TechEd 2006 Day 4

I already posted about the party, but here’s a quick roundup of Thursday at the conference. I skipped a couple sessions today to catch up on some work and to have time to head back to the hotel before the party at Fenway. The sessions I attended:

• SEC317 Windows Vista Security Tidbits
• LNC008 Managing the Asylum: Daily Diaries of a Network Engineer Caught in the Twilight Zone of Academia
• MGT222 Introducing System Center Operations Manager 2007 (MOM version 3)

SEC317: A Jesper Johansson What more needs to be said. No smokin’ demos, but loads of good information.

LNC008: This is the first lunch session I’ve ever attended at TechEd. Since the topic concerns higher education (something near and dear), I figured I should make time for this. Folks from Yale, Boston, and another school that escapes me at the moment, talked about some initiatives they had implemented in their schools. I wish TechEd had more presentations/discussions dealing with higher ed, but I found out during the session that there is an annual conference focusing on Windows in higher ed I’m going to have to take a look at that and see if it is something I should be attending. Would be a great opportunity to compare notes.

MGT222: This session focused on the new MOM and wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped. MOM 2007 looked great, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the new self-tuning thresholds will work. It was more the style of the two presenters that turned me off a bit. It was too polished and rehearsed. The jokes were forced, and it was a good example of using two people when one would have been sufficient. I still came out of the session with good information, it just didn’t measure up to the other talks.