Microsoft Tech-Ed 2011: Memorable Moments

• The Braves-vs-Phillies game on Sunday at Turner Field
• Dinner with my nephew and his family in Alpharetta on Sunday night.
• The "Desktop Deployment Game Show" session on the last day, with Michael, Johan, Jony and Tony and some others - was hilarious.  Absolutely entertaining and educational as well.  The questions presented via the Jeopardy-style game board were obviously aimed at inside knowledge, since nobody in the audience even tried to answer when the panelists couldn't figure them out.
• Wednesday night.  Sitting in Peachtree Station mall at closing time, aside from the floor cleaner guy, it was empty.  Myself, Mike and Todd were getting a bite to eat from one of the two shops still open, then sat down to chow and along comes Wally Mead who pulls up a chair and works on his Subway sub while we talked for about an hour and a half.  For non-geeks, this is probably meaningless.  For anyone who works with System Center Config Manager (or SMS), it's indeed a rare event.  Wally is a really cool guy.  Laid back and great to chat with.  I learned so much in that short time.  Even about dogs, kids, houses, places to live and places to travel to, not to mention his knowledge from being at Microsoft for 17 years.
• The two sessions on memory management with Mark Russinovich
• The "Solving Unknown Mysteries of…" session with Mark Russinovich
• Getting a book signed by Mark and a brief chat.
• The final session of the conference with Mark Minasi on DNS was funny and very informative.  He's a great speaker.
• Breakfast in Building C open Hall.
• Lunch at Building C open Hall.
• The Expo floor and the open bars and food buffet every night
• The SpecOps team party on Wednesday night at Max Lager's.