The Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta

I spent most of yesterday attending the inaugural Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta. I’m happy to say that I found it completely worth the time. I learned a lot yesterday which makes spending a Saturday downtown totally worth it. Seeing so many great speakers just pushed it over the top. I truly hope this will become an annual event.

Here’s a quick run-down of what I attended. Since there were typically multiple sessions going for SQL Server, .NET and Windows I managed to do some skipping around.

1. Keynote – (speaker unknown) I attended the “Windows” track keynote thinking that might be the most interesting. Alas, it wasn’t quite as informative on Windows futures as I might’ve hoped. However, the bits and pieces on how Microsoft does data centers was fascinating. They build these huge facilities and fill them with big shipping containers. Each container is full of servers and power gear. If a drive dies, do they replace it? Nah, they wait until there’s enough attrition in the container and swap out the whole thing!
   Overall this was the only “marketicture” session I saw for the rest of the day.
   
   
2. MVC – Scott Hanselman – I don’t know a lot about MVC, and after this presentation I don’t know much more than I did… but if you have a chance to go see Scott speak, take it. He’s funny, quick and really knows how to engage and work a crowd.
   His spot probably should’ve been a couple hours as 50 minutes just wasn’t enough time. That being said, I took down enough notes to realize that this “mvc stuff” is something I’m going to check out when I have some spare time.
   
   
3. Introduction to Azure – Scott Golightly – Like the MVC spot, this was another that would’ve benefited from at least twice as much time. Scott wasn’t giving us a marketing overview, this was all hands-on, in the code deploying and running stuff in the cloud. Cool stuff, but he had to blast through it so fast that all I can really say is, “yeah, it seems to work.”
   Another topic that is now on my “things I must research and better understand soon” list.
   
   
4. SMO (SQL Server Management Objects) – Arie Jones – Initially this time slow was going to be more on Azure storage and I really wanted to learn about SQL Server in the cloud. However, that was dropped and this SMO talk was a last minute substitution. Pity too, there were only 5 other folks in the room… I bet a lot of folks at the conference would’ve learned something here.
   In spite of the attendance, AJ gave a great talk with plenty of code examples and samples. I walked out of this one with my head spinning – I see lots of automation potential in my future now that I better understand this stuff.
   
   
5. PowerShell Jump Start – Don Jones – For several months I’ve been hearing that I really need to learn more about PowerShell, but I’ve not had the time to find out why. Now I know and can’t wait to get started. Don Jones did a great job laying out an orientation sufficient to get anyone (even me!) rolling with PowerShell. The fact that he presents from a Mac was good for a few chuckles as well.
   Don also has a TechNet Magazine column that is worth keeping an eye on.
6. PowerShell v2 Freakin’ Amazing – Don Jones – a continuation of the previous session, but focused on the upcoming version 2. Many more features to explore… and we did.
   
   
7. Windows Server 2008 Virtualization – Greg Shields – Greg is a partner of Dons and a last-minute replacement speaker for the topic of Server 2008 and Hyper-V. He did a great job, kept it very interactive and I finally get how Hyper-V works. I also now better understand the licensing model (not nearly as awful as I’d thought) and the hardware requirements (I don’t have any servers capable of even trialing this…).

I should also mention that the majority of these sessions didn’t even have PowerPoint presentations… cool, huh? We saw a lot of editors and a lot of code today. Loved it.

Swag was pretty nice too. Every session had a handful of books or CDs to hand out. I scored a couple T-Shirts and a pair of books (Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed and System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed ) that I suspect I’ll be able to use. Not to mention the obligatory water bottles. Oh, and the granola and gummy munchies in the registration bags were a nice touch as well.

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4. Nesting Remote Desktop Connections
5. Windows Update / Hotfix Conundrum