TechEd 2011: Day 4 Review and Random Photos

Today is the last day of TechEd 2011. It's been an amazing conference and I'm sad to see it end. We spend so much effort getting ready for this and it's always a huge success.
It's amazing to see the amount of effort and logistics that go into a conference like this. There are a tremendous number of details that need to be managed. Brandy Pepper did an absolutely awesome job managing most of these. Thanks, Brandy!

Me and Brandy Pepper (@TechEd_NA)

Vendor area

On this final day of TechEd, I usually take advantage of the smaller crowds on the vendor floor to talk with vendors I'm interested in. I spoke with Vision Solutions (Doubletake), F5 Networks, HP, Dell Compellent, Barracuda Networks, and others.

I attended the Speaker Idol contest to watch TechEd attendees compete for the best speaker on any technology they chose. Mark Manasi and Mark Russinovich we among the judges. It was fun.

Speaking of Mark Russinovich, we attended that Microsoft Springboard party the night before where he autographed copies of his book, "Zero Day" which I'm currently reading. Great book and I highly recommend it. The rumor is that this will be a movie soon.

My autographed copy of Zero Day. Glad to help out, Mark!

I attended a Windows Internals session with Mark Russinovich, "Case of the Unexplained: 2011" which was packed. I had a great seat next to Scott Ladewig who had VIP seating for winning the TechEd VIP contest and a free trip to TechEd 2012!

The last session of the year was with Mark Manasi, "The Network Files Case #53: Diagnosing Diseases of DNS." Mark, as usualy, was highly entertaining and covered 4 hours of DNS information in 75 minutes.

With that, we all went back to our hotel rooms to get ready for the epic TechEd Attendee Party, this year at World of Coke and the Atlanta Aquarium. Everyone had a great time with food, drinks and music. All the exhibits were open and we made the most of it.