I just arrived in Barcelona and was met by what felt like a hurricane. There doesn’t appear to be a dedicated bussing system in place this year between the airport and the conference centre. Instead I caught a taxi, not feeling like getting lost on a mass transport system for the day. Between the taxi and the conference centre I got SOAKED. I smell like wet jeans! If you’re reading this in the conference centre right now, that’s me you smell in the black IMTC 2008 baseball cap.
I’ve registered and and I’m sitting in the arrivals hall, making the most of the free wifi access. I’m looking outside and I can see this place has either gotten battered by the weather or hasn’t been well maintained. My first impressions of the building: it’s a glorious tribute to 1980’s architecture 😉
My advice to anyone coming here: bring waterproofs and don’t be an idiot like me and forget your international power socket adapter kits. I’m facing the prospect of trying to hunt some down – I’m not thinking that will go well.
The hall opens tomorrow at 8 and we have between then and 2PM to play in the hands-on labs. Based on my experiences in Amsterdam, they’re usually crowded at the best of times. The keynote will be at 14:00 tomorrow (Monday). Hopefully the speakers will remember that this is an IT Pro crowd and not start telling us about the wonders of the newest generation of Visual Studio tools – 99.999% of us couldn’t care less. There’s other cooler things to talk about: Azure, Windows 7, BPOS, Hyper-V 2.0 and VMM 2008.
I’ll hang around here a little while and let the rain die down. When my battery dies I’ll brave the elements and head into the city to find my hotel and maybe some food – I haven’t eaten in 14 hours and I’m starving!!!! No, Aer Fungus, I won’t pay €9 for a dried up sausage and a slice of bacon swimming in fat.
Damn I hate airports and airlines … at least I can enjoy the rest of the week until I face them again next Saturday.
Anywho … my agenda for tomorrow as of now is:
- Morning: Labs
- 14:00 Keynote
- 16:00 SEC201 Do These Ten Things Now or Else Get 0wn3d! – Steve Riley rocks.
- 17:45 MGT04-ILL Management Pack authoring – a dive into the black art of OpsMgr 2007.
- 19:00 Welcome Reception – including "Speaker Idol" 🙂