Welcome to the second day of Tech∙Ed 2009. I hope you’re ready for some fun, because I’m sure going to tell you some stories about today. But first things first: Let’s go through the boring official technical stuff first 😉

Tech∙Ed Technical, Day 2

Today I attended two Tech∙Ed sessions and one invitation-only session. Starting off at 9 am with CLI201, I had a fun time watching our two Dutch IT Pro Advisors demo the Windows 7 UI, BranchCache and DirectAccess. Since blue screens are still part of Windows 7, this functionality was shown as well by setting ACLs on user32.dll that lock out SYSTEM. Of course the new recovery tools in Windows 7 solved the issue within a minute…

I then attended session SIA307. When I selected the session back home, it sounded like a challenging level 300 session on Identity and Access Management (IAM). It sure was an interesting session for most of the attendees, but I already knew all the stuff. I think I was expecting this session to focus more on Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) / Geneva and Identity Lifecycle manager (ILM) / Forefront Identity Manager (FIM). Note to self: Check out other sessions.

After lunch, one of my favorite sessions was rescheduled. To 9 AM… That wasn’t going to fly, when I glanced at my evening schedule. Instead I spent some time at the SpecOps stand and checked out their Password Reset and Password Management tools.

Later in the afternoon I also attended an invitation-only interactive session off the official Tech∙Ed schedule. It focused on managing IT with minimal resources. It gave me the opportunity to meet Craig Wilson, who is Business Development Manager at Microsoft and focuses on Solution Accelerators. Since I’m a big fan of Microsofts Solution Accelerators. I had the opportunity to give feedback to him and his team.

Unfortunately the session I had booked after the interactive session started at 5 pm, while the interactive session ran late. I walked over to Hall 7-2c for Mark Minassi’s level 400 session on Kerberos. The room was already full. People were standing outside and were being refused entrance. The atmosphere outside was tense and the four persons outside were outraged. Since I’m allergic to people behaving like that, I left.

Watergate Club, Cookie Club, Dante

Tuesday night was reserved for the Microsoft Springboard Series Community Partei. This party started late, so from Tech∙Ed we started drinking at the Lounge again. Yes, the bottle of Johnny Walker was emptied; Achievement unlocked.

We used Berlins Public Transportation Infrastructure to the party, since the Watergate Club is located near several S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations. It didn’t take forever, so we arrived at the club around 10 pm. We had a couple of beers and met with some folks. I can clearly remember shaking hands with Mark Wilson and Steven Bink. While we’re exchanging links quite frequently, we hadn’t had the chance to meet in person until today.

Around 1 AM we were ready to leave. In a motorcade of cabs a couple of us (Tony Krijnen, Daniel van Soest, Aaron Margosis, Richard Rodgers, Rhonda Layfield and others) went to the Cookie Club. We weren’t allowed entrance, though. We got into cabs again and went to Dante.

We danced the night away there and had a great time! We were back at the hotel around 4:30 AM.

Barcelona (Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008) style!