Microsoft Tech-Ed: Friday June 6

My last day at Tech-Ed was fairly uneventful. The morning started out well with the final Data Dude session, which included the full demo of the DB2 support that was announced. Only about ten people showed up to that presentation, but that's pretty much expected for early Friday morning. Still, it was nice to have my software displayed in it's full functionality. The keynote presentation really didn't show much.

That brings up another point. I never really thought about the personal honor in having my software in the keynote presentation of one of the biggest technology conferences, and featuring Bill Gates. I had only looked at it from a task point of view - it was something to do and something to get done. One Microsoft employee commented on how it was pretty amazing to have only been working at IBM for under 2 years and already have my software in the Tech-Ed keynote. Apparently, most Microsoft employees would kill for that. I didn't know what to say, so I made some comment about watching my back.

I guess I felt like I had achieved a slightly higher level of maturity, having accomplished this. I think I felt even more mature at the airport waiting for my flight back home, though. I was able to keep up a conversation with a stranger (who had Tech-Ed in common) for a full two hours. It was fairly amazing, from my perspective.

It's time for the most important part of this post: a full cataloging of what I got in Orlando:

• 14 t-shirts
• 1 slinky
• 1 squishy basketball
• 1 flying, howling monkey
• 1 foam dart flinger
• 1, 1GB flash drive
• 1 medium-sized notepad/binder w/ pen
• 1 mechanical pencil
• 1 water bottle
• 1 backpack
• 1 LINQ pocket reference book
• 1 luggage tag
• 1 key chain compass