You may very well be at a Geekfest...

It is with a sigh of relief that I can announce I survived Tech Ed 2007.

This Microsoft event dominated what was an incredibly busy week on the Reseller News calendar, which also included Datastor’s celebration of its new services division and relationship with Juniper, and a screening of Die Hard 4.0 with Marshal and Express Data.

But back to Tech Ed…

While we all love hearing all about techy stuff and adding another official Tech Ed bag to our collection, the RN team is not as geeky as you may expect and largely focussed on attending the more social activities at Tech Ed.

This involved spending many hours networking in the exhibition hall sipping Provoke’s Red Bulls or flat whites courtesy of Ace Training, all the while chomping Smarties thanks to Auldhouse, whose Da Vinci Code-like cryptic puzzles none of us could crack to enter the draw for a Zune - like I said we are not all that geeky.

Of course we made an appearance at the opening cocktail party and Women in Technology dinner, but the highlight of TechEd, from a social perspective, was the Vegas-themed Techfest on Tuesday night.

Overall this was a great party with Fielding’s best-ever export, Evermore, leading the entertainment, which also included the burlesque-ish Candy Lane Dancers and a casino complete with poker and roulette tables (no real money was in play though).

But being a Tech Ed party meant Techfest was also a bit of a geekfest, which is why we bring you this list of Top 10 signs that you may very well be at a Geekfest…

1. During Evermore’s performance of "Light Surrounding You" everyone waves smartphones and other Windows Mobile devices in the air

2. While doing this, concertgoers start comparing features on their devices

3. The queue for the bank of Xbox 360 consoles is longer than that for the bar

4. The male/female ratio is less balanced than at a Texas gun rally

5. The groupie-wannabies at the front of the stage are all middle-aged males who curse at each other in programming code as they jostle to get as close to the Hume brothers as possible

6. You find yourself in a huddle with the Microsoft marketing team sporting t-shirts with "Geek" written on them, singing "Stand By Me" together

7. Someone who looks like the 40-year-old virgin attempts to stage dive during "Running"

8. There’s chaos in the men’s room as tech-heads who know the intricacies of .Net and Visual Studio try to figure out how to operate the automatic hand-towel dispensers

9. Half the people at the afterparty at Cowboy, didn’t even go to Techfest - they just came from a Cure concert

10. And the top sign that you are at a GeekFest - it’s 2am and Mr Tech Ed, Sean McBreen is still wearing his conference name badge

Posted by Louis Van Wyk August 17, 2007 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)