I just got back from a week in Orlando, Florida for the Microsoft TechEd Developer conference. It was a somewhat of a short notice trip. Much earlier in the year I had filled out an application to work at TechEd, as working at conferences is a good way to touch-base with your customers. As a program manager Microsoft likes you to participate in a couple conferences a year. Well time passed and I didn’t remember receiving a confirmation that I had been accepted. So, a couple weeks a go, it was a surprise to me when I received an email that I only had one day to make my hotel reservations!

I flew out on Sunday so I could make a short conference worker training on Monday. Since the conference didn’t start until Tuesday and I’d have the rest of Monday free, Heather decided to come down with me for those couple days. She flew stand-by and lucked out by getting the last seat possible on the leg from SLC to Orlando! If she hadn’t made it, she probably would have just gone back to Boise. The perils of flying stand-by!

It was nice to have Heather there the first couple days. The hotel was really nice and we spend a lot of time together. We ate some yummy food at the Bahamas Breeze, who is known for their coconut encrusted shrimp, which we both enjoyed! We also split a delicious, Dulce de Leche cheesecake. Yummy!

Then on Tuesday Heather left for the airport super early in the morning while I got ready for “booth-duty”. My job was to answer questions about our product at the PerformancePoint Server booth.

Typically there were two of us at a booth at a time and I only had one, three-hour shift per day, except for one day where I had two shifts. Aside from that I attended sessions and then one night I went out to dinner with my team. Overall it wasn’t a good experience but by Friday I was ready to come home.