Well, I’m back from TechEd 2004, actually got back around 7, just haven’t done much other than unpack the swag and dirty laundry. Hopefully the race will run tommorrow: rain rain go away.

So, I’ve been to 7 TechEds in a row and this was, by far, the best one for technical content for a ‘jack of all trades, expert of none’ type person like myself. While some of the free stuff wasn’t quite as good as previous years, attendees are getting the post conference DVDs for free. It’s a worthy trade.

Thank you for a wonderful conference. Now if I could just get that free license for VMWare?

There are lots of things that I’ve taken away from here that I should be able to apply in the real world.

Commnet is closing up shortly, so unless I pay the fee for internet access in the hotel (which I’ve heard is not worth it, thought the geek percentage is probably much lower tonight) this will be the last entry from San Diego. Hopefully the pictures will come out well.

Now to go buy some trinkets/gifts for friends and family.

This was a really good session, the slides are packed with tips and tricks the presenter has learned in real world consulting doing exactly this. I’m actually beginning to wonder if, maybe, we’ll be able to migrate someday. The attendence in the session was fairly low, but being in a gigantic room on the last afternoon of the conference might have amplified that effect. A couple of people walking by commented that maybe it was because ‘Exchange 5.5 is finally dying’.

I’m probably going to go chat with the presenter, there isn’t much in the way of interesting topics in the last session.

And, just so I don’t forget this: TechEd CommNet

While I don’t run anything that needs to worry about file server performance (~300 users on one decent size box is not hard work), I still went to this session because there wasn’t much else. The presenter had a real cute start:

“Fileserver performance tuning is all automatic in Windows 2003. Thank you.”

He then went on to explain that while that was not true, any changes you do choose to make had better be well tested before you do them in production. He also had a very entertaining display of acting like data going to/from the client by running back and forth across the front of the room, breaking his wireless mic in the process.

Lots of interesting things, one of which is that you DO NOT need an Active Directory to start using Volume Shadow Copy (but you do need Windows XP at the client if you want users to directly retrieve files). Something to think about I guess.

And, disappointingly so, the Redhat shirt has generated a grand total of 1 comment. From a guy at ASU who says they are all Linux except for Exchange. What is the world coming too?

This guy is really the King of Swag. I couldn’t stand the Exhibit Hall for anywhere near that amount of time. Something about talking to vendors that much just gives me the heeby-jeebys.

And, the obligatory rant about cellphones and pagers.

And a random photoblog from TechEd2004