TechEd 2007 - Day One Recap

Today has been a long day and it isn't even over yet.  I woke up extra early knowing that I didn't want to be late for the press reception prior to the keynote and that my hotel was a fair distance away from the conference center.

I was up and waiting on the bus at 6:20am, but it wasn't until I got down to there that I found out that the buses don't actually start picking up until 6:45am.  Oh well, I had my Cingular cellular card and was good to go to kill some time.  I booted up the notebook and got connected just as a bus was pulling up.  As it turns out the buses start out my hotel to get coordinated in the morning so they let me load up and ride along.

After about 45 minutes we pulled up to the west conference building where the keynote was to be held. I shuffled in with the others on the bus and headed toward the press areas.  I had forgot the room, so I sit down and again pull out my laptop. A few minutes later a guy, who later turned out to be Peter Bruzzese, sits down who is also press and looking for the same area.

Peter and I headed over to the press breakfast and had some idle chit-chat about things like Long's post this morning regarding his book. Jeff from our site, and Tom Warren from Neowin filed in before too long and we all ate and enjoyed the calm before the storm that is TechEd's first day.

15 minutes prior to the keynote we were ushered off to the press seating area in the front of the auditorium. I am not gong to recap the keynote, because Jeff pretty well sums things up here, needless to say it wasn't stellar.

After the keynote we had a rather lengthy walk back to the main conference, about 20 minutes due to all the people trying to shuffle. Since it took so long get back to the main conference center I missed the start of any of the 10:30am conference so just hung out at the press room planning the rest of the day and catching up with everyone there that I hadn't seen in a while. I also met Marteen from techlog.org

At lunch I had planned to meet up with Wes, but due to the spotty cell coverage by Cingular today we were unable to connect and so just went back to the press area for a quick bite with Jeff and then headed to the partner expo area for some quick freebies.

This year the partner expo is packed full of the usual give-a-ways which largely consist of t-shirts, coozies, squishy toys, candy, and pens.  There is a occasional Xbox 360 and iPod giveaway to enter and even one drawing for $10,000. I find the iPod ones a little funny with how pervasive the devices are these days if you wanted one chances are you have one already. So I loaded up with all a bunch of the free giveaways and then got ready for the afternoon sessions.

I spent the 1pm time slot at the Microsoft TLC area where I was mingling with many of the employees manning the booths at the time. I lingered the most at the Microsoft hardware booth playing with the OQO and the ASUS concept ultra light notebook with wood paneling.  The OQO was really fun to play with, but I think it is one of those that has a COOL factor, but isn't a long term usable machine.

Next on the agenda was a talk by the Windows Home Server team and I was stoked to see this on the agenda as it has been one product I have been really looking forward too this year. However, after spending 30 minutes waiting for the presenter to show the  staff finally told the 200 or so attendees that they were unable to locate him and so they would reschedule the session for later in the week.  Unfortunately, that means that most of the people who wanted to see about the product will now have to miss the session. I will post any info they share on a when the session  gets rescheduled.

By now I have been running most of the day so the evening press reception was a welcome break. I spent the hour hanging with the Windows IT Pro folks and some the ZDNet folks (including Ryan and Mary Jo).

While on the bus back to the hotel I was reflecting on the fact that this was just day one and four more full intense days are ahead.

josh