Here’s what I collected on Day 4:

• Screaming Pig – Microsoft SilverLight

My first session was “SIA309 – Secure Endpoint – What’s in Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010” up in 388. We’ve been using Forefront Client Security for quite a while, and I was interested to find out some more details about the much delayed replacement. I came away pretty excited and eager to get my hands on the early bits. The addition of CPU throttling is a big win, as we often receive complaints from our users that FCS has started a scan and is impacting performance right when they need to get something ready for class. The addition of “sequencing” to its behavioral analysis will help catch things that are getting past FCS today. While individual events may look safe to the scanner, by looking at the events as a sequence, the combination of events can indicate a malware attack.

Forefront Endpoint Protection will also be better able to access updates as needed and automatically upload malware samples. The Dynamic Signature Service will go a long way towards shortening the cycle between new variants of malware and the release of updated signatures. Lastly, Dynamic Translation is a new feature that translates code from accessing actual resources to only using virtual resources, allowing Forefront to keep your system safe while it analyzes the behavior of the software it is scanning.

Next it was on to more Forefront family content in “SIA325 – Secure Endpoint: Virtualizing Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway.” This session was heavy on PerfMon analysis to monitor the load on your TMG server to determine whether virtualization will work. They showed an interesting table that listed each feature of TMG and the relative CPU and I/O hits from each one. Malware scanning was far and away the biggest impact on the system which is why they recommend placing the volume used for scanning on its own LUN and away from other activity. I have a feeling that our load would be well-suited to virtualizing, but I’ll need to look into it some more when I have time (as if that will ever happen!). The presenter offered to provide the data and PerfMon settings from the presentation, so I stopped by the booth and had it copied to my thumb drive.

I asked (at the booth, not during the session) whether they had considered adding multiple scanning engines in TMB, and he said that they had, but they didn’t feel the performance impact justified the benefits of the additional engines.

I ran into the guys from Med School so I had lunch with them (and apparently missed quite the discussion over at the Krewe table) before heading off to a meeting with @TechEd_NA, @expta, and @thekrewe. We had an interesting conversation about the event in general, the value of community at TechEd, and the phenomena that is The Krewe.

After the discussions, most of us were going to go to the Russinovich session, so we hung out for a while before heading down to the Auditorium. Even though we had met earlier in the week, @TiffanyWI hadn’t connected that I was @Ladewig until we were standing there waiting around. Since I use my last name for my Twitter name, anyone who looked at my badge knew right away who I was on Twitter. So that earned me a big hug and added another person to a growing list of friends thanks to Twitter, TechEd, and the Krewe.

Anticipating a packed house for “WCL315 – The Case of the Unexplained, 2010: Troubleshooting with Mark Russinovich”, we headed down to Auditorium B early. That turned out to be a good decision because we managed to be near the front of the line and secured decent seats once the room opened. Mark was in great form as always as he walked us through a number of puzzling problems. As he showed us how to use several Sysinternals tools to identify the causes of the problems, he managed to get in a number of digs at Microsoft, Outlook, and Google. How does a guy get to be that funny and so wicked smart? If you haven’t been to one of his sessions, make an effort to do so the next time you’re at a conference where he is presenting. Absolutely amazing!

With our brains just a little bit more full than before, it was time for everyone to leave the Convention Center for the last time and say good bye to the educational part of TechEd for 2010. I headed back to the hotel, changed clothes, and killed some time before heading down to the lobby to catch the bus to the Closing Party.

The Closing Party (used to be the Attendee Party in previous years) was at Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World. This place is a little bit hard to describe. Blaine Kern Studios creates floats, sculptures, and props, and entire parades for Mardi Gras, Universal Studios, and other locations around the world. Mardi Gras World encompasses the actual sculpture and prop studios where they do their work with huge and unique event spaces. Check out their web site to learn more.

I arrived at the party just before the doors opened, so I was one of the first people in. At first you walked into a huge warehouse between rows of sculptures from various floats and then past entire floats from which costumed people were throwing beads. I collected several, enough to make myself look festive, and then walked through the area and the out into the open space along the river. Here they had a number of tents setup with food stations. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, and I had had enough food to tide me over for the evening. As it was still quite warm outside, I moved into the indoor area and found @TiffanyWI and then @wcaubrey. The band from the opening Keynote, Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr. and the Zydeco Twisters, was playing there, so we found a table for us and @expta. At the same time, the rest of the Krewe were securing tables in the Grand Oaks Mansion area, so we eventually moved over there where it was a bit cooler and a little more relaxed.

If you’ve ever been to the Blue Bayou at Disneyland, the Grand Oaks Mansion area is very similar with a replica antebellum mansion under a night sky with walkways and courtyards under moss-draped trees. Very cool. We managed to carve out our own area and spent the rest of the evening hanging out and enjoying everyone’s company on our last night together listening to a Dixieland-style band play.

After a lot of photos, hugs, and promises to stay in touch, people started to disperse. I left around 11 PM and headed back to the hotel. It was pretty late as usual, so I decided to save the packing for the morning and get some sleep.

Here’s what I collected on Day 3:

That’s correct… Absolutely Nothing!

This is the first time in many years that I didn’t visit the Expo and didn’t come back with some swag.

My first session on Wednesday was “WCL317 – Troubleshooting Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Lite Touch” with Johan Arwidmark. I just upgraded our BDD 2007 system to MDT 2010 a week or two ago, so I figured this would be a handy session to attend. Johan is one of those TechEd rockstars, not quite Russinovich-level rockstar, but close to that for deployment folks. He didn’t disappoint. I haven’t run into the scenarios he described, but if I do, I’ll have a hint as to what to look for. If you’re deploying Windows 7 (or even Vista and XP if you really want to still be doing that) and you aren’t using SCCM or MDT 2010, check it out. It gives you a great framework for adding some discipline to your deployment process. Being able to generate consistent gold images for your desktops pays big dividends when you have to support the systems where you deploy those images. I shudder to think of the way I used to build images. I won’t even describe it here to save myself public embarrassment.

Session 2 was “WSV316 – Hyper-V and Storage: Maximizing Performance and Deployment Best Practices in Windows Server 2008 R2” which is probably the longest session title of any I attended. I was a bit disappointed by this one. The speaker really focused on iSCSI over Fibre Channel, and since we don’t use iSCSI, a lot of the technical details didn’t hold my attention. I’ll take another look at the session later and see if I missed anything.

I managed to sneak in a quick lunch with some of the Krewe before I had to run to an 11:45 session. The lunch menu was pretty good. The catfish sticks had some seasoning to them and the mac & cheese was quite good. The red velvet cake was decent, considering that it was sugar-free.

The lunch session was “COS207 – Microsoft Live@edu: Moving Your School Communication and Collaboration to the Cloud” all the way in the back in Room 298. As I told some people at the time, I think I passed a sign that said “Welcome to Mississippi” on the way it seemed so far. We’ve moved our students to Live@edu already, just finishing up this month in fact, so I was more interested to hear what other schools are doing. A gentleman form the Kentucky school systems was the customer presenter, and he gave an interesting presentation of their migration. They moved all of their users, not just students, and had some different concerns than we did since they’re K-12 and we’re Higher Ed. I was interested to see the portal they developed in-house to simplify some of the management tasks that they can delegate to other users. I’m hoping our central IT does something similar for us to use.

Then it was on to “VIR320 – Sequencing Deep Dive: Efficiently Making Your Applications Virtual” to help prep for some App-V sequencing I need to do when I get back to the office. I actually went to this session last year, if I recall, but I never had time to move our App-V deployment forward, so I figured a refresher was in order. The presenter was a bit dry, but definitely knew his stuff. This was a much better App-V session than the one I attended previously. At the end of the presentation, he highlighted a new App-V community site that is available for Microsoft and the community to use to share recipes for sequencing apps. I haven’t visited it yet, but plan to do so when I get home.

It was back to MDT 2010 at 3:15 for “WCL403 – Unleash the Power of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010” with Michael Niehaus, another one of the deployment rockstars. Mike’s demos were a bit rocky due to network issues getting back to Redmond. I can’t imagine relying on network connectivity to be present for a demo for TechEd, especially when you can get a laptop with eSATA and a big external drive to hold your VMs. I’m just saying. Even without some of the demos, the session was still great however. He showed how to test and debug the modifications you make to MDT 2010 without having to actually lay down an image on a machine. That’s the worst part of making changes, and shortening that cycle will be a huge bonus.

I closed out the day with the 5 PM session “UNC315 – Microsoft Communications Server 14: Setup and Deployment.” There were three key takeaways from this session. First, with v14, Microsoft will support virtualization for all roles, including audio/video which isn’t the case with 2007 R2. Key will be the guidelines they provide for your configuration to ensure everything works as expected.
Second, SQL Server 2008 R2 will not be supported until after RTM, as part of some post-RTM update. That was unfortunate to hear as people want to start standardizing on R2 today. Instead you’re going to wind up with more SQL systems and clusters than you would need if you were only looking at your performance requirements.

Lastly, when you are in a coexistence mode with 2007 R2 and 14 running side-by-side, 14 will use a 2007 R2 Edge Server. Unlike Exchange which had you start upgrading from the outside and work your way in, with OCS you will start from the inside and work your way out.
Then it was back to the hotel where I discovered that housekeeping had “helpfully” raised the thermostat from what I had it set to. That really annoyed me. I understand I had it set a bit lower than they would like, but if you’re going to give me a room with two exterior walls in the heat and humidity of New Orleans, I want to make sure the room stays comfortable.

The main event in the evening was the Springboard party at House of Blues. Food was OK, nothing fancy, but was sufficient to keep the stomach from growling. The Krewe had gathered on the upper level overlooking the stage. Before the music started, most folks were watching the Stanley Cup final. I like the Blues and Kings, and since neither was playing, it didn’t really matter much to me who won. As everyone knows the Blackhawks went on to win the Cup that night, and that was OK with me. I like to see teams come back from long droughts in championships, so good for them.

The band that was playing the party that night was Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience. Terrance Simien is a Grammy-winning, Creole singer, and they brought down the house. I applaud the Springboard folks for their entertainment choice. I think everyone there that night would agree. And being the Disneyphile that I am, I was excited to hear them play “Gonna Take You There” from the Princess and the Frog soundtrack. Terrance did not sing on the soundtrack, but so here tonight and did a great job. I loved Princess and the Frog and really think it was underappreciated during its release. Be sure to check out the Terrance Simien web site. If you enable pop-ups for the site, you’ll get to listen to some his music.

I detoured to Krystal again on the way back to the hotel for a late night food fix. Made things interesting by adding a spicy chicken sandwich this time. Quite tasty.

Given the quality of breakfasts at previous TechEds, it was an easy decision to have breakfast at the hotel. You can’t beat a made-to-order omelet in the morning with crispy bacon on the side. And from what I read on Twitter, the Convention Center didn’t even try. I’m not sure what went down, but people seemed really disappointed in what was offered.

After breakfast, I didn’t want to walk to the Convention Center and be dripping wet when I get there, so I rode the bus, the well air-conditioned bus to be exact. Arriving sweat-free, I lined up for the keynote and for once had a decent seat: pretty close and right on aisles so I could make a quick escape. They warmed up the crowd with a zydeco band, and it helped wake everyone up and get people as jazzed as they can be at a TechEd keynote.

Bob Muglia was his usual self. I’ll give him credit for keeping things on time and having a lot of demos, but I swear if he said cloud one more time I was going to lose it. And what is up with that hideous shirt they distributed on the chairs. I have no idea what the company on the shirt does and the shirt didn’t help solve that mystery. Going straight into the Goodwill pile.

Lunch was OK. The gumbo was decent enough, and the meatloaf wasn’t inedible. It definitely was bland. Not at all the “cajun” meatloaf that was on the name tag. Others on Twiteer disagreed and weren’t happy with the meal at all. I sympathize with the Convention Center since it is hard to cook for thousands of people and have it come out fresh and delicious every time. Now on to the sessions for today:

WPH201: Windows Phone 7: a New Kind of Phone

Good overview of the phone, the thought behinds the big changes in the Windows mobile platform, and where they are going. Kind of strange to be listening to the presentation while reading the announcements being made by Steve Jobs at the same time at WWDC. I like most of what I see, but the problem is they should have released this phone ages ago. I fear an end-of-year release may be too late.

MGT203 Microsoft System Center Roadmap and Strategy

This session was a look at the plans for the System Center suite including the v.Next products. It is amazing how much the System Center family has grown and how much the products have matured and continue to mature. SCCM 2007 will be the first Microsoft product to reach an R3 release. Highlight for me was the look at Forefront Endpoint Protection management, all of which will be handled in SCCM with the next release.

UNC320 Microsoft Communications Server 14: What’s New in Microsoft Communicator 14 Experience and Backend

The new Communicator client is a far cry from the current 2007 release. Very streamlined and information-rich, Communicator looks to both SharePoint and AD for user data. Photos and skills come from MySites, org charts from AD, etc. Since we aren’t using MySites currently, that added capability wouldn’t do much for us, but down the road, I can see how it would be useful. The client has a bit of a Facebook feel to it with the listing of status/presence changes for your contacts. Not sure if that is good or bad. Would be more helpful in large companies like Microsoft where not everyone may know each other. Less applicable to us at the school level, more so at the campus level.

After the sessions ended for the day, I made my way to the Partner Expo and grabbed some food and made the rounds. Not bad, but just typical appetizer food, albeit with a local twist. After visiting a few more vendors and Microsoft stations, I met up with some guys from the Med School and went to Gordon Biersch with them for dinner.

After dinner, I met up with some of The Krewe at the Exchange Roundtable at the Rusty Nail. It was a little hard to hear everyone, but there was a good discussion before it broke up into side groups. The Microsoft folks who attended were a great resource. Direct access to these folks is always the best reason for coming to TechEd. Thanks for setting this up Jeff!

Everyone rolled out of there around 11 PM and tried to move to the Bing party, but we weren’t able to get in. They had reached the limit of 200 people, so we would have had to wait for a large group of people to leave. most of us elected to return to our htoels and get to bed so we can all wake up in time for the 8 AM session. Ugh… too early.

OK, that’s out of the way. So what happened today… The flight from St. Louis on Southwest was uneventful and on time, and my bag was one of the first on the carousel, so things were going well. And then I tried to get to the hotel. I should have gone for the taxi, but I’m thrifty (even when WashU is paying for everything) so I decided to take a hotel shuttle. Big mistake. We waited almost 45 minutes for a shuttle to show up, all the while standing outside the terminal in the hot muggy air. Watching cab after cab drive by made it that much worse. I’m sure the occupants were comfortable and cool and looking on the huddled masses waiting for the shuttle with pity. Then again, they could have been laughing at our misfortune, but I digress.

I did finally make it to the Embassy Suites, checked in, and found myself walking back outside (?) to get to my room on the 11th floor. I’m not sure why there is an outside corridor, but there is. Someone wisely installed a sunshade right in front of my room, so I’m hoping that will help keep things cool. I had to crank the A/C way down, but it isn’t too bad now.

I hopped the bus over to the Convention Center after unpacking to get register and pick up my badge and bag. I would have walked since we’re only two blocks away, but the A/C in the bus felt really good. Registration was as fast and efficient as it can be. Probably didn’t spend more than 10 minutes total in the Convention Center, and that includes the time to walk to and from the doors. I’m hoping that means the logistics for the rest of the week are as well executed.

Another stop at the hotel to drop off my bag, and then I started walking down to the French Quarter. I met up with a contingent of The Krewe at Oyster Fest. According to them, I was the Man Who Wasn’t There at TechEd last year. Everyone seemed to have a “Where’s Ladewig” story to tell. Who knew?

I met up with @Brian_Bell later for lunch and left The Krewe at Oyster Fest. We went to Johnny’s Po-boys and it was well worth it. The po-boys were delicious and the gumbo had a great, rich flavor. You just can’t go wrong with the food down here.

We walked back to my hotel so I could give Brian the 3 lbs. of Provel cheese I brought for him. Oh, didn’t I mention the cheese? Yes, Brian had asked me to bring some Provel for him so I went over to Schnucks for a late night Provel run and came back with 6 packages of slices since the deli counter was closed. Brian acquired a taste for Provel via a friend from St. Louis, so I was glad to be able to help give him and his family back in North Carolina a way to get their Provel fix.

Wow… it is midnight. I need to wrap this up so I can get some sleep. After relaxing in the room for a couple hours, I changed, and went to the Manager’s reception at the hotel for snacks and drinks and met up with @wcaubrey. He headed off to do some work while I headed to the Party with Palermo. Considering there was a $10 cover this year, I expected more than we received. The food was not the “full dinner” that was promoted, but at least I had something in my stomach to tide me over. I found The Krewe inside, and we all made our way to Bourbon Street and My Bar where @thekrewe had arranged for the Krewe Meet ‘n Greet. We had the whole second floor as well as the wraparound balcony looking out over Bourbon Street. Plus bags and bags of beads. Booze, beads, and Bourbon Street… What a powerful combination. It is amazing what people will do for beads, and quite entertaining. I do question the wisdom of the parents I saw who bring their small children down to Bourbon Street at night. Seriously, is this an appropriate environment for young kids? I can only imagine the conversations when they get back home… “Daddy, why were those girls rubbing each other and pulling up their tops while people threw necklaces at them?” Good luck with that one…

Anyway, the party was a great opportunity to meet people. I finally met, live and in person, @TIffanyWI (who is NOT from Wisconsin, which is too bad for her), @ClauPerez, and @ClosedSocket, to name just a few. I finally headed back around 10 PM, but had to duck into a Krystal to pick up a late night burger fix on the way home.

Whew! I think that’s everything and in much more detail than you ever wanted to know. Hey, I didn’t make you read all of this. I figure if you made it this far, you must have found something worthwhile. Didn’t you? What, you were only reading because you wanted to see the first Swag Report? OK, OK, here you go. It isn’t much, but it is day 0, so you can’t expect much.

• Official Microsoft TechEd 2010 T-Shirt
• Microsoft TechEd 2010 Bag and Water Bottle

I also added a placeholder for Adonia which will join the fleet in 2011 and replace Artemis.  Artemis was sold to Artania Shipping which will charter her to German operator Phoenix Reisen as MS Artania.

We made our way down to the Magical Express area only to find the longest line I’ve ever seen for ME. We were a bit concerned but the line moved pretty fast, so while it took longer than we had anticipated, it really wasn’t long until we were on the bus.

We arrived at All Star Sports (Not our preferred level of resort, but we wanted to minimize the costs for the trip… we miss you Wilderness Lodge!) and put the new online check-in to the test. The idea is you provide all your info ahead of time and check-in by showing photo ID and picking up your pre-printed materials. Honestly I’m not sure we saved all that much time. Perhaps if the lines had been longer for regular check-in, the advantages may have been more apparent. Would definitely do it again however.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that we were in Surf’s Up building 1. Nice and close to the pool and main building but with a room facing away from the noise around the pool. We settled in, changed into warm-weather clothes, and headed for the bus to Downtown Disney. We were easing into things with a park-free day. After arriving at Downtown Disney we spent the rest of the day shopping and eating.

Lunch was at Earl of Sandwich (love their bread), and dinner was at Cooke’s of Dublin (fish and chips!). We’re on the Disney Dining Plan this trip. Used to be a better deal when the tip and appetizer were included for table service meals, but you can’t beat the free dining promotion. Our only complaint was the inclusion of a dessert item with every quick meal. It is OK if the venue has a fruit option, but not ever one does.

We also did some shopping though not as much as in previous years. Nothing was all that compelling. We were disappointed that we couldn’t find a Chipbacca or Mashter Yoda Star Wars Potato Heads. Will check Hollywood Studios and keep our fingers crossed. We had our real dessert at Ghirardelli. As usual there were way too many people there for their seating area. It doesn’t help when people hold a table waiting for the rest of their party to arrive. Wish the staff would police the area and reserve seating for people who have ordered.

We also took the boat up to Port Orleans Riverside (aka Dixie Landings). We honeymooned at Dixie Landings and it remains a favorite of ours. We checked out the Christmas tree in the lobby then boarded the boat back to Downtown Disney. During the trip we had a good look at the reconstructed treehouse villas. Very nice. Curious how many points these go for.