After the keynote went back to the press room to write up notes (which I posted already), check email, eat lunch (cajun meatloaf) and then off to wander the Expo area. Lots of vendors, though of course not many of the SQL specific, saw Red Gate/Idera/Solid Quality/Confio/Pragmatic Works, maybe others? Big area in the middle to meet MS/community people, spent some time there watching the traffic flow, lots of people dropping by. Saw Kevin Boles and Robert Cain, Bob Beauchemin.
That ran into the start of the first session after lunch so gave me time to look around more, at 2:30 wanted to sit in on a Master Data Managment session, but it was packed, and they are enforcing the rules – can only fill to seat capacity. From what I heard the rules are that attendees of the BI Conference get first seats in BI topics, then if seats remaining TechEd attendees can sit. Few people frustrated by that and the no standing rule.
So, I headed to a Reporting Services session. Maxed out too. Nothing else exciting, so sat in a Visual Studio 2010 testing session for a while (interesting – not sure how much of this you get without TFS?), have to find time to give a few of those things a try (and I guess figure out installing TFS too). Left there to sit on some of full text searching by Robert Cain, good stuff there but I’ve heard Robert do that one before.
Headed over to the Birds of a Feather/Community area, ran into my friend Shawn Weisfeld (formerly leader of ONETUG, now on the INETA board) and chatted for a good half an hour on all things community. INETA had a meeting on Sunday, apparently one comment was that Code Camps should consider adopting more of the SQLSaturday model! The .net community has INETA, but it’s different than PASS in a couple ways. One is no big annual conference, another is that have Code Camp, but no central coaching/repository/tools that we have. We chatted –unofficially mind you – about looking for ways for the two organizations to work together on some things where our interests overlap. I’ve always found Code Camps to be a great place to talk about SQL.
From there off to the press room, turns out wifi was down throughout the convention center, I heard for as much as 2 hours. Next session was on Streamlight by Torsten Grabs, and that was well done. I’ve got a much better (if still not very deep) of how all the pieces fit together and it did what I hope for in a session – made me itch to go build something with it, even if I mostly have projects that involve inserts/min rather than inserts/sec.
After that it was time for the opening night Expo, having already done the tour and not needing any more tshirts went back to the hotel to relax for a few and do chores, then off to a bookstored enroute to Cafe Du Monde. Book store closed at 5 pm, suck. Cafe au lait pretty good. Good to just sit and relax, think about tech stuff, community, and then stop thinking about it for a while.
Couple hours later Steve Jones catches up with me, off to find dinner, first stop was Primo’s – just closed. Next place didn’t look so good. Walk some more. Stopped at a t-shirt store, looking for a few gifts, didn’t buy anything yet. Thinking that Brennans wasn’t far away, decide to walk some more to find it. Pass Mr B’s Bistro on the way, saving it as plan B. Brennans looks good, closed. Back to Mr. Bs’s. Closing. Greasy hamburger starting to sound ok, Mr B’s points us down the street and we find Dickie Brennans. Expensive, but good, though service was a little off, maybe they were just tired at end of day. Skipped dessert, but they had two that looked interesting, one was a take off on Baked Alaska, another was some kind of lollipop confection.
End of day for me, slow walk back to the hotel. Not as much tech as some days, hoping more on Tuesday.
