A 7am start in the labs the morning after the TechEd party!
And while the labs were fairly quiet, there will still a few folk who made it in first thing to get started on doing more exercises.
There was a sense today that not only were people getting tired, but that they were also wanting to cram in as much as possible on the last day before they had to leave. The TechEd shop was discounting items by 25% (or more in some cases) and as the partner expo had closed people were spending more time in the labs, at sessions, or talking to the product experts in the Technical Learning Centres. I chased down some folk about specific problems, but most couldn't help and took a card and promised to email me back. I'm not holding my breath.
One problem was about the slow performance of Outlook 2007, and one of the MVPs suggested trying the Office 2007 Performance pack, which is an optional download. Once I track down a URL I'll link it here.
Also took a bundle of Prometric buy 1 get 1 free vouchers, as it was confirmed to me that they would work in Australia and that I could pass them along to others in Ozland. Already (as of Tuesday 12th) had a good take-up rate from the SAGE-AU community.
I left the conference centre a little after 3pm and after dropping my bag off at the hotel walked up International Drive to pick up a rental car. Made it back to the hotel just in time (4:30pm) because a group of MCTs were going to see the shuttle launch. I had suggested it on the private MCT forums, Bob Lawler had checked that it would be ok to see it from his mom's place, and Kim Ditto-Ehlert herded the cats^H^H^H^H MCTs in to carloads for the trip out east.
What can I say - it was a wonderful time, and I managed to drive back without going on to the wrong side of the road more than a couple of times. I'll add some pictures when I get the chance.

Day 4 and the Partner Expo finishes - discounts start appearing in the TechEd store and the Hands on Labs get very busy.
Today we found out that for the first time ever, the Instructor-led Labs and HoLs have the highest satisfaction scores of the various events at TechEd - beating chalk-talks, breakout sessions, bird of a feather gatherings and the regular speaker sessions.
We now just have to keep it that way, because traditionally the labs take a dip over the last two days.
Thursday is a shorter day (and Friday will be even shorter) due to the TechEd Attendee party - which this year was being held at Universal's Islands of Adventure (http://www.universalorlando.com/ioa_index.html).
It would have been really good, except the rain came bucketing down and there was an electrical storm around the time we arrived.
This shut down several of the rides, including the Incredible Hulk rollercoaster, Dr. Doom, and Duelling Dragons. Duelling Dragons opened later, as did Dr. Doom - but it meant that apart from those who ran to one of the other rides first, there were extremely long lines for the few rides that were still open. Those that went for food first found that getting on even a few of the rides for the evening was going to be a challenge.
I managed to get on the Jurassic Park River Ride, Duelling Dragons (when it opened - I stayed longer in the line to get to the front of the ride), the Cat in the Hat ride, and Spiderman. Also bought some t-shirts for the kids - and in retrospect - despite the need that I would have had to hold on to them during the rides, I should have bought the t-shirts first. A VERY hot item was the Thing 1 and Thing 2 t-shirts in kids sizes, with many sizes selling out. I did manage to buy some though they may be something for the kids to grow in to.
Bus lines leaving the park were even worse than the rides for the show, so a few of us managed to catch a taxi van back to the hotel - goodness knows how late things would have been if we had stayed in line for the busses.
7am start tomorrow morning for the last day of TechEd and 5 1/2 hours to go.

Time for some shopping in addition to the swag.
I bought a retractable 8 ft ethernet cable for US$8 which I am using at the moment. Conference wireless is not something to be relied upon, and finding an unused ethernet cable is quite an exercise.
It rained this afternoon (and through in to the evening). Well - when I say rain, I mean that the heavens opened up and basically dumped water - hour after hour, at (what I have been told was) about 1.8 inches per hour. The roar on the conference building roof was quite loud, and thunder accentuated the lightning flashes that were visible if you were at either end of the hall where the windows are located.
The conference store sold out of umbrellas.
I sat in on Kyle Rosenthal's Vista deployment via BDD instructor-led lab  to support the Aussie effort, and it was good to have some hands on time with the deployment workbench. Other than that there weren't a lot of sessions that looked all that interesting that wouldn't also be available on the conference DVD (that I had time to get to), and I am able to download most of the slide-decks from CommNet, so will plan on doing that and spend the time at the conference instead on making contacts with people higher up the Microsoft food chain.
Apparantly the swag this year is not as good as last year and some of the vendors are getting "clever" in how they do their prize draws - having to work together as well so that they can maximize the number of people that attend mini-talks at their booths before a prize draw. Attendee information is collected from handheld Windows Mobile devices with a scanner attached (looks like RFID) being placed next to the name badge. It picks up the information and transfers it to the device - very neatly done and avoids wires and barcodes and other less friendly options.
The Microsoft influencer party was on Wednesday evening at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville on the Universal CityWalk. I'd never heard of it, so look at http://www.margaritavilleorlando.com/index.htm if you want more information. There were a limited number of tickets available for MCTs, MCPs, MVPs, Partners and the TechNet crew. It was very wet, so a large number of people took taxis to the Convention Centre rather than going through the rain to the shuttle bus, and then taking the bus from the convention centre to Universal. The place was closed to the public between 8 and 10pm and there was a DJ, a live band, food and drink laid on. There were quite a few photos taken by various people so I'm sure that they'll eventually make their way to the various groups who are interested in seeing them. I got a shuttle back to the hotel at 11pm (first shuttle to go back to the hotels from there).

Another long day spent in the Hands on Labs, and assisting with Instructor-Led Labs.
The small amount of time that I had to check on other things I spent having a look at Windows Mobile 6. Top reasons to upgrade really boil down to integration with existing communications strategies. If you have Microsoft Communications Server and are allowing people to access emails via their Windows Mobile devices, then it can include presence information and voice interaction with Exchange 2007.
Unless you are running the latest version of everything Microsoft though, it doesn't look like that compelling an operating system to move to from Windows Mobile 5. Windows Mobile 2003 on the other hand is getting significantly long in the tooth and most of the newer applications and functionality will not operate on it. In Australia, with the OS being so tied to the device that it is installed on, and with little to no ability to upgrade, it may be better to start planning now for the next iteration of Windows Mobile due next year. Unless an integrated and corporate-wide communications infrastructure strategy is put in to place it will fail to realise the benefits of leveraging off the technology. I have a Windows Mobile 2003 powered iMate JAM which is now over 2 years old. As a portable device for managing contacts and calendar (via Active-Sync or Vista's Mobile Centre), using office documents and playing media, it does a fine job. Without the infrastructure to connect to and leverage off there is no real point in me upgrading at the moment, and that seems to be the general feel among many of the attendees.
Tuesday evening saw the second of the MCT-only parties hosted by Ken Rosen. This time we were on the balcony of the hotel that overlooks the pool instead of in his room. It was a lot less crowded and noisy. I couldn't get there until late - was on-deck in the HoLs until 10pm, but still worth dropping by for a quick catch-up with people.

The layout of TechEd this year has the Partner Expo and Hands on Labs on either side of a huge hall in the convention centre. In between are the product teams, Microsoft resources and community stands, Commnet and the TechEd store. This means that there isn't a great deal of traffic that goes past the Labs, unless people are headed for the labs or one of the instructor-led lab sessions. With all the swag available at the start of the week, that meant that the labs had lots of empty seats on Monday. As a consequence of working 8 hours in the labs today I didn't manage to get to any sessions other than the keynote, and with an even longer day tomorrow expect things to be much the same. I was able to visit quite a few stalls and pick up a fair amount of information, talk to vendors and get some feel for what products are on offer. The Partner Expo reception was held Monday evening from 6pm through 9pm - alternatively called trash & trinket because of the free swag, food, alcohol and prizes on offer. Unfortunately I was manning the labs at the time, but it seemed that it was the place to be for most of the attendees, leaving the labs even quieter than usual. In a many places the number of TLGs on duty outnumbered attendees doing labs.

Bob Muglia gave the keynote again this year.
He was trying to get away from "future vision statements" (and did a cool Back to the Future intro to show that people are sick of unrealisied vision statements said at TechEd Keynotes and elsewhere - including Christopher Lloyd reprising his role as Dr Emmett Brown, and driving in to the keynote with Bob Muglia in the Delorean). Talk instead was about Microsoft Optimisation model - classifying businesses into 4 categories so that the most appropriate software, architecture and processes are used. The categories are Basic, Standardized, Rationalized, Dynamic. This has been on MS's agenda for a while now (was talking about this with MS employees at last year's TechEd in Australia).
There are 3 versions of the model: Core infrastructure, Business productivity, and application platform, and they are designed to match to the initiatives of Dynamic Systems, .net and Trustworthy Computing.
Tom Bittman from Gartner than came on stage and talked about IT and Agility - about web enabling connections between customers and suppliers, and about how response times are decreasing. Kids today have no tolerance for delay because they are used to instant and pervasive access. Relationships are online and short-lived. For business this means that windows of opportunity are increasing in frequency but decreasing in size, therefore agility is becoming a key business differentiator. Agility is the ability to sense a change and do something about it (with a balance between speed and efficiency). Interfaces between business process, policies, etc need to be agile as well as the ingredients of management, development and infrastructure as well. There was a warning though - complexity trumps agility. Rather than IT being a cost centre - it should move to being a profit centre, where business costs have to become a utility model - business pays for every transaction, quality of service as well needs to be a priority but management of it has to be by policy rather than just by process, and the business has to be agile with infrastructure being dynamic and able to adjust for change. Each of these areas have to be measureable. Cost measurement is fairly easy, quality of service a lot harder and almost no-one effectively measures agility. When asking companies about what was stopping them from maturing as an organisation, 29% said technology, 26% process, 25% culture/organisation, 20% other factors. Process-centricity for business maturity is insufficient, there is a need to focus on technology, culture and process and have return on maturity for each one.

Bob Muglia then came back on and talked about the three pillars that Microsoft were building on. Federated (indentity management across disparate entities), Interoperable (products, community [including open source, and other partner relationships, announced partnership with Xandros, so both Novell and Xandros are able to run MS software], standards (open xml, html, etc), access), and being Secure.

Then there were some more specific talks and demos on Server Core, Virtual Machine Manager, Powershell, Server 2008, etc. The sound kept dropping out (as a "staff member" I was viewing the keynote from a separate hall on video screens with the other TLGs, speakers, and staff members), so decided to bail and type up this entry. The whole keynote will be on the conference DVDs that I should be getting a copy of in 8 weeks anyway.

I have a full day - finishing at 9pm today and 10pm tomorrow, and with 7am starts, so getting these entries up (at least for the first few really busy days) will be when I have time to type and connect.

Sunday was pre-conference sessions for attendees and training day for the Technical Learning Guides (TLG), of which I am one of the latter.
7am we met in the lobby of the hotel and took a shuttle bus to the convention centre. It is about a 15-20 minute walk, but in Florida humidity, and/or if you are lugging a bag, it can make you sweaty by the time you get there. For this first morning at least they wanted to keep all the TLGs together. Directing MCTs at times is a little like herding cats.
Registration, followed by breakfast and then Karen Henderson from HynesITe ran through the agenda for the day, who the core team members were and what being a TLG entails. There are TLGs on deck this year, with 15 lead TLGs. 15 of the TLGs were internationals, and 62% were new TLGs. There was also an introduction to the Hands on Labs Launchpad setup and what questions we are likely to be asked. The version of Launchpad was new to the Americans, but was essentially the same version that was used at TechEd Australia last year, so I was ahead of the game. We sat in groups with the people we would be working with, and after lunch headed down to the labs to get familiarised with the setup, layout and content of the labs. I am working in the Security and Management area of the ITPro labs.
This took up the bulk of the rest of the afternoon and after 5pm we all got together for some group photos. More lab work and tracking down which labs the ILL (Instructor Led Labs) assistants would be helping with (I am assisting with 3 different labs through the week, all of them being run twice). Finally left the convention centre at about 7pm and had enough time to get back to the hotel, catch my breath and then at 9pm joined a lot of the other MCTs at the MCT party on the top floor of the hotel in Ken Rosen's room. Obviously a time for people to renew acquaintences and catch up with people that they hadn't seen for a while, so for someone like me who wasn't really part of the crowd from previous years it felt a little like being an observer for a while. But since we are all trainers, and used to breaking the ice and talking, it wasn't long before I was talking to other people and getting to know new faces. I'll try and get some photos up to show what it was like.