Take this TechEDians !!!

Oasis_ViddlesLast year at TechED I ended up working pretty much the entire event.  Budgets are tight so I figured the chances of going to learn this year were somewhere between slim and none.  Instead of going to TechEd 2006, I choose to head south to Austin for the AICPA Tech06 Conference. 

Sunday started out early in order to catch a flight down to Austin and deliver a Windows Vista Technical Overview presentation.  My audience was great!  There were a lot of smart folks asking a lot of smart questions about the product, skus coming out, the prices, features, etc.  Of course we haven’t released any pricing so I could not answer those questions. 

Normally for our content we do focus groups to see if we are hitting the mark.  Yesterday was an excellent chance to test drive the content we’ll deliver across the USA in Q1FY07 which starts in August.  Being the content lead for the Windows Vista content, I worked hard to make the information relevant, entertaining and useful.  I burned a lot of hours the past few days to make that happen and as my neighbors will attest, the yard suffered.  Insert pic of my grass and weeds in need of mowing.  I’m nowhere near done and will hook up with fellow content developer Shawn Travers later this week to do the post mortem on what we need to adjust.

AustintatiousLast night and today I got a chance to spend more time with my family.  My wife's daughter Stefanie, her husband Eric and beautiful new baby Brooke are carving out a living in Austin.  This afternoon we headed to Lake Travis just outside of Austin, Texas and enjoyed the cool summer.  One of the places known to the locals is a place called the Oasis.  The Oasis has an interesting past, good food, good drink, music in the evenings and stellar views of the lake.

So you guys enjoy your chowder.  I’ll take a frozen rita, plate of Tex Mex and my family any day.  I’ll be delivering another presentation in the morning then heading back to Dallas to unveil my new toy.  I’ll fully document that process for you geeks since I know how you like nude laptops.

Sorry I didn’t use my brain and bring my good camera.  The pics are from my obsolete Cingular SMT 5600.  That’s a story all by itself.  Coming soon.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.