MEC update #4: wrapup

Wednesday and Thursday were busy days too. Wednesday morning I did my session on best practices for migrating to Office XP. It was moderately well-attended, but posted good numbers (7.6/9.0, my best session overall). A surprising number of people are still using Office 97, which to me makes sense only if you can’t afford better hardware. My own productivity is measurably higher with Office XP, based on just two features: the Send To collaboration features and the offline improvements in Outlook. I’m really excited about seeing the betas of Office 11, which promise improvements in the collaboration and disconnected-from-server environments.
In the afternoon, John & I went pistol shooting with Pierre Bijaou and Kieran McCorry of HP and Jerry Cochran of Microsoft. We had a great time, even though we could only stay on station for a short while. Pierre shot a little better than Kieran did, but they were both shooting respectable groups (Pierre with a Beretta .40S&W, Kieran with a 9mm Glock) by the time we left. Next year in Dallas, watch out!
Wednesday night was the Windows & .NET Magazine editorial dinner. What a great group of people! I met Darren Mar-Elia for the first time and got to spend some quality time talking with Kim Paulsen, the new publisher. These folks are serious about making a great magazine that gives their readers the information they want, but they’re serious about doing it in a fun and lighthearted way.
Thursday was my storage management session, largely a repeat from last year. It was well-attended, and it got good evals, but it ran long (just like last year), so I missed most of the panel discussion I was supposed to attend. I had a meeting with some interesting hardware people, then it was time to head to the airport for my flight to Sacramento. That trip (and the associated wedding) was so cool that it deserves its own trip report, coming soon.