Tech.Ed : Day 1 : Keynote Over, Tech.Ed Begins!

I'm sitting in a place called the TechNet Lounge, following the morning's keynote at Tech.Ed. My mate Big Iain McDonald was the special guest, and you know he rocked. Iain and I started at a similar time in Microsoft in Australia. He headed over to Seattle around the same time that I did and we were pretty close when we were living over there. After I came back to Australia, Iain's career really soared and now he is one of the big men on campus responsible for making things happen. I think he is a legend, and he always makes time to say G'day to me and very generous with the hugs.

His presentation was entitled "Back On The Front Foot", which is a cricketing term. I loved it, as it really embodies the feeling we have here at Microsoft regarding the next 12 months - we have the PDC in September, the launch of Visual Studio 2005 & SQL Server 2005 and the preview of BizTalk Server 2006, in November, followed by the release of Windows Server 2003 R2 and the next Beta of Vista before the end of the year, and then in 2006 the wave of  Office 12 and Windows Vista. Exciting times indeed. I think back 10 years ago to when we launched Windows 95 and the buzz is very similar.  How can we not be excited.

The keynote was put together by one of my boys, Jeff Alexander - he had been so stressed about this, he had gotten sick. Jeff pulled it all together and I think he did a  really good job. Time to take some Codral and rest before your session matey.

The keynote featured a nice demo of Windows Vista, by another one of my boys - Michael Kleef. He really did a terrific job - Confident, Clear and Connected - good thing you rehearsed mate!.

As I walked out of the keynote, I meet Rodney Gedda, who was the journalist who interviewed me a few weeks back. He gave me a hard time that I scooped him on his own article that he was writing!. Rodney - welcome to the new world. Bloggers can scoop journos, these times they are a changin'. Hey, I've scooped before, and I'm sure I'll scoop again. I'm not in the Scoble league yet, and I probably never will be - who wants to read the ravings of an aussie microsoft geek?

Anyways, I am doing booth duty today and will be answering lots of questions from the delegates. I'm in the lounge for most of the day. Come and say Hi. And yes, I am wearing that shirt!

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