Tech Ed Daze: T - 1 Day Till My Presentation - Part 1
Last night we had a dinner with several of the Team System MVPs and some product group members. It is always fun to get us all in a room together and watch us argue. :) We went to one of those places where it's five different courses, but you basically only get to select your main dish, and everything else is set for you. The first thing they brought out was this little cracker-like thing with some unidentifiable stuff on it. Jeff Levinson and I kept looking at each other with a "You try it and then I'll try it" kind of look. Jeff finally went first. It was pretty good. Then when the soup came out, it was my turn to go first. That was pretty good too.
After the dinner we went to Doug's Geekfest party at the piano bar. I had not been in a piano bar in a while, and had forgotten how fun they were. I hung there for about an hour, then hitched a ride back to the hotel to look at my presentation again.
So here I am this morning, about to head over to the convention center and queue up my VHD to get loaded for my presentation tomorrow. And I have to admit I'm now getting really nervous. I've set in on several sessions, and seen what I like and didn't like about how some speakers did their thing. My biggest concern is my demos, to be honest. I don't know if people will be expecting some sort of huge, esoteric, very complicated-type stuff, but if you are, you'll be in the wrong place. I have a message to convey, and I want to point out some tools that are available in the product that some people don't use, because they are either unaware of the tools, are concerned that they are too complicated. I didn't want my demo to get in the way of that message, so intentionally kept it relatively simple.
My schedule today is pretty simple. I'll be spending most of the morning in the speaker room, running through my presentation, or over in the TLC, just hanging out. I'm headed to the Team Build Muscle Man presentation at 1 PM, and then I'll be working in the TLC from 3-6. I'd love for at least one person to come by today and say they have been reading these Tech Ed Daze posts, :D. After that, I've got my Tech Check at 7.