Woke up at 6:30AM. Met colleague Sumeeth Evans at breakfast. Sumeeth and I will be working together to write up on articles for Bink.nu. We left for the center by half past 7 and walked all the way over. It was a bit warm but doable.

Upon arrival we quickly regged up Sumeeth, and we headed over to the special press room. DAMN! I’m loving my presscard! A nice large room with nice leather seats, couches and special workdesktops for pressmembers to work at. In this special area we got nearly everything we need including a 5-star buffet for breakfast and lunch. It is a shame tough tomorrow will be last day it’s available.After a quick break and logging on the press room wireless, we left to attend the keynote. We had special seats on the front row reserved just for us, the press. We also got to bypass the main waiting line at the entrance which was nice.

The keynote itself was really interesting and it covered a lot of ground. I’m not going to repeat myself with all the quite boring IT blah again. If you want to read, head on over to Bink.nu. After the keynote we left again to freshen up at the press room and write up the keynote summary that’s online on Bink.nu right now. Had to fight with the admin system to upload all the photos and insert them in the article. Ultimately it worked and we finished it up. After that I headed on out in the center booths on the conference. Saw a lot of interesting booths out there on Windows server, Windows client, security.

After that I headed on over to the “Tricks of the Windows Vista masters” session. The session itself .. the content .. was a bit basic. Nearly every tip they demoed I already knew. However the presenter himself was great. Very funny and good jokes to lighten up the mood. Halfway through I made a couple of pictures of the session (as I do with all) and he stopped presenting. Told me to give him a headsup next time as he wants to pose for every photo. Later on I took a couple more and he ahw’ed I didn’t notify him. Good laugh.

After the Vista session, I met up with fellow Dutch reporter Raymond Comvalius. Had a good laugh with him and hit up the System Center Ess. Session. (which was .. boring). Here we also met up with (another Dutchy) Marco Timmermans. Both are Microsoft Certified Trainers and we walked around talking to a lot of people from the MCT world. We walked through the booths again, talking on IT in general, specific products and problems in de modern IT.

To end the working day we headed on out to the Partner Expo partner. Every expo exhibitor had some nice stuff at their stand and we had great fun at multiple stands. Had a good time with Marco and Raymond.

Around 2PM it started to storm outside. There were big thunderclouds out and it rained like hell. Luckily when I started to go to the hotel it stopped storming. On my way to the hotel, I met a fellow TechEddy (of who I just forgot his name).

Wrote some more, slept some more…