Michael Kleef is talking about how he tried to make his session more interactive for Tech Ed this year...

I really want to start getting my sessions more interactive too- tried to get this years Tech Ed one more interactive. The fact that it was 2nd to last session made it a bit tough...

Looks like Michael was using bribes... must remember to take some bribes next time

Will have to wait and see how my evals turn out....

Hard News has good post on Maxim today.

Including Maxim being caught telling porkies... which is WELL WORTH READING

...and more good stuff from the Rationalists and Humanists on the Maxim Spambomber

Now you all know that I'm by no means a religious nutcase. But this is really funny...

Our Father, who 0wnz h34V3n, j00 r0ck!
May all 0ur base someday be belong to you!
May j00 0wn earth just like j00 0wn h34V3n.
Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe.
And cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz, just as we teach n00bz
when they act lame on us.
Please don't give us root access on some poor d00d'z box when we're too
pissed off to think about what's right and wrong, and if you could keep the
fbi off our backs, we'd appreciate it.
For j00 0wn r00t on all our b0x3s 4ever and ever.

4m3n

Got to a few sessions on Day one... in between sorting my deck and in particular my demos.

The 100 level Map Point session was prettty good- getting our hands on the map data for NZ (about 6mo out) will mean that we can start to do some really neat stuff with our utilities job dispatch application. Pity there is no support for writing your own plugins to the MLS- kinda precludes doing funky stuff like location over packet trunk radio.

Next session I hit was the stuff on Team System. I'm not completely convinced that the demarcaton of roles in Team system is going to work in an NZ context- we tend to be jack of all trades down here... but we'll see. The workflow looks good but I'm going to delegate all that hard stuff down to Nick

Went to the Metropolis architecture talk, if only becuase it was The Metropolis talk. Harry did a good job, knew his stuff well.

Also went to the Data in SOA discussion that Harry gave. Again, a useful session if maybe a little assumptuous of the idea that we are all from big IT shops.

Finished the day with an early Dinner @ The Mexican Cafe with Nick. Saw the guys from Provoke and there were plenty of other Wellywood types- seemed they were all out for dinner with PAndrew.

Blogging from the keynote this morning.... The room is filling quickly and as per usual people are STUPID and don't shift to the middle of the rows..... is it some innate fear of a sudden need to ablute that causes this phenomena?

The MS team have been a bit more adventurous with the keynote this year and chose a 'Professional Speaker' rather than an MS exec for the keynote. I think this should be cool- we never get one of the really BIG execs down here anyway.

A few days ago I thought I'd post some bollocks on Rod Donald, a politician for our Watermelon (Green) Party...

It's already up to number three on Goggle! Somebody up there loves me....

DPF is moving to Qantas.... and I'm a long time bitcher on the state of Air New Zealand so I'd better have my say.

I'm not too fussed about the whole Airpoints thing as much these days to be honest.... Fares are now becoming so checp that it's easier just to buy them- Taes and levies make up a huge proportion of the fare anyway and Airpoints doesn't pay for these.

What is important to me are those Status credit things. Reason being is that Air NZ is a shitty little South Pacific Airline and in order for me to get anywhere around the world I'm likely to have to travel with both Air NZ and one of their Star Alliance partners. Now I've got a Koru Club membership, but that doesn't mean DIDDLES when you are flying on a Singapore Airlines SGN-BJS sector. I'm big enough and ugly enough to look aftermyself down the back of the plane, but, I appreciate a nice shower at either end.

Hence the need for Status credits- a Gold status level lets you use Star Alliance Lounges internationally. Now Air NZ have markedly cut back on my ability to earn these credits and they are still tied to the Airpoints system. I would ike to see them seperated from the Airpoints system and still earnt on Smart Saver flights. Another option would be to set up a policy that Koru Club members earn credits and maybe even airpoints on all flights. We have after all plumped up with a decent cash commitment to the airline in terms of loyalty and we are probably the group of customers that they would like to be most loyal- I probably do about 30-40 flights of mixed domestic and international a year. Status credits are a threshold based loyalty system. They expire anually and aren't worth anything if you don't meet the threshold. I believe that they are the key mechanism to ensuring loyalty from SME business travelers in this hot market.

I'm having an aggregatorial day today... some interesting stuff in the ether though.....

From Dare

A friend of mine, Justin, had an interesting idea at dinner yesterday. What if Google ends up building the network computer? They can give users the storage space and reliability to run place all their data online. They can mimic the major desktop applications users interact with daily by using Web technologies. This sounds far fetched but then again, I'd have never imagined I'd see a free email service that gave 1GB of free email.

Seems everyone is taking the Red Pill.....

http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/7285.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/gad

maybe the lawyers forgot to talk t the webmaster....

http://linspire.com/lindows_products_license.php

Seems that yet again Tech Ed New Zealand will fill one of NZ's largest conference venues to capacity.

I'll be there! Will you? Let me know in the comments and we can catch up.... talk some politics and have a beer maybe.

The Keynote looks fantastic... a great surprise to pull out of the box... checkout what you're missing.

Deviating from the usual TechEd keynote, we are very pleased to bring you Dr. Joseph MacInnis, one of the world's foremost explorers and innovative thinkers. Dr MacInnis was the first man to dive under the North Pole, was a consultant to the Titanic discovery team and the discoverer of the world's most northern shipwreck.

http://pluralsight.com/blogs/mike/archive/2004/05/25/415.aspx

at least I think it's funny.