Welcome to 2008! It's a new year, which presents a prime opportunity to make a resolution to blog more often. I'd like to aim for at least one entry per month, but old habits die hard... it's taken me 21 days to write the first entry, and it's an entry that should have been written over a month ago to begin with...
Our team sends people to quite a few conferences around the globe, especially with the release of Windows Server 2008 coming up. As a tester who refuses to give talks, there aren't super high odds for me being sent anywhere interesting, but when they started taking names of people who were interested in TechEd Europe, I decided... why not? I don't have kids, I don't need a visa to go to Europe, and I already have a passport. Prime candidate! I was fortunate enough to be selected to attend TechEd Europe ITForum (for IT professionals) in Barcelona.
Working booth duty is actually pretty tiring stuff. It's generally about two people per shift, so you have to use the bathroom or shove lunch in your stomach quickly, just in case a big rush of people comes in to overwhelm your partner. Lots of time on your feet, lots of time talking to people... not my strongest point. But it's cool to listen to all of the questions and realize what customers focus on when the product leaves our hands and goes to them, and it definitely boosts morale to hear that people actually like what we're doing. It's easy to get too focused on the feature areas I work on when I'm isolated in product-team-world, and opportunities like this help me see a bigger picture. Hopefully I'll be able to do this again sometime soon!
After the week in Barcelona, Mike and I took off to southern Spain to visit some cities in Andalucia. I'll probably make a separate post about that later, but for now... a geeky tradition, making IIS7 visit places around the world. You can click on the images to enlarge.
(left to right, then top to bottom: Alcazaba, Malaga; Alhambra, Granada; Alhambra, Granada; Bullring, Ronda)