Today was a great day for TechEd enthusiasts like myself: TechEd 2012 blog bling is now available! That may not sound all that exciting to most of you, but for those of us who attend TechEd every year, it really is. These badges showcasing the conference logo, location, and dates are another reminder that we’re getting closer and closer to the real thing. We’re going to spend a week with thousands of other IT Pros and Developers, digging into the latest and greatest Microsoft products and technologies, meeting with vendors, making new connections, and having fun with old friends. You can’t blame us for getting excited can you? And having blog bling lets us advertise to the world that we’re psyched to be going to TechEd and encourage everyone else in the community to think about going too. See you in Orlando!

I received approval yesterday to attend the Windows in Higher Education Conference 2012 in Redmond (April 29 to May 2). Held on the Microsoft Campus, this event is like a mini TechEd for those of us who work in Higher Ed.  I attended back in 2007 and wish I had made more of an effort to attend in the intervening years.  Presentations are split with half by Microsoft speakers and the other half by peers.  Take a look at the agenda from this year’s conference for an idea of what topics are covered and by whom.

It is sometimes difficult to find and meet up with other Higher Ed people at TechEd, so this is a good opportunity to network and compare notes.  I remember coming away from the 2007 event really excited about Live@Edu, and I’m interested to see what I will take away next year.

I’m also looking forward to getting back to Redmond and the Microsoft campus.  Hopefully I will be able to meet up with friends and contacts while I’m there.  I’ve only been to Seattle a few times, but always enjoy my time there.

Time to start a new countdown.  Only 193 days until TechEd, and 150 days until Windows HiEd.  See you there!

Top Twitterers in the TechEd Twitter Army

TechEd 2011 LadeSwag Day 3

• Geeks with Blogs t-shirt
• Microsoft Desktop Virtualization plush mouse

TechEd 2011 LadeSwag Day 2

• Xiotech insulated plastic cup
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 sticker
• Windows Azure lip balm
• Office 365 car
• Norton 2011 license
• Veeam glitter ball
• Veeam pen
• Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization plush rabbit
• Windows Intune power strip
• Windows 7 fake tattoos
• Microsoft Visual Studio t-shirt

TechEd 2011 LadeSwag Day 1

• Cisco “Got Servers” t-shirt
• Microosft Exchange “Super Sparkle Happy” t-shirt
• NeverFail “I’m Available” t-shirt
• AvePoint foam heart
• SharePoint 2010 car
• Office car
• Coyote Point LED flashlight
• ChangeGear blinking pin
• MS ICAB foam rocket
• Datalogics screen cleaner
• Microsoft Volume Licensing foam couch for business cards
• MicroExcel Keyboard Brush/Screen Cleaner
• Microsoft Services Premier Support blinking “ice cube”
• Diskeeper V-locity mug
• Infragistics cozie
• Microsoft BitLocker Administration luggage lock
• Brocade foam cloud
• DataCore dancing robot
• K2 blinking rubber ball
• EminentWare rubber duck (2)
• Office screwdriver kit
• Commvault yo-yo (2)
• Idera rubber duck
• Geekfest rubber duck
• Schneider Electric pen

First session was VIR371 Best Practices in Virtualizing RDS and Virtual Desktops.  This was an interactive discussion so we voted on topcis, and unfortunately we never made it to the topic I was interested in, virtualizing RDS hosts, but the discussion was still interesting.  The presenters were form Project VRC (Virtual Reality Check) which they consider TopGear for desktop virtualization.  Check out their site, http://virtualrealitycheck.net/, for unbiased vendor-neutral analysis.  If you’re using VMware for VDI, check out their presentation “vSphere on Red Bull” for a simple way tro get 20+% performance improvements.

Of to the dining hall for som food, then back to the Expo Hall for some time in the Blogger’s Hub) where I discovered the iPad isn’t so good for blogging. (See So Much for Blogging for background).  My next stop was B101 for VIR305 Packaging with App-V 4.6 SP1. Only problem was I couldn’t figure out where B101 is. After a lot of going in circles and backtracking, I finally decided that the room was actually inside the HOL. I didn’t feel so bad since nearly everyone else commented on what a bear it was o find the room if you hadn’t been there before.

SP1 has some useful improvements.  Getting rid of the requirement for 8.3 names and an actual Q: drive on the sequencing machine get rid of a couple annoying aspects of the App-V product.  Good to see them shedding more of the SoftGrid legacy bits and pieces.  Even better are the package accelerators which bring packaging best practices and info from app recipes right into the sequencer itself.  Little by little, we’re getting close to the point when apps start being deployed this way from the beginning.

I made a quick detour to B3050to say hi to Scott Hanselman (he used to work for one of my college suitemates), then a break in the alumni lounge before hading to the hotel to get ready for try 2 for the UC Roundtable.  Since the Roundtable is Jeff Guillet’s baby, I’ll let him tell this part of the story again. 

Jump over to Jeff’s blog and read the rest of the story. (Kind of sounds like something you would hear on Paul Harvey’s radio show.)

And we’re back…  A few of us left the Roundtable and grabbed cabs to head to the Springboard Party at Ventana’s so we could get there early enough to receive our free copy of Zero Day. We exited the taxi only to see a long line around the corner, which made everyone sad. But wait, since we have green wristbands, we were able to to jump the line and head to the book signing, making everyone happy! The party was quite the event.  Had my picture taken with the three Marks: Mark Russinovich, Marcus Murray, and Mark Minasi. Spent the rest of the evening hanging out with The Krewe.  Party ended at 11, but it was after midnight by the time I managed to get outside.  Having to move people out via elevator really slows things down.

I headed back to my hotel, and the night was so pleasant and my hotel sits right next to Centennial Park, so I figured I’d pop in and just sit and relax for a bit.  I was there for maybe 20 minutes, just enjoying the moment, before I headed back to the hotel. There aren’t a lot of opportunities to relax while you’re at TechEd so you have to grab them where you can.

Day two started with a decision to be made. Hands On Labs (HOL’s) or a breakout session.  Every TechEd I plan on working on multiple HOL’s, and every TechEd I’m lucky to do one or two.  There never seems to be enough time to do everything you want to do. I decided to go to a session, WSV201 RemoteFX Hardware Selection and Deployment Considerations for VDI and Sessions.  It turned out to be a poor choice.

I’m looking at replacing some or all of our computer lab with thin terminals connecting back to a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) host.  Our users aren’t working with a lot of multimedia or 3D graphics, so RDS is a good fit.  I’ve been holding off until RemoteFX was available, so this should have been a useful session.  The first and last five minutes of the session was useful, the rest was a walk-through of a white paper that is coming out soon. I should have waited for it to be released and gone to a different session.

After the session, I made  quick run to the bookstore only to find that they had already sold out of the 1080p Studio cam.  I’m 0-2 for the day and we’ve hardly started.  It has to get better here on out, right? Wrong.  I made it to my next session, SIM341 First Look at DPM 2012, just it was starting.  We’ve been using DPM 2010 for several months and have been really happy with it.  I was looking forward to finding out more about 2012. The spekaer was on his third or fourth slide when I get a page from work that said “The UPS is beeping.”  That’s not the kind of message you want to see when you’re out of town.

A quick logon to the UPS revealed a bad power module which means no battery backup. Great…  Spent the rest of the session setting up a service call with APC and praying to whatever IT gods there might be to keep supplying my computer room with clean, smooth, continuous power until the module is replaced. I also asked them to quote an additional power module.

Crisis averted (for now), it was off to kill some time in the HOL area, then lunch, then some more time on the Expo floor.  Checked out the Verizon booth, but all they could do is point to pictures of the HTC Trophy and repeat the word “soon” over and over. Why show up at a Microsoft conference if you don’t have a Windows Phone to sell?

After all that, I finally get to go to a complete session, SIM 341 SCCM 2012 Deployment and Infrastructure Technical Overview. Like all Wally Mead sessions, it was full of great detail and was well-presented, but it really wasn’t that appropriate for my environment since we only have a single site.  Just not having much luck picking sessions today. 

Next stop is EXL319 Lync 2010 Setup, Deployment, Upgrade, a and Coexistance Scenarios. Finally a session with info I can actually use! Three things I heard that made me happy:

• Virtualization support for all roles (requires 2008 R2 Hyper-V and you can‘t use Live Migration)


• SQL Server 2008 R2 supported


• Little or no schema changes moving forward (we’ll see how well they keep to that promise)

The plan for the rest of the evening was going to be simple: dinner at Legal Sea Foods, the a quiet evening back at the hotel getting caught up on blogging and other things.  Then I get a tweet from Jeff about a schedule change for the UC Roundtable that Jeff Guillet sent out.  I quick check my email and see that the UC Roundtable is actually tonight and not Wednesday night.  Uh oh, the plans they are a-changin’.

For the story of the UC Roundtable (that wasn’t), hop on over to Jeff’s blog, The EXPTA (blog), and read the story there, then come back for the rest.  It is his story, so he should be the one to tell it.

OK, so you’re all caught up on the story. He mentioend they were filming the VH1 series Single Ladies whl we were there, right? No, he didn’t. Well, they were.  It really wasn’t that interesting other than the multitude of beautiful women in tight, short dresses. Guess you had to be there.

Atfer the non-Roundtable, those of us who did not abandon Jeff, made our way down Peachtree in weather that felt more like Chicago than Atlanta, cold and windy.  A quick stop to warm up at the Spiceworks party at Barley’s and then we were on the way to Geekfest at STATS. We were greeted at the door with wristbands and went inside, ate some real food (if you count wings and chips and cheese dip as real food… you do during TechEd if you want to eat), and closed out another day. 

But I was talking about blogging. I had hoped to keep up with my ambitious plans this year with the still-hot geek accessory, the iPad… the iPad 2 to be exact.  Unfortunately blogging turned out to be something that did not work well with the iPad. I use WordPress for my blog, and the WordPress iOS app… well, it sucks… for anything more than simple text entry.  I still have not found a way to easily add a link without editing HTML code, and that is soooooo 1990’s. So I gave up.  Editing it via the web would have been OK, but trying to scroll in a text box without scrolling the entire page on the iPad proved fruitless as well. I’m sure I could pick a random 5-year old and ask him/her how to do it and they would sigh loudly, roll their eyes at the stupid old (42) man, and then proceed to do it so quickly that I miss it entirely.

And don’t even get me started on using Flickr. Another #fail on the iPad. So I gave up and will finish these half-written posts when I get home, hopefully before I forget all the technical stuff.  You’re just going to have to wait.  I’m sure all nine of you who read this blog could care less, but there might be a couple of you who stop by and find it interesting.