I really have no idea if anyone else found it funny but honestly I'm a Samantha Bee fan, well... a Daily Show fan.
For those of you who were not at the Keynote speech from Steve Ballmer I'll fill you in. Since this is my first TechEd I really have no idea if they do something like this every year or not but my gut says they probably do. The program started out with what they called “The Techie Show“ with a similar graphic and theme song as the Daily Show. Themed like a spin off if you will. They bring out Samantha who hosts the show and tosses various funny pokes at devs and the people they have to support. Like the Daily Show some was funny and some was forced but in the end you go away laughing and I believe she pulled it off this time as well.
There were various announcements, new Exchange SP2 and Windows Mobile 5 features with mobile devices, new Windows Server 2003 (dubbed Release 2) Active Directory enhancements and the new ADFS or Federation Services, a new ThinkPad TabletPC, etc. I won't go into detail because I'm sure several will blog about all of it.
In the end I loved the keynote and in my opinion Steve Ballmer is a powerful speaker. I'm sure some may not agree but I like a speaker that can make you feel empowered and energized and he does that for me. The demos for me were, eh, not that exciting but then again it WAS just a keynote address. I think it was a great start to what I'm quickly realizing to be a very tiring week.