logic don't you? Babe - Pig in City, 300, the Academy award winning Happy Feet, and of course that overwhelming success, "Big Ad." Animal Logic put the creative into the visuals for those movies.

This is going to be a great keynote. Be there.

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So last night myself and Andrew Coates went to see the Blue Man Group on their opening night here in Orlando. As you can see, the weather was a little on the inclement side as we go to Universal Studios.

Despite stress in getting to Universal on time (to do with bus drivers, weather, and traffic) we managed to get in 10 mins before the start.

The show is very, very interactive, and hilariously funny. As we got in, the staff handed out crepe paper streamers, which the audience was requested to tie around their head. Suitably silly, we waited for the concert to start.

BMG concerts don't really start, as increase the anticipation of the audience. Over the PA is a general BMG drumming rhythm, and a number of electronic signs start interacting with the audience. Firstly with std messages like: "There is no intermission during this concert.... ...Now is the time to Pee!"

Then the messages get funnier, and more interactive. People are called out, the audience is encourage to speak (not sing) "happy birthday" to an audience member, and others are made to stand up. Jokes are made about people "mapping the human genome" so being important, and others just "not very important at all." All the while, the music very slowly increases in tempo and volume.

On either side of the stage were two huge column water tanks, surrounded by sculptures of dancing Blue Men. The water in the tanks suddenly starts spinning (ala whirlpool) and changes colour, and hey presto the concert starts.

The band were in black costumes, with luminous paint, so from the audience looked like glowing animated characters - very cool and effective. And as at other BMG concerts, they threw themselves into the fray with passion and enthusiasm. 1 drum kit, 1 percussion it, another percussionist, and a keyboardist.

So not as many muso's as on the Complex Rock Tour, but still loud, high energy, and timing to be believed.

A couple of the songs were from Complex - the Drombone, "I Feel Love", and a lot of the show was a cut down version of Complex - the rock moves, closer look at the audience. There was a bunch of new stuff as well, and the finale was the entire audience pulling long rolls of tissue paper over their heads from the rear of the theatre to the front. An amazing effect.

All in all, if you get the chance, this is well worth it. An interactive, funny, brilliantly musical experience like you've not seen.

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This is a great session! Admittedly not the level of energy, excitement, and potential injury that you get at Microsoft TechReady (our internal readiness conference in Seattle), but still fun nonetheless. Actually, I realise that we get away with a lot more in Australia with distributing "swag" than they do here.

So if you're into mobility, you need to come to TechEd07 at the Gold Coast in August. If you are, and you're there, you must come to the Windows Mobile Smackdown. This promises to be possibly the best event of the conference.

Not all just fun either, but on the cool side - two new gadgets about to hit the streets:

HTC Touch - this looks very, very cool, and I'm sure I could even get Lucy to want one of these.

HTC Advantage - also called the "Hummer" of Windows Mobile Devices. 5" Screen, 8GB HDD, Video out, GPS, 3G, GPRS, WiFi, Bluetooth - I want one!!

So a great roundup of devices. Then there was the software:

• Deepfish of course - the best innovation to mobile browsing to date
• Also a cool bit of software from Microsoft Research which enables social networking around products in a store.
• Of course Mobile Communicator
• Mobile OneNote
• And many more....

Great session. Looking forward to bringing this to Australia.

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So here is the strangest, and dare I say coolest kit at TechEd07 in Orlando, a clustered rack of Mac Minis.

This setup is a .Net application cluster, and has to be the neatest little multi-computer rack I've seen. Of course it is running bootcamp and Windows Server 2003.

Very cool.

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One of the more dynamic offerings I've seen here in Orlando is the TechEd Idol, over at the Virtual TechEd stage.

Here contestants battle it out for a spot to be a speaker at next year's TechEd. They get all the resources, computer, projector, AV etc, that they would get in a typical TechEd break-out session. Then they have just 5 minutes to deliver a presentation within the "Track" of the day. Each track is treated as a heat in the competition, and there are 3 short-listed contestants per heat.

Three current TechEd speakers act as the judging panel, with of course a lot of very noisy crowd interaction.

It's dynamic, exciting, and well attended. Thoughts for Australia?

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The best session of TechEd by far to date was delivered by Evan Dodd yesterday. This was UNC309 on Windows Powershell scripting for Exchange 2007.

Evan's delivery was easygoing, thorough, and most importantly, practical. Although he delivered some Powerpointware, it was just enough to give context to the demos. There were a number of deliberate mistakes in the demos, allowing him to highlight the common gotchas, and more importantly, how to recover.

Powershell itself absolutely ROCKS!!! The amount of VBScript it replaces to perform simple and complex tasks in installing, deploying, and administering Exchange. It is very simple to learn, yet all of those engineers used to Command Line interfaces (Unix, Cisco etc) will find it intuitive as well.

I find myself strangely drawn to learn more about this great tool.

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Released yesterday -

This new version of the Windows Mobile Device Center contains key improvements and new features to support Windows Mobile 6 devices. The Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1 is only supported on Windows Vista.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devicecenter.mspx

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I attended a "Birds of a Feather" session last night - for those not TechEd regulars, this is an entirely different sort of session at this conference. A kind've moderated meeting of minds.

The session I attended was of particular interest to me - BOF55 User Groups: Benefiting You and Our Community! Starting, Running, and Succeeding with Your User Group! As,  together with my good friend Kean Maizels, I helped start the then PocketPC Usergroup (now Sydney Windows Mobile Usergroup), which over 5 years later is still running successfully, I was really interested in hearing the challenges, views, and great ideas from other Usergroup managers.

The session was good, and reinforced all of the things we're doing right:

• Keep things personal
• Encourage participation
• Share the management load

There were some discussions around challenges some areas faced with multiple groups (whether based on the same common interest or not), but we don't really suffer from that.

Greg Low was brilliant as ever, and gave a passionate plea for Usergroup leaders to personally engage with their members. He posited this as the make/break difference for groups that survive and thrive. He suggests that not inviting, responding to, and engaging with people on a personal 1:1 basis leads to shriveling numbers, and the death of the group. This despite the most passionate and charismatic leader.

I did get some great suggestions around sponsorship, which hadn't occurred to our team before. Look at Recruitment Agencies. What a great idea.

Also, and this is something I'll be discussing with our group leaders, look at how we can reach out into the community. To the teens, and (my addition) seniors. There is nothing that drives passion and engagement like a common purpose, and what better purpose than to educate people in your community around your technology passion.

So this was a great session. I know we'll be emulating the BOF sessions at Aus TechEd07, and if you're coming, sign up to one of these Birds of a Feather. You'll have a chance to participate, meet great like minded people, and even learn a couple of things.

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There are a bunch of great things happening here in Orlando, and a number of them we may choose to implement in Australia (pending Core Team approval)

• Signpost - if we can get the code, and put in the signs, this is awesome!
• Bluecasting - this is an ability to share information with anyone carrying (any) Bluetooth enabled phone or computer, assuming it's in "Discoverable" mode. To be fair, although my phone is discoverable, I've not had anything Bluetooth to it yet - so more on this later in the week
• WiFi and Public Access to both the Internet and CommNet - Bring your laptop! Nuff said
• Online Session Evaluations - paper is dead! Long live paper (another reason to have your laptop)

Currently there is no plan for ubiquitous WiFi, but rather to have zones where people can access the Net. Principally this means no WiFi in the session rooms. So if you are planning to bring your laptop to TechEd07 at the Gold Coast in August, and would like WiFi everywhere, please a) Indicate you're bringing your laptop at registration (we have a very low number indicating this from the present registrants) and feel free to let me know. My experience here at Orlando is that there aren't (m)any people without a laptop.

Also, we're looking at many ways of increasing Interactive Sessions. Here in Orlando there are some 16 Interactive Theatres, but then there are 13,000 attendees too. We'll have 3 on the Showcase, and 2 Cabanas running throughout our conference.

Also, we are planning to host "Consulting Surgeries," where real-life case studies are resolved by Microsoft Consultants and their clients. If you're interested in sessions such as this, please let me know, and what topics you're interested in. If you're a client of Microsoft Services, and would like to participate in such a session, please contact your Technical Account Manager, or Services Executive.

So, we're shaping up to have the Best TechEd yet. Did I mention that the Technology Showcase has grown significantly this year? Look for hands-on, expert discussions with all of our latest technologies.

See you there.

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I love my Palm Treo 750W, I really do. It has some very nifty Palm specific features, like: One touch photo dialing, SMS threading (this is just about my favourite feature), and the keyboard just works so well.

This week, however, I seem dogged by a couple of more annoying "features." The first is the lack of WiFi. Considering the lacklustre battery life on this device with push email turned on, I'm not surprised there is no WiFi. However, having been used to "always on" connectivity, and being in a foreign country (without global roaming) with no data plan, I've come to realise just how convenient online access to my mailbox, calendar, contacts, and tasks really is.

Particularly the calendar actually. At TechEd07 we have the opportunity to save session details to our calendar, or wirelessly download a client of the Conference Portal to our device. This is GREAT and enabling technology!! We'll definitely be using this in Australia, so bring along your Windows Mobile devices.

Of course without GPRS or WiFi, I have access to neither my calendar, nor the wireless CommNet client. Yes, I know I can save it to my laptop, then plug my phone into the laptop, blah, blah, blah... But after a year of, "ooh look, my calendars up-to-date" it seems a bit of a schlep. To be honest I'm running a new laptop (2 weeks old) and haven't even installed Mobile Device Synch Centre yet - I've just had no need to in the online world.

Deserves a beating really.

I did manage to download a copy of Signpost (see my previous post), transferred it to the Palm using the magic of MiniSD and SD adapters, installed it, and ran across to the Signpost signpost (if you get my drift) eagerly expecting to be told where I was, and where I should go....

....Doh!! The software doesn't work on the Treo 750W. The area for the camera picture is simply black, and no amount of fiddling or restarting would do the trick.

See what I mean by trials.

Again, this is great technology, and something we're investigating for the Australia TechEd. There are enough mobile devices that are working with it successfully for me to recommend we use this. So again, if you have a Windows Mobile device, bring it to TechEd07. If you don't, get one...

Then this morning, in a seeming fit of personally targeted pique, the alarm on my phone decided to go off at 5:25am. That wouldn't have been an issue, except that is was set for 6:25am. One hour out. I could understand that if it was 14 hours out, I am in a different timezone after all, but just one!!!! No amount of checking the phone, changing the time, or the timezone (yes daylight savings was adjusted correctly) would resolve this issue.

Should it go to Davy Jones' locker? There's a nifty Samsung Blackjack with Mobile 6 on offer here - but then that doesn't have WiFi either....

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So this afternoon's flogging goes to the Home Server overview session. As you can imagine this was a popular session. People have heard of it, some have even seen pictures of it, but no-one's actually played with it. If you're anything like me, you're looking for a less resource intensive replacement for your Small Business Server, which runs ISA, Exchange and Sharepoint, sits in a rack under the house, and is the cause of many fruitless requests for budget from "she who must be obeyed."

After 30 minutes of eager anticipation, one of our friendly EventForce hostesses came in to mention that they were still trying to find the speaker for this session. I have images of him standing outside a room in the west building, shaking his head and muttering "they must be here somewhere..." Apparently they'll be rescheduling the session, let's hope they find the speaker by then.

On the plus side, I did manage to get across to the Exchange 2007 Deployment Session, delivered by my good friend, and ex-work colleague (from my Compaq/HP days) Donald Livengood. Now that was a great session - informative, funny, and full of great tidbits. 

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Rum's on you tonight Don

Well the prize for the most unexpected, and impossibly irrelevant word used in a break-out session has to go to Mike Wilson in the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Overview session this morning. He somehow managed to bring in "Hypoglycaemic" as his introduction to the Unified Messaging Demo.

The demo of course, rocked, well apart from Outlook not exactly being synchronised with Exchange, so although the automated attendant was gaily rescheduling meetings, deleting emails, and forwarding voicemails, the displayed inbox wasn't quite keeping up. Apart from that, a great demo, and I can add my personal recommendation to UM. It rocks. I'm sitting 12,000 miles away from home and getting all my voicemails seamlessly.

The flogging, however, is to be meted out to Terry Myerson, for the most gratuitous, and prolific, use of the word "Triage." He managed to pop it in some 13 times during the session.... So you scurvy dogs, you can rest assured that Exchange 2007 will help you triage your email, triage your appointments, triage your tasks, using OWA you can triage your OOF messages, triage your contacts, even triage your sensitive office documents (and display them as web pages)....

I didn't know there was that much triaging going on, but with Exchange 2007 I can do it all

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Well I loved the intro into the Keynote - Christopher "Doc Emmett Brown" Lloyd - is a funny blast from my past. He finally looks as old as he was made to look back in 1985, and was an hilarious start to the TE07 Keynote.

There's a lot of cool stuff MS is putting together, virtualisation, Silverlight, Model-based process maps, development, and maintenance. Very cool. And the keynote entirely missed the really cool stuff we're doing - Mobility, Surface computing, and of course the Exchange Powershell. They should be keel-hauled at the very least.

The coolest component to the Keynote was catching it in the overflow room at the North-South convention centre. This is where the rest of the conference is being held, so there was plenty of wireless access, empty seats, and proximity to the rest of the sessions without the 12,000 people trudge.

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Morning me hearties, for today's beating I have to propose a certain rather prominent wireless mobile provider, who's name I cannot divulge. Why should they receive the cat-o-nine-tails? No prepaid data plan!!!

This is a lot more serious an offence than it seems at first glance. Firstly, I cannot synchronise my Palm Treo with our Exchange Server, that entails me having to lug around my laptop and power supply. Secondly, the CommNet at TechEd07 can be synchronised to your mobile device - great functionality. If you have a Windows Mobile device, this is the easiest way of figuring out which of those 4 sessions you've signed up to next and which room they're in! And that brings me to the third major reason why this provider is to be flogged - finding where the h@#ll that room is.

There is awesome technology here at TechEd - called Signpost - you install the sw on your PocketPC or Smartphone, then point the camera at sign posts dotted around the conference. In an instant, it shows you where you are on the conference map! Brilliant!! Better than rum in a cask! Of course I can't use it, because I can't access the Net without a data service!!! No global roaming, so I have a local "pay as you go" SIM. Deserves a flogging!!

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So "Day 0" as we in the know like to call the pre-conference seminar day, is over. As I'm here on a fact finding mission, I've decided to attend as a conference delegate, to understand what it's like on deck as one of the crew.

So I spent the day at the Exchange 2007 Server Deep Dive, with somewhat mixed results:

Worthy of Commendation

Well, Exchange 2007, from the GUI to the Powershell, absolutely ROCKS!!! As a one time Exchange Consultant, I'm blown away by the versatility, and pure power found under the hood in this new version. Of course I knew this, but it was different experiencing it first hand.

Cory from Hynesite, has done his ever increasingly impressive job on the machines. The Hands On Labs all have two screens (not sure if this is new in the US - but it would be in Aus). This is fantastic, as the lab manual displays comfortably on the starboard monitor (that's right ye landlubbers), and all the virtual PC's display on the port side. Also I detect changes in the delivery software, which make it just work. My recommendation is if you're here for the next five days, skip those track sessions you're undecided about attending, and get some hands on experience down in the lab.

Greg Tyler, and Simon Sheperd, are Principal Consultants flown here from the UK. What's to say, other than they really know their stuff! Greg in particular handled the wrath of the demo gods with humour and good grace, and, more importantly, got everything back on track quicksmart. They're only here for another day-ish, so if you want real "from the field" experience with Exchange 2007 (Greg in particular throws Security and Mobility into the ring too), make sure you connect with them.

Beating into the Wind

I did struggle in this morning's first session. I haven't tried to follow an Instructor Led Lab, especially on a new topic for quite a while. It didn't help that in 2 of the 4 sessions we needed to apply an undocumented step to get the virtual machines working. By the time we'd figured it out, and taken the action, I was taking a flogging of my own. By session 2, I had this figured out though, and followed the lab about two steps ahead of the instructor, letting him fill in the blanks and give context to the actions I was taking.

I would say, however, that if you're contemplating coming to TechEd07 in Australia - you're getting GREAT value with the Deep Dives. The sessions I attended today were good value at the price, yet at the Aus TechEd07 we're delivering two days for half the price of the one day session here. But I know that slots are filling up, so I'd book now.

Last Gasp

Well I was told to leave the credit card at home, and me missus was right to say so too, because I popped into the TechEd store on the way out. 20% off of all books for attendees. I even found two worthy of a not-so-technical-anymore people manager like myself: "Crucial Conversations" and "Getting to Yes" 

So the round up for the day then looks like follows:

• Conference registration, transport, and welcome - Bosun's Commendation
• Pre-Conference Lunch - three floggings, including the Bosun for being so slow
• Pre-Conference Seminar - Exchange itself, HOL infrastructure, instructors and proctors - Bosun's commendation
• Pre-Conference Seminar - Exchange Lab configurations & notes - needs some trimming.
• TechEd Conference Store - Bosun's commendation 

Someone's in for a flogging, and I'm not sure just who...

Far be it for me to abdicate responsibility for my actions, but I arrived at the lunchroom today, somewhat after the start - well, about 30 mins after the start, of lunch. 15 of these minutes were due to the running over of the Exchange 2007 Pre-Conference Session Two (Preparing Active Directory). The other 15 were my fault, blogging about bags for goodness sake.

So I'll accept my beating. And, of course meeting out a flogging to our instructor Simon Sheperd. He did a great job of course, but I missed my meat, and so he must be flogged.

But the third flogging must surely go to the Lunch Providers. By the time I arrived, there were only vegetarian lunch packs on offer. Yep, I come from South Africa, I live in Australia, and I'm visiting America - what more evidence does one need of carnivore status? That's three factor authentication. I'm happy with lunch-packs, I'll even tolerate (with a polite smile as me mum taught me) green stuff on my sandwich, but no meat!!!! With three more hours of Exchange2007 ahead!!

Either we totally underestimated the number of carnivores attending, or misunderstand the migratory patterns of the herbivore. I can see a whole bunch of vegetarians standing around the lunch tables shaking their heads in dismay at us flesh-eating geeks, whilst desperately searching for the celery. Because they didn't realise that Vegetarians don't ever arrive early.

Oh well, the two family-sized chocolate-chip cookies filled me with enough sugar to push on into the afternoon.

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This years bag is ok, of course not as good as the ones we give to delegates at TechEd in Australia Last year everyone got a great Targus Backpack, which is still my primary laptop bag of choice. But the US TE07 Bag is fine. You can convert it to a backpack, and it has that most important of all conference bag features - a great accessible drink bottle holder!!

• Straight zip at the top - with the looped zip, it's not easy to get at things on the go (the whole bag falls open)
• Use the "Make Your Mark" Handprint Creative - this is such a powerful image, and TE07 differentiator, it's a shame that it's not on the bag.

Still - first impressions of Orlando TechEd07 are: This is huge; easy to get to; easy to get around; plentiful resources (including the bag); and I've actually spent this morning learning about Exchange 2007. (So technically not a junket - savvy!!)

Great start.

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