For anybody following my Tech Ed posts, I will hopefully be getting info from my other days up online in the near future. There were in fact many more days packed full of exciting sessions and valuable information learned. I met many great people! This was definately a worthwhile trip, hectic, yet high valuable. Unfortunately I now sit in another airport heading back to the head office for some "face time".

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Today marks the end of a good thing for me. Since April of 2004 I have been a very happy subscriber of the Nextel Broadband Service. This mobile data service provided broadband speeds with the flexibility of moving wireless within the coverage area. The speed was amazing, and although limited to this region the coverage was excellent. My understanding is that because of their merger with Sprint, and Sprints heavy investment in the slower and more expensive EVDO technology the trial has been cancelled. I find this extremely hard to believe that this product was not wildly successful, and a candidate for a national service. I guess I know how all those Beta-max users felt when the world was going VHS, despite it’s technical advantages. I guess now I need to seriously consider a new Windows Mobile device that allows me to use it as a modem as well for my laptop. The service officially ends June 30th (Anybody want to by a used Flarion card?) but I will be away from the area until then. :-(

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In Raleigh-Durham? Interested in what's new with Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition? If so, this Triangle .Net User Group meeting is a must for you!

TOPIC: Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
SPEAKER: Eric Adams, Program Manager Microsoft Corporation.

Tell 'em Rob sent you!

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Tech Ed 2005 has officially started with Steve Balmer presenting as only Steve can. It's my first live view of one of his presentations, and while somewhat subdued to what I have seen video of in the past, he certainly is an extremely passionate speaker. According to Steve, there has been not better to be working in the technology industry.

Highlights included:

- Quick stage apperance of the new Lenovo / IBM Thinkpad Tablet PC - Apparently this little device has a 6 hr battery life. I hope to find one on the show floor.

- A great demo of PUSH technology between the upcoming Exchange 2003 update and mobile devices pushing messages and providing device managemen an security similar to some of the functionality currently on RIM's Black Berry Devices.

- Using MOM to manage devices at a hardware level, including a demo of telling a crashed system to boot from a backup drive when the primary device had failed. I definately want to look more into the remote manage capabilities of MOM.

Those are some of the key points, but now I need to decide which of the 3 sessions in that are about to start is the one I want to attend. More later.

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Today is what I am referring to as Day 0 at Tech Ed. I've reserved day one for the tomorrow when the keynote takes places and the sessions begin. This may get confusing as my Tech Ed schedule calls today day 1, but that just doesn't seem right. Now with that out of they way....

Today was the INETA User Group Leaders Summit which brought together the organizing leaders from INETA as well as user group leaders from all over the place. This was a great event that allow me to finaly meet face to face with many that I have exchanged emails or phone calls with in the past, or other who's names I have just heard. Somehow being talked into working the registration desk gave me a really good opportunity to say hi and chat briefly with many of the attendees as well. The day included a variety of workshops aimed at helpign user groups be more effective in promoting themselves, obtaining sponsorship and adding value for all participants. If you're involved in a .Net user group and are not familiar with INETA, please check them out. If you're not involved in a user group, it's time to either go find one or start one up!

On of the highlights of the day was also having Ari Bixhorn present Indigo. It was a brief but very interested session where he even build a peer-to-peer cha application in under 5 minutes. I'm looking forward to much more Indigo content throughout the week.

And in other important news, today I stated the official collection of Tech Ed T-Shirts. So far 4 shirts and counting!

Now, it's off to try and decide which sessions I'll be attending tomorrow hopefully leaving time for the hands on labs and other networking.

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After a wonderfully short flight compared to my recent travels, I arrived today in Orlando for Tech Ed 05. Upon checking in at the hotel I received my first SWAG of the trip. My very 0wn bottle opener on a key chain. Just what every developer needs. I've heard stories of other attendees receiving goodie-boxes, but I think that must be soemthing special for MVP's and certain user group leaders. Hey, I'm a user group leader! I guess I'll just have to wait until somebody trom the Tablet PC or other group nominates me or something.

After getting settled in, my first task was get get myselg to the Peabody Hotel to attend Jeffrey Palermo's "Party With Palermo" which was attending my a whole mess of people. Thanks Jeff for organizing the event which drew a great turnout The name tags were a bit geeky, but very helpful. I enjoyed meeting some new people (Jean-Luc David, Chris Dufour, Amanda Murphy, and others) and some familiar faces (DonXML, Brendon Schwartz, Matt Ranlett, Chris Williams)

Speaking of Chris Williams, Charleston, SC Code Camp is taking place September 17th!

After seeing how many .Net developers we could fit into a 2 door car, I decided call it an early night. (Don't worry, I'm sure photos of the car inicdent will show up sooner than later on a blog) I'll start tomorrow at the INETA event and go form there.

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Josh has put together an excellent read on XSLT Code Generation and even includes sample code! I personally think that while code generation may not be the silver bullet for every project, it's a area the every developer must have a good understanding of. [CODE GENERATION PART II (XSLT)]

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A wonderful week of sailing around the British Virgin Islands with some good friends has come to an end. There's something truly great about island time, as as much of a technology fan as I am, it was nice to spend some time away from it all, but now back to the grind for a hectic short week trying to get everything important done before I shock my system and head to Tech Ed. Drop me a note if you're going to be there.

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