I let Brendon sleep in again.  D’Arcy and I headed over to the convention center early again for breakfast.  I swear – that Canadian is crazy!  A wild man!

Anyway, the first session I caught was Rob Howard’s early morning cabana talk about his company Telligent Systems and their Community Server product (the successor to .Text).  He answered lots of my questions and provided the group with a roadmap for the future of Community Server.  Number 1 cool thing I learned is that Community Server’s main mission recently has been to provide multiple methods of access to their products.  Not only can you browse their forums on the web, but they also support NNTP access to the forums so you can browse and reply the forums from your favorite news reader (Agent, Omea, Outlook Express, etc.).  Since the Telligent Community Server runs the ASP.Net forums, I’ll be adding them to my list of newsgroups in Omea.

Brendon caught up with me at the cabana (he managed to make it for the last half of the presentation) and then we went to go give our stuff to Mark D.  Mark D and Mark B drove down to Orlando from GA and offered to load up all of our stuff in their car so we didn’t have to ship it all back.  This turned out to be really useful as Brendon and I took a few boxes of books to give to the groups.  We managed to completely fill the trunk of Mark’s CRV.

Back at the conference center everything was shutting down.  The vendor area had closed down the night before.  The community cabanas were in “give away all the remaining stuff” mode so we got some packs of CDs for the groups.  We helped break down the INETA booth by deflating some random palm trees and beach balls.  We said our good-byes to everyone who was leaving that day and made plans with those who were sticking around to go out for dinner that evening.

Cut to Bahama Breeze.  Brendon, Rob, and Caleb rode with D’Arcy (who’d rented a car as he was sticking around for vacation after the conference with his wife).  Trisha and I caught a ride with Keith Nicholson, an old friend of Mark Dunn’s.  We all went to Bahama Breeze for an excellent dinner.  The rain was really coming down, so our initial plan to go to the hotel pool was crushed.  Instead we decided to go to the Pac Man Cafe and Arcade in Port Orlando (near where the Jam Sessions and Influencer’s party had been).  Trisha’s actually pretty good at video games.  Caleb sucked and Rob didn’t play.  Brendon beat us all at every game he played.  We had all purchased cards that gave us unlimited play for an hour, so when our hour was up we headed back to the hotel.  The plan was to go to the pool.

Back at the hotel, we all ran up to change, but when we got down to the pool we found that they’d already closed it due to the previously bad weather (which was clear by now).  Too bad, it was a really nice pool complete with a lazy river to float around in.  Brendon, Caleb, and Trisha found the hotel game room, complete with free Foozeball.  Once again, Brendon showed off that he was the best at games.  Whichever team he was on won.  After everyone was tired of losing to Brendon we went up to the bar for a drink.  At this point, Brendon was Elimi-dated.  Has anyone ever seen that show on UPN or wherever where a group of guys tries to all date one girl, all at one time.  She eliminates the potential dates, one at a time, until she’s down to just one.  That was our running joke of the evening b/c Trisha was the only girl with 5 other guys.  Rob and D’Arcy were Elimi-dated first b/c Rob quit after the Pac Man arcade (and D’Arcy left to drop him off and pick up his wife at the airport).  Brendon was next, so it was just Caleb and I drinking a beer outside with Trisha.  Ok, I had a beer, Trisha had wine, and Caleb had some fruity girly drink called a Red Devil.  We made fun of him for that.  Eventually I was the next to go – 12:30 AM and I was tired.  So I left Caleb and Trisha with a half dozen of Trisha’s friends who we found inside the bar.

Tech Ed’s over.  I had a blast, learned a lot, met tons of great people, got lots of UG swag, and basically ate and drank myself to oblivion.  I’m exhausted!

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet