TechEd - The rest of the story

My apologies at not blogging more often, but TechEd became even more of a blur in the last days and I simply had to let it drop.  Perhaps if the network were better behaved...

Day 3

Wednesday during the day was like any other.  Lots of potential partners and lots of general VS programming questions.  I got to visit the show room floor a little bit and see some partners products.  I'm particularly happy to note that Statesoft got a little issue fixed and are ready to ship their product.

Wednesday night Joe, Varun and I attended the VS Magazine's Readers' Choice Awards ceremony.  We played a little pool, had the buffet and then rooted for partners up for awards. 

Day 4

Thursday was definitely seeing less traffic in the booth, but still steady.  I was happy to see a few more partner demos in the pavillion.

Thursday night was the all-attendee party at Fenway Park with a concert by Train and a local band.  There were labor demonstrations against one of the bus companies used by MS during TechEd so we arranged for a police escort and they closed off the streets for the busses that moved everyone from the convention center to the ballpark.  This was the highlight of the conference for most customers.  Those who sat behind me were extremely vocal about how cool this was.

Day 5

Friday was a lighter heavier in traffic as people were trying to get their last questions and demo's in.  Our Chalk Talk (last hour of the entire conference) was attended by only 3 people, but we had a lively discussion and those who came were appreciative of the intimate attention they received.

This was the impression that I received from talking to partners: the VSIP partner program is on track and the improvements over the last year or so are very much appreciated by the partners.

I took the subway back to the hotel, but stopped off for a bit of pizze before getting some sleep before the early plane home on Saturday.  After the pizza I decided I needed to get a few souveniers so I wandered around downtown for a long time.  Ended up with a few gifts for my wife and children so I decided to go back to the hotel and get some sleep.  Upon entering the room, I looked around for my laptop.  Where was it?  Oh no, did I leave it on the subway?  Or one of the shops I visited?

I rushed around the block to the pizzaria (very good pizza by the way) and it was closed.  Looking in the window I could see my backpack on the counter.  Long panic-filled story short: Concierge at the hotal picked up the back on Saturday and Varun carried on the plan back to Redmond.  Disaster averted.

Well, I'm exhausted from being on my feet too long and working, partying, hosting so much.  Glad to be back in Redmond now.