Sessions for Day 3:
I headed back to the hotel after the last session to drop off my bag and pack for the trip home on Friday. I knew I’d be at the Attendee Party at Universal Studios late that night, and I was going to want to pack afterwards. That didn’t take too long, so I headed down the manager’s reception before going to wait for the bus to the park. Since the lines for the buses are usually pretty long, I started the line at least half hour early. I wanted to make sure I was on the first bus. As we passed other hotels, the lines of people were stretching all the way from I Drive back to the hotel lobby, so it was going to take several buses to clear out those lines. With a park like Universal Studios, getting there early and getting there six or seven buses later makes a big difference in how long you wait for the rides.
They handed out ponchos as we arrived at the park, but thankfully we didn’t need them, unlike last year. No rain at all all evening. I had been sitting next to someone from Amarillo who was also there alone, so we hung out and hit the rides together. Of all the attractions, the new Simpsons ride was the best. I believe this replaced the old Back to the Future ride which was never one of my favorites. Too bumpy and jarring. The Simpsons ride is a similar concept with a simulator in fornt of a large screen, but they’ve done a much better job integrating the motion of the ride vehicle with the screen. The premise is you are at Krusty the Clown’s amusement park, Krustyland, on a new ride with the Simpsons. Sideshow Bob has escaped from prison and is coming to kill the Simpsons and whoever is with them (that’s you). You definitely feel like you’re in their world. A lot of digs at Disney rides such as Captain Dinosaur’s Pirate Rip-off Ride (which looks just like Pirates of the Caribbean except with dinosaurs as pirates) and the Haunted Condo (instead of the Haunted Mansion). Probably should have gone on that a second time. Headed back to the hotel around 11:30.
Tags: TechEd, TechEd08, Universal Studios
Sessions for the day:
Nothing grabbed me in the later sessions, so I headed over to the Hands-on Lab area. Worked on:
I returned to the hotel to drop off my bag and get cleaned up before the evening events. Microsoft and Dell were hosting a higher ed reception over at the Westin. At first I thought I was going to need to take a cab, but quickly realized it was right behind the OCCC. So I rode the bus back to the convention center and walked all the way around the building and down Universal, getting in the door just before It started to rain. I left my umbrella in the room, so I couldn’t have timed it any better.
They were serving pizza, very tasty and more of a meal than the Expo reception the night before. Talked with some folks from William and Mary, Microsoft, and another school that escapes me at the moment. Stayed here around an hour before catching a cab over to CityWalk for the Double-Take Cluster-Funk party at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. I don’t use the product, but had read good things about last year’s party so I had signed up. The cab ride over was more than I expected, but at the Westin, you get these really nice SUV taxis, same as at the Rosen Shingle Creek. Cheaper than renting a car, so not a problem.
For food they had sushi, coconut chicken, and conch fritters. The chicken was good, the conch was disappointing, and I stayed away from the sushi. Grabbed a seat at one of the bars and camped out. Spent the rest of the evening there talking with some folks from a shipping company. Didn’t leave until around midnight, much late than I had planned. Cab ride back was less than half what I paid to get down there.
Bucking tradition, I ate breakfast at the hotel instead of eating at the convention center (OCCC). The food at the convention center isn’t bad, but the Embassy Suites offers made-to-order omelets, so I couldn’t pass that up. After breakfast, I headed over to OCCC for the morning keynote.
Normally the keynotes feature some amusing videos and a guest celebrity (or minor celebrity depending on the year). previous years we’ve seen Christopher Lloyd, Samantha Bee, the woman who plays Chloe on 24, etc. I should have known something was off when I found a plastic maraca on the chairs in our section. Plus the slides they usually show with sponsors and trivia questions weren’t running. When the lights finally went down, they showed a short video (non-funny type) and as it ended, the stage was lit and there were people dressed like they came out of the Lion King. They played drums and eventually a woman came forward and tried to lead the crowd in shaking the After what seemed like 5 minutes or more of this, I was ready to go up front and beg them to just get on with the keynote already. After all that I figured they owed us a decent celebrity guest.
As it turned out, they didn’t agree. The keynote was presented sans celebrity and funny videos. And to top it all off, the first demo they did was basically a developer topic. Still can’t figure out why they were showing it to us at IT Pro week. Nothing of much importance was announced. SQL Server 2008 RC0, but that wasn’t exactly earth-shattering.
The rest of the day was spent as usual—in breakouts, on the expo floor, and so on. My sessions for the day were:
During my first session after lunch, I realized that I never noticed any snack tables during the morning sessions. That struck me as odd, considering in years past, the tables were overflowing with chips, string cheese, cookies, trail mix, etc. When afternoon rolled around and all they had were empty tables during the first break, I went on the CommNet site and did some digging. Turns out for this year we get one beverage break in the morning without any snacks, and hen one snack break late in the afternoon. Lt me tell you, the tweets were flying about the dearth of snacks. I’m sure the blogs were or will be full of comments about that. Considering they cut a day from the conference and still charged us the same for registration, the snack situation or “Snackgate” as I like to call it, was the final straw for some folks.
Later at 6 PM, the reception in the Partner Expo started. The food was decent. The little mini burgers were good as always, but I hate when they label them as White Castle burgers. Whoever called them that has never had a White Castle before.
There were some good vendors represented this year, most notably Dell. They’ve skipped TechEd for several years, so it was good to see them back in the house. IBM backed out fairly late in the game and was not here. No big loss, but i was looking forward to seeing an X300 in person. The Xiotech folks were there, showing off their new Emprise units. I also spent some time at the Citrix booth. Very interested in their XenDesktop product in conjunction with some Microsoft components. I think that’s where we’ll take our student labs some day. Moving to a standardized, virtual desktop for students to use no matter where they are is the future for most universities in my opinion.
I picked up a fair amount of swag, but not as much as in previous years. Most folks seemed to be cutting back, even Microsoft. Most of the booths didn’t have the kinds of toys and oddball items they usually do. The only exception to that were the Vista Springboard folks who gave away a remote control car for following a few simple instructions. i figured the car would be something tiny, but it turned out to be a fairly large (to me anyway) remote control car. Looking forward to trying it out when I get home. I’ll post the swag tally on a separate post.
