Fall is, by far, my favorite time of year. It reminds me of my years playing snare drum in the Marching Illini. The air clarifies, the pace of life eases, my patio door stops sticking. In college, the best time of year (besides the end of finals) was fall break for one simple reason: you got to go home and stuff yourself silly with food. Now that I’m an adult with my own family, there is no fall break.…

Yes, the tent is very large. And they’ve already started taking it down. Day one and two keynotes are over and gave Build 2012 attendees a familiar experience similar to other Microsoft conferences held in giant convention centers. All thanks to a giant tent. Overall it’s a similar and comfortable experience set inside Microsoft’s Redmond campus. Here are some pros and cons about Build 2012 as it compares to similar conferences held in the past.…

Billy Hollis as John Keating Day one of TechEd was a bit light for the developers in the crowd. One of the stalwarts of TechEd speaking is Billy Hollis and he’s here in 2012 with two sessions. I went to his first #Creating User Experiences: Unlocking the Invisible Cage#. Billy was an inspiration to me last year at TechEd 2011 and convinced me to get off my chair and start thinking about design myself, instead of waiting for someone else to do it.…

I Need One of Those For My Office Kicking off TechEd 2012 was a DJ on stage manipulating a SmithsonMartin Emulator DJ Touch machine. This translucent large panel multitouch display runs only on Windows and filled the big room with soothing grooves to get the show off to a nice start. We won’t take too much mention of the fact that he was using his iTunes library to supply the tracks.…

This is the ninth time I’ll be attending TechEd and what I carry around the conference center has changed from year to year. When I started going, I lugged a heavy laptop. Last year, I mostly went unencumbered. This year, my every day carry (EDC) looks like this: ASUS Zenbook I’m planning on blogging throughout the conference and the 13” Zenbook is a super lightweight Ultrabook that can handle the job with aplomb.…

At the ripe age of 34, I decided to run in a local race and after months of “training”, I ran my first 10K this weekend. About 23 years ago, I was a competitive runner in cross-country. But that was junior high and I was 11. Because of that, however, I admire the Barney Stinson method of training for a race: “You don’t train for a marathon, you just run it.…

My daughter is turning three in a couple of days and my wife and I have planned her birthday party over the past few weeks. We like to formulate ideas over time and build up the party instead of sitting down and planning everything at once. Since we’re both busy parents with full-time jobs and our own after work activities, it’s often the case that we’re planning pieces of the party when the other isn’t around.…