If you're signed up to go to the show, now's the time to start deciding which Hands-On Labs you'd like to do.  We've got about 120 planned right now, so you'll have to make some choices.

 

Here's a quick little how-to video to show you how it works.

 

 

It's been a little damp here on the right coast (even for a Seattle guy) but it's always 72 degrees and sunny in the Boston Convention and Exhhibition Center.  We're getting all set up for TechEd, and I've been shooting more amateur video of what makes this whole thing happen.

 

As of Thursday morning, much of the physical infrastructure is in place -- carpet, couches, wires, walls -- and we spend the next few days getting all the details just right.  Saturday will be a big day for training and orienting the 3,000 or so staff people who will be working here.  Sunday is our Hands-On Lab preview day (12-6) and then the big Keynote happens Sunday night.

 

But enough words -- go look at the pictures.

 

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Preparations for TechEd 06 in Boston are well underway.  I'm in the Microsoft Offices in Waltham, MA (about 30 minutes from the show site) working with a group of Microsoft Certified Trainers.  Here's the beginning of my amateur video about the experience.

 

They're spending an entire week here, making a "Quality Assurance" pass through all the Hands-On lab content (124 proposed labs) for the show.  It's the first time we've made this committment to find bugs, fix them, and make sure that what you see on the floor is top quality.

 

It isn't easy.  It took three days of work to set up the infrastructure (servers, network components, test stations, etc.) and we now have five very full days of work.  (We started here at 7AM -- or, as I like to think of it, 4AM in Redmond.)

 

At the end of the week we all move into Boston and do it all over again, in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.