Sunday, June 18, 2006

What Does It Take to Feed Tech·Ed?

  • More than 1,250,000 pieces of Mikes and Ikes were consumed over the course of the week.
  • 18,750 pounds of salad were prepared and offered at meals.
  • 83,700 ice cream novelty bars and fruit and yogurt bars were served.
  • 60,000 (or 5,000 dozen) eggs were eaten by attendees at breakfast.
  • It took four tractor trailer trucks to transport the 150,000 bottles of water that were consumed this week.
  • The total amount of fruit ordered for this week would fill three-quarters of a full-size tractor trailer.
  • At least 1.6 million ounces of coffee were poured.
  • More than 50,000 pounds of carbohydrates were consumed at Tech·Ed (Atkins who?).
  • 7,500 table cloths were used and reset on a daily basis.

(Taken from Commnet, Microsoft's TechEd site for attendees.)

Saturday, June 17, 2006

TechEd hotel problems

well...i had planned on blogging during my time at TechEd but thanks to the hotel's internet connection not working i wasn't able to. now that i'm back at home, it's time to go through all of my notes and start blogging.

i've created a new blog as well that i will start using for my technical/work related posts. check it at out:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/

Monday, June 12, 2006

thanks hurricane Alberto

I just talked with my wife and found out that we have a hurricane heading our way (in Florida, not Boston). It looks like it is going to make landfall sometime tomorrow night around Tallahassee (north of us) according to the latest models. Of course, that can change at any moment.

I logged in to try and finish my post from last night about the keynote and ended up looking up information for her about the hurricane and watching the last 10 minutes of the Japan v. Australia match. The Aussies won 3 to 1.

Anyway, I'm off to lunch and to officially check out the exhibit hall now that it's finally open.

To everyone back home, be safe through the storm.
This is a little late, but better late than never. I tried posting this last night on my Jasjar, but wasn't able to keep a connection going.

The keynote this year featured Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia, and Chris Capossela. Micrsoft introduced the "four promises":

1. Manage Complexity, Achieve Agility
2. Protect Information, Control Access
3. Advance the Business with IT Solutions
4. Amplify the Impact of Your People

This is the year of what Microsoft is calling "people ready" software. People ready software sounds like the service oriented programming model rebranded to a catchier title. People ready software is the logical conclusion of the consumer market moving towards a more service oriented architecture with the introduction of the Microsoft Live brand of products. Microsoft feels that this is only the beginning and that the industry is moving towards a "services disruption", a phrase coined by Ray Ozzie. This services disruption is fueled by the Grove technology that Microsoft is incorporating in to the Microsoft Office family of products and is positioned as a middle ground for business to adopt the software as a service model without completely decentralizing their network.

There are lots of new products looming on the horizon, least of which is Vista. Bob Muglia hailed Vista as the most secure operating system Microsoft has created and perhaps the most secure in the industry. Very bold words for a company that has traditionally been riddled with security flaws in their operating systems and other operating system core components (namely Internet Explorer).

Microsoft is investing heavily in the server virtualization market as well. There are updates to Virtual Server 2003 that are coming in the next few weeks to help ease the transition to the next generation of virtual servers. Microsoft is rumoring that by the end of next year they will have not only full support for hardware virtualization, but also support in Longhorn for operating system virtualization (this is where the core operating system services are virtualized) and support for application virtualization (which would allow incompatible versions of the software (either the same or different) to run at the same time). In order to further their goals of application virtualization, Microsoft has bought Softricity.

In the arena of security, Microsoft announced a new security product called Forefront that promises to ease the adoption of better security models when using Vista and XP. Forefront also has Antigen components not only for Exchange but also now for SharePoint and Live Communication Server.

All in all, it promises to be an interesting year for Microsoft and the industry as a whole. We'll have to wait and see if Microsoft follows through on their promises.

in Boston, finally

Stepping off the plane at baggage claim. Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do about a hotel since my coworker missed the flight and the hotel is in his name.

Update: I was able to find out when he was coming in and get checked in to the hotel anyway. I've just checked out our booth and it looks really good. The entertainment center is incredible. I'm off to the keynote...see you there.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

getting ready for TechEd 2006

I'm getting ready for TechEd 2006 with mixed feelings this year. In the five years I've been married I've never left my wife for longer than a night or two. Now, before anybody pipes up and says "Oh...how sappy/cute/etc.", let me explain why I feel this way.

She has epilepsy and has had it for the last 11 years. The convulsive seizures are under control, but the partial ones aren't. So, it's because of the seizures that I don't like leaving her alone for any extended periods of time. Fortunately, she has a lot of people here that are keeping an eye on her while I'm gone and a friend staying with her...so that all helps.

This is the third TechEd I've been able to attend and looks like it will be just as impressive as the last two. I've just finished packing, and barely filled one corner of the massive suitcase I'm bringing. Why bring such a large suitecase? Easy...SWAG! Last year I ended up with almost an entire small suitecase worth (thanks mostly to my wife, who was able to attend since it was in our backyard). Learning my lesson from last year, I'm bringing the largest suitecase I have and making sure it arrives almost empty. That way I can be sure to fill it up with lots of goodies.

This is definately the year for Vista and .NET 2.0. It should be interesting. There are a ton of changes in Vista and .NET 2.0. I'm already pretty familiar with .NET 2.0 since the product I've been developing since October of last year is written using C# 2.0. Vista is another story. I'm just now starting to take the plunge, although I'm very happy to say that the remote console portion of the product runs as a native Vista application under limited user mode.

It looks like the sessoins on malware are starting to die down from last year. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not. There are still a few, so I'm going to try to hit those as well. Malware (especially spyware) is of particular interest since I was the lead architect and developer for our CounterSpy Enterprise product (at least all of the releases through 1.5) before I moved over to become a development manager. Now I handle our Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall, LanHound and Sunbelt Network Security Inspector products.

It looks like a good list of sessions this year, although again there are lots of sessions that I want to attend that are all at the same time. If only I could be in two places at once. Oh well...I'll just have to wait for the DVDs.

I wonder what they will be "giving away" at the keynote this year. It's Sunday night this time so there's more time for the actual conference. Last year I was one of the lucky ones to get a Jasjar and absolutely love it. I've got my entire schedule planned out on it, plus the slide decks for the sessions I'm going to on the SD card. If they give out some equally as cool this year, I'll have to try and get it. Last year it was hard...they only had a small amount and by the time the keynote was over they were all gone.

If you're going to TechEd this year, be sure to check out the Sunbelt Software booth (both #909) and see the demos for CounterSpy Enterprise and Sunbelt Messaging Ninja. Be sure to sign up for a chance to win the entertainment system (XBox 360, Alienware media center PC, stereo system and big screen TV). I wish I had this setup. It's very slick.

Stay tuned.....I'll try to keep blogging while I'm at the conference.