Well that was fun! First there was the traffic jam getting into the Microsoft Campus 45 minutes before it starts, but 15 minutes before the speaker briefing (sorry Melita!) and managed to sit down with Annie who was highly amused to be called a big name speaker. I was highly amused when, upon booting her laptop the hard drive went rather weird and error messages complaining about missing system directories appeared. Panic ensued. I volunteered to dash home to get my identical work laptop, and we could put her drive in an external usb enclosure and copy files. As she was trying to rearrange her timeslot it booted. The miracle of plugging it into the power socket may have given the drive the kick it needed. So it was carry it reverently downstairs and hope. Then it was kick back and relax until it was time to speak and make sure we were in our DDD branded speaker shirts. We had a separate speaker area with sofas and rather hairy, fluffy cushions, which Sarah took a strange liking to. I have to admit I was rather shocked to see my room start to fill up, and keep going and going. I think I had around 70 or 80 people, which for a dry topic like MSBuild was rather amazing. Simon Harriyott managed to make it to my talk this time (unlike last time), sat in the front and took the picture you see above. Err, thanks(?) Simon. I feel the talk went well, there were good questions, I got to hand out the Microsoft branded socks (punishment for a question asking if VS would overwrite changes you made to a build project!), the CD holders, coffee cups and bottle openers, and like before the socks got a laugh. I await the score from the feedback forms with eager glee. (update: there were no forms, feedback is all online) I await the photos that Dave and Benjamin took of me dozing on the sofa with dread though!

I do wonder if Amy Sorokas, freshfaced and over from Redmond, got over the shock of my blog card. Daniel Fisher loved it though and he was an interesting guy to talk to. Lots of things in his head about driving the German community forward. We both ended up blaming the French for everything. Amy was bemused by that too. <g>

For those who want the actual presentation content see my other entry.

Finally, as Phil is comment bombing (:p), if you attended please leave your feedback.

[24 Oct] Changed Sarah's link to a post where she actually does talk about the cushions <g>.

[24 Oct] Added the feedback link, there were no forms, linked Amy to her blog and a picture.