TechEd-IT Forum : Day 3

Last night I attended the MS Influencers Party and as predicted yesterday, it was awesome. Had lots to eat and drink (the baby cosmopolitans were great, but lethal!) and even got a crash course in cigar smoking from Karen-Anne Young (APAC & EMEA MVP Group Regional Manager).

This morning I Proctored SQL Server HOL's from 10:30am - 1:00pm and then worked on the ATE Booth from 1:00pm - 4:00pm. Feeling absolutely knackered now and not sure whether I will make it to the last session of the day on SQL Server Upgrade Best Practices, Tips, and Tricks (Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal). I've still got 45 minutes to go thought so could probably find the energy if I had a quick nanna nap!

Today's speaker idol winner was Mark Budzinski (Intel US and TechEd Exhibitor) who did a presentation on Intel Multicore Processors and how they achieve a balance between performance and power. Mark was pretty awesome and it was obvious that he's done a fair bit of presenting for Intel. The only thing I didn't like about the presentation was the sales pitch. Although he did keep it short and to the end, it was obvious that his whole presentation was an Intel sales pitch which I believe is not in the spirit of the competition. It also makes me wonder what sort of session he'd present at TechEd Barcelona 2008 (if he wins) and whether it would simply be a 75 minute sales pitch. Anyway, as judging is mainly based on presentation skills and not content, he deserved to win his wave as he was very impressive.

Tonight we have Country Drinks where the idea is that delegates from each country get together for drinks. I will be attending the World Party which was setup for all those attendees that don't have a country party to attend. Last week's was pretty cool so I guess it's going to be another late night :-)