Day 2 TechEd - need more caffeine

Well, so I get to the booth, my latte is not even a third consumed, and the guys tell me that people are already looking for me. "Blogs is down!" they say. Thank God for the fresh Sharepoint donuts that are being handed out. :)

So I toodle over to the communications network area (since our booth connections are for demos). Suffice to say, if you get this, blogs.msdn.com and its posting mechansims are working. I think it was a momentary traffic glitch. TechEd is pounding us, you can be certain.

What else can I tell you about TechEd? Florida generates the exact pleasant sensation of being hit in the face with a hot wet towel. Over and over.

I went to a Central Region Regional Director event last night and chatted with one of the leading VB community dudes Jason, who cheered me on to write my next article for VB Newbies, some nice folks from Milwaukee who want Gotdotnet Workspaces source code to be made available (I said karmically I'm for it, there are logistics like prepping the code and determining whether the company wants to do it - really, where Andy Oakley was a few years ago), and of course the illustrious Rob Howard who as he hails from Texas is now central.

Rob actually helped wangle me in, as Jim Newkirk was on the list with a badge, my boss was on the list with no badge, and I was the crasher. I realized that Doug Seven really does know everyone so I'm proud even to stand next to him for drinks in my new Gotdotnet t-shirt.

Oh yeah - the Gotdotnet t-shirts. I think Korby Parnell ran around and took photos of some leading lights in them. I cannot wait til he uploads those!

That part of booth duty has been amazing. I gave one Workspace user two t-shirts just for having suffered through the last few months with us fixing stuff. We are doing a sort of interesting thing, because the swag vultures hover every time the t-shirts are unpacked.  We send them to Dave Morehouse, who regaled one person about RSS so hard that they signed up for Newsgator (but not sure is going tohis focus group). We sent them to the forums focus group which suffered from a last-minute switch of rooms and times. Or, I say, you can talk to Betsy. Betsy says if you want a GDN t-shirt you need to write on your blog something nice about Gotdotnet. Perhaps as simple as "Thanks for the t-shirt, Gotdotnet team." Which frankly unless you were born in a barn and raised by sheaves of hay, you should be doing anyway, but people get excited and forget.

I'm debating having people email Scott Hanselman for a t-shirt. I ran into him Sunday (he didn't recognize me in my short hair) and said "Hey Scott, clean any urinals lately?" I had to strike a blow, you understand, for Workspaces. :)

Unfortunately, now he knows me on sight again, so I will have to come up with something else.

Live it vivid!