After the last session ended, I wandered around looking for the FedEx that was supposed to be in the convention hall...the load of shwag in my pack was killing me (that was all free stuff!). I stumbled into a small classroom off to the side...outside was a table with people giving away t-shirts and CDs, and a sign that said “Biztalk Loadfest”. Hmmm, ok. I'll grab a shirt and CD for Allen (hope an XL will fit!). Then I notice event staff taking some pizzas into the room. Mmmm, I'm hungry. So I wander in and ask a friendly MS guy what's going on. He tells me that they're here to help us get loaded. We can have some pizza and beer, and play around with loading Biztalk Server 2006 on the test machines ringing the room. But he said mainly everyone was here for the beer (wink wink).
Hey ok, I can handle that. So I grab some pizza and a beer; then I sit down at one of the workstations, because I'm genuinely interested in this. I remember Allen said that his BizTalk 2004 install went as smooth as silk, so I wonder how they could have possibly improved it. (In case you don't catch the sarcasm in this, go ask Allen about his experience).
Well, actually, it was pretty easy. Did it in less time than it took to finish the pizza. They actually (gasp) put all of the dependencies on the CD, so they get installed with BizTalk. That was just the install, anyway. I didn't get a chance to run through the post-install config. There's a pic of me, uh, getting loaded in the gallery.
So I wandered off. Back in the exhibit hall was another reception, this one much larger. There was food and open bars. This was a good opportunity to talk to the vendors, and try once more for the swag I missed the first time. I also ran across a network appliance that has an embedded runtime of Microsoft Internet and Acceleration (ISA) Server. It's from http://www.networkengines.com. Their prices for the NS6200 are comparable to other firewalls I've seen. Then I stood in line for 15 minutes to hear a walkthrough on APC's new network rack cooling infrastructure system. Kinda neat, looks very expensive. For my trouble I got an optical travel mouse. Not sure if that was worth it...
Saw some other stuff, but nothing worth mentioning. Went back to the hotel, snacked some more, and pounded out the blog entries.