TechEd Day 1 wrapup

I flew out to San Diego yesterday and got to the convention center about 45 minutes before my first session, a troubleshooting panel with Chris Nelson (from Microsoft’s IT group), Karl Robinson of HP, and the legendary Paul Bowden. It was fun to share the stage with three knowledgeable people, and we got some good audience questions.
Next, I had a book signing, at which I sold three whole copies of my book. It was fun nonetheless; I got to spend some time chatting with the legendary Charlie Russel, with whom I’ve worked but who I’ve never met, Paul Cayley of the MS UNIX migration team, and Eldon Nelson from Microsoft Press. After that, it was off to the “Meet the Technologist” area (aka “Ask the Experts”). The place was mobbed! Erik Ashby was drawing a steady line of folks asking 5.5 migration questions, and there were lots of miscellaneous troubleshooting questions.
John and I got together for a short visit (wherein I learned that his first session outscored mine by about 0.5– significant on a 1.0-9.0 scale!) before I headed out to the MVP dinner organized by KC Lemson at the Zocalo Grill. I had the good fortune to sit with Andy and Kim Webb, Andy David, Scott Schnoll, David Sapery, and Sue Hill (all MVPs, save Sue, who works on the Exchange User Education team), and there were a ton of other MVPs (including Sue Mosher, Diane Poremsky [at least it looked like her from the back], Chris Scharff of MessageOne. The product team was well-represented: KC and David Lemson, Ed Wu, Nicole Bonilla, and a few others were there. As a bonus, I finally got to meet Brandon Hoff, the MVP lead for Exchange; he and I have missed each other several times in Redmond, so it was good to finally shake his hand. The food was quite good, and the company was great. (Thanks, KC, for setting it up!)
Today I’m back in the Ask the Experts area for a while, but I should be able to actually attend some sessions– more on that later.