TechEd 2005 - Day 2

Woke up early and headed down to the INETA NORAM User Group Leader Summit 2005 (fortunately, the event was being held in my hotel). Met up with several INETA leaders past and present such as Julie Lerman, Stuart Celarier, Samantha Spears, Bill Evjen and many others. Ari Bixhorn gave a fantastic 5 minute peer-to-peer Indigo demo using the Peer Channel. I also got the opportunity to meet the heads of Culminis organization including David Sanders, Paul Hailey, and Peggy Gould. The Culminis event was of special interest because my user group (Toronto Windows Server User Group) joined up a few months ago.

Then I was off to the MVP get together at the Peabody hotel. I met Carl Franklin for the first time - we talked briefly about the upcoming jam sessions. I also met with J. Andrew Duthie (a former MVP) who is now is working as an Microsoft east coast developer evangelist, Mark Dunn (one of the architects of .NET Rocks!) and Mario Cardinal (the guy behind BlaBla dot Net, a French radio show similar to .NET Rocks!). During the get together, a monsoon hit the hotel and we were forced to party indoors. :)

The final stop was at the Orange County Convention Centre. I got registered as a staff member and headed towards the Microsoft Store/Bookstore. Jim Minatel and a great bunch of WROX authors went out to Lulu's Bait Shack for "Gator Bites". There I met J. Ambrose Little and the creators of Dot Net Nuke (Shaun Walker, Joe Brinkman, Scott Willhite and Dan Caron). Jim has blogged about the dinner and posted a photo of the get together.

Day 3 coming up...