Blends With Savanna Grasses

TechEd is Microsoft's biggest technical conference of the year. It's an educational conference for programmers (a.k.a. developers) and administrators (a.k.a. IT pro's) to learn about the newest software and techniques for keeping their IT organizations running at top efficiency.

This year is sold out, as have the last couple years, which means there are about 8,000 paying attendees and a few thousand more non-paying attendees such as exhibitors, speakers, Microsoft staff, etc. It is big! With such a large event, there are only a few venues big enough to hold the crowds - LA, Dallas, New Orleans, Boston, and Orlando are about all that come to mind. This year we're in sunny and not-so-hot Boston, which is a very welcome change from the blistering heat of Orlando.

I arrived fairly early on Sunday so that I could avoid the big crowds at the airport. I'd heard from several friends who will be working the Quest booth with me that there were a lot of cancelled and delayed flights coming in to Boston. I think that the added load of umpteen thousand extra people coming in may have contributed to the air traffic problem.

TechEd is always an extremely busy time of year for me. You can get a taste for what I mean by taking a look at my Outlook calendar for the week. No rest for the weary!

The really scary news for me is that I've started to come down with a head cold and cough. I doubt I'll be able to make it through the week without getting sick. :^( Wish me luck!

Cheers,

-Kev