New Orleans: Day 2

Due to our late arrival yesterday we had to be up pretty early to get to the convention center for registration. Thankfully I’m still in the throws of jet lag and was awake from 5:30am onwards so the 6:40am start wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be. Whilst I was getting ready I noticed that my camera battery was a little low and then realized that I had left my charger at home. One of the Lifehacker guys is using a Canon though so hopefully I’ll be able to bum a charge off him so I can spend what little free time I have taking pictures as I found today that spare time is going to be at something of a premium.

The keynote turned out to be a lot more interesting than I had expected, mostly because my expectations were in the toilet after last year’s TechEd Australia. There was the usual over the top parts, the keynote speaker playing a James Bond-esque character and trundling up in an Aston Martin being chief among them, but thankfully that was essentially it with the rest of it focusing on good old fashioned technology. As the other’s remarked there was a lot more newsworthy stuff in the keynote than we’d expected and whilst I won’t cover it here (mostly because I’m sure it’s already been done to death everywhere else) suffice to say that instead of walking out feeling confused and slightly angry I was instead pretty eager to dive into some sessions to get my hooks into the newly announced features.

My choice of sessions was probably a bit sub-optimal though as the first couple we essentially retreading the same ground with not a whole bunch of new insight. Indeed the best session of the day was the one I hadn’t planned to go to since it was labelled TBD but my press buddies informed me they would be the ones to watch out for since TBD was code for “covers as of yet unannounced features”. With that in mind I’m taking a good long look at my schedule for tomorrow as I’d rather spend my time being interested in these sessions than nodding off halfway through them.

This time around has felt a whole bunch more disconnected than last year as after the keynote we all kind of went our own ways and we didn’t have the convenient press room to retreat to. It wouldn’t have been much of an issue but it seems that they couldn’t arrange the powered seats like they did last year which put me in the unenviable position of having to ration my use of the laptop, which meant my notes were pretty brief. It seems like an odd oversight given that they had it at TechEd Australia but I guess it must be a limitation of the venue.

I wasn’t so fussed about the relatively long hours last year since I’ve already seen most of what Brisbane has to offer but it does feel like a right shame that I’ve been here 2 days and I haven’t really seen much of New Orleans. Since TechEd won’t be providing dinner tomorrow though that might give me a little bit of a chance to get out and see a little bit of the place while I search for something edible. There seems to be a really cool little amphitheater/restaurant across from me that had live jazz playing tonight which is quite intriguing but it might have to wait as I’ve got a couple suggestions from friends to check out first.

I guess I could just go AWOL… 😉