One of the online comics I regularly check had what I considered one of the highlights of my viewing week (at least so far). If you don't mind the politically incorrect then check out the wulffmorgenhaler comic for August 20.

The various boards are going to go crazy over this.
May 2008 for the new Players Handbook.
June 2008 for the new Monster Manual
July 2008 for the new Dungeon Masters Guide.
More details (including links to Youtube videos of the announcement) at the Wizards of the Coast D&D page

For more piccies and a lot more comprehensive info on TechEd Aus you might also want to check out Long Zheng's blog.

OK - first impressions aren't always correct.
TechEd Australia does have good swag.
The TechNet booth was giving out some fantastic gear, but not to everyone, and like most of the good stuff around you had to work for it. I managed to score a box that has a golf putter, balls and target. Other people got a poker set with cards, dice and chips, Halo hoodies, etc.
And for giving a 30 second impromptu presentation about TechNet at the interactive theatre I scored a Microsoft Wireless Presenter Mouse 8000. It had to be the best of the presentations to win, but only one other person tried, and they started talking about TechEd instead of TechNet. 30 seconds goes WAY TOO quick, and TechNet (especially TechNet Plus Direct) are well worth the money and I could rabbit on about the benefits for 30 minutes without too much trouble.
The MVP stand had a questionnaire that you needed to fill out to get a prize - you got a choice, and I got a set of travel power adapters - all fit neatly together and allow for conversion from just about any country's power plug to just about any country's socket. Not that I travel much overseas, but it is certainly 1000% better than a T-shirt or pen.

I didn't pick up any T-shirts except for the one provided to be worn as a Technical Learning Guide, and only a couple of pens (and some of them came with the bag). And for that I'm glad - I certainly don't need any more t-shirts or pens. There were rubik's cube keyrings, thongs (known as flip-flops to Americans), 128MB USB drives (vs 64MB ones at TechEd US), mini footballs, and the backpacks are much better than the ones delegates get at TechEd in the US - and that's just of the stuff I that I got - I'm sure that there might have been more that I didn't get. So maybe not the quantity of stuff at TechEd US, but the proportion of trinket to trash was probably better - at least for me.

One of the highlights of the entire conference was the Mobility Smackdown. There was a pirate theme with lots of stuff being thrown out to the audience and lots of mobile devices being demonstrated.
I also heard that Steve Riley was back on song giving a fantastic talk - just goes to show how subjective these things are. Good presenters set high expectations and if the audience feels that they don't deliver, or they just have an off day, then it can come back to bite them. But they will bounce back. Poor presenters though (and there are more than enough of them out there) will always be middle of the road at best.

The closing locknote didn't really do it for me. It was on computer forensics and the huge increase of information and caseload that the AFP have had to deal with - but was mostly at a high level. Then there were some interesting photos of some of the crime scenes that investigators have had to deal with - but it was a different world from the one that most of us live and work in and it felt like a bit of a dampner had been put on the afternoon.

Anyway - a great TechEd - I'll give it an 8 on the 1-9 satisfaction rating used by the evals on Commnet.
Next year is back in Sydney, but with Frank Arrigo moving to Redmond there will definitely be some differences.
Time will tell, and hopefully I will be there to see them too.

The TechEd party this year was at Movie World.
Took a while to get all the attendees there by the bus-load, but once there it was swinging. There was a sci-fi theme, with people dressed up as characters from Star Wars, The Matrix, Star Trek etc. The entrance looked like a star-gate, and there was a big screen near the food plaza. Food was good and drink plentiful, and while the lines for the rides were a little long, they were worth it - there was room to spread out and mingle and the weather was great.
I got to go on the Batman ride that went straight up and down, and the Lethal Weapon ride. There were thoughts of going on the Superman ride but we were told the line was pretty long and after two nights of very little sleep and two very long days it was time to get the bus back to the hotels.
While the party itself was a blast - I must admit that it was the people that made it fantastic. I spent most time with Freddie Louwrens - one of the other TLGs who was doing the Instructor Led Labs and had also been one of the Aussie TLGs who had made it to team in Orlando in June. We also bumped in to Trika and a bunch of other MS folk and had some fun conversation around misinterpretations of product names and user names in other languages.

OK - apparantly Steve Riley's interview yesterday on the APC magazine website has been slashdotted - well - so I've been told. The link works now. And from second hand reports I might have been a little premature in saying that he always has interesting talks. Colleagues who have attended his presentations have felt that he was below par in delivery - probably still better than half the presenters here - but he may not top the speaker evals if the small sample of responses that I have heard are on the money.

Oh - and I'm annoyed that HP has no similar show deal on hardware like they did at TechEd US.
But the Hands on Labs have been going gang-busters, and I got good evals on my ILL this morning - so over all things are going pretty well.

First run in the Intructor Led Labs, and we were turning people away. There may have been some of the curiosity factor and many didn't realise that exactly the same labs were available in the Hands on Lab downstairs, but obviously the demand for ILLs was very much underestimated. It was an interesting experience being a TLG for a lab that was way outside my skillset (one was a development lab, and the other was on Powershell - which I was a lot more comfortable with).
Missed the Ask the Experts sessions last night as I was preparing slide decks for this morning's Instructor Led Lab session that I was running (more below), but made sure to get along to the Influencer Party at Howl to the Moon which was hosted by Wardy IT. It was good to be able to just sit and talk with people from a variety of places and catch up with other MCTs that I had worked with - Paul Turner and Tim Carson especially. Taxi back to the hotel to work on slides again, and stayed up way too late, and woke up far too early - only about 3 hours sleep, but did get to see the sun rise over the ocean.
Day 2 started with 2 ILLs for me. The one that I ran on Network Access Protection, and then Freddie Louwrens ran one on SCCM 2007. We turned away about 100 for the NAP lab, and 40 or so for the SCCM one. Many people were once again disappointed at missing out, especially after having queued for 10 minutes or more in some cases.
Have a bit of a lull this afternoon before assisting again in the last ILL of the day, and then it is the Closing party at Movie World. No time to rest yet.

Well - Day 1 where the count starts at 0. The Welcome Party was yesterday but the keynote was this morning - so I'll call today Day 1.

It certainly gives an interesting perspective on the size of a conference when one has been to one 10 times the size, and one 10th the size in the past couple of months.
TechEd Australia has very much the same "feel" as TechEd in the US, except in miniature.
There is less polish, less swag, less wide open space - in fact the entire Exhibition Hall area including MS Technology Showcase, Partner and Sponsor stalls, Commnet, Community booths and Cabanas could fit in the area that meals were held in at the Orlando version of TechEd.
The Hands on Labs environment is unfortunately tucked away a bit from the main traffic, and occupies a room that is perhaps 1/6 the size of the one of the Orlando HoLs (there were two there - split in to ITPro and Dev - here they are all together). Instructor Led Labs are held in 1 room with about 28 machines, instead of 4 rooms with over 50 each, and the number of labs available to be done is significantly down from the Orlando menu (which had around 300).
Having said that - it is definitely easier to bump into or find people you know. On the first night (Welcome party) I caught up with Michael Kleef, Steve Riley, Jeff Alexander and Trika Harms zum Spreckel, as well as a host of other people that I either worked with, or knew from other places. Not as "familiar" as perhaps SAGE-AU - where I knew considerably more people - but there wasn't the same feeling of being lost in a huge crowd as TechEd US was (though that may well be due in part to it having been my first trip to the US).
This is my 3rd TechEd, and I feel comfortable here. While there is the occasional "sea-gull" rush when there is a prize draw or other special event, it doesn't feel like being at a large country fair with load noises of disparate groups scattered over a large area vying for the attention of the assembled masses. It feels more cohesive and relaxed - more so than TechEd in Sydney last year - though that could also be in part due to the weather here on the Gold Coast.
I actually managed to get to some speaker sessions. From the title it isn't always obvious if they are targeted at ITPro or Dev, so I walked out of Principles and Patterns of Security when it turned out to be focussed on code reviews. And some go in to a little more technical detail than they need to. Leave that stuff for online resources and information available at the Technology Showcase - just give me the WOW to encourage me to seek it out - I can't remember everything that gets said in a 75 minute lecture - even with a few demos sprinkled in. That's what drove me from the IIS7 and Web Server 2008 for ITPros. Cool stuff but the number of people that left through the talk supports my theory.
Yeah - I could just sit in on Steve Riley and Kai Axford's talks which are always entertaining, but I know the security stuff so I don't actually learn anything new from them - and for me - that is the reason for going to speaker sessions (and TechEd in general).
There will be other blogs with pictures and notes on sessions (eg. keynote) which I will add links to (apart from those already listed above), but I have my first sessions assisting in the Instructor Led Labs this afternoon and my own ILL to present tomorrow morning, so some preparation is still required.

tomorrow is TechEd Australia's kickoff, and I'm going as a TLG again but this time will be in the Instructor Led Labs rather than the Hands on Labs - so will be a little different - especially delivering one of them (Securing your network using Microsoft Network Access Protection), but I thought I'd take a bit of time to mention the Australian System Administrators' Conference that was held in Parramatta in July.
SAGE-AU (www.sage-au.org.au) seems to be one of the best kept secrets for system administrators, but for those in the know it was a good time with lots of interesting talks, including Jeff Alexander's talk on the top 10 things to know about Windows Server 2008 (slides here), Simon Hackett's talk on the state of broadband in Australia, Randal Schwartz's tale of how he finally had his criminal conviction expunged and much more.
I'll also brag that South Australia won the Region of the Year award - and as (now former) President of the SA Chapter during that time I get to take the trophy home , and that the trivia night that I ran (that makes 3 in a row now) raised more than $2600 for a local charity.
For a rundown on what happened at the conference check out the update pages.
But back to TechEd Australia - will be interesting to compare it with its parent conference in Orlando now that a) I've been there, and b) it is still reasonably fresh in my mind.