Yesterday evening, August 25th, was the 2nd SMBiT Professionals Tech.Ed Dinner held at Sage Restaurant on the Gold Coast.

Attended well by members of the SMBiT Professional Association from all parts of Australia, it certainly shows the power of a nation wide IT Professional Association that has committed Members who are dedicated to furthering the IT Community.

A last minute generous offer from Steve West at Storagecraft saw the 2nd annual Community Event being sponsored by an extremely Community Focused company, Storagecraft – who on Wednesday evening sponsored the AuTecheds Party and last night, made a contribution to the SMBiT Professionals Networking Dinner.

Companies such as Storagecraft recognise the importance of supporting the IT Community though the sponsorship of events and empowering the IT Community though in depth, true technical events that focus on their product to empower the technical workforce who deploy their product, to do so confidently, competently and most of all giving the Client the best deployment of a brilliant Disaster Recovery solution.

Using technologies such as their 15 minute incrementals, 5 Minute Server Restore using Virtual Box and Head Start Technology sets Storagecraft far apart and well ahead of competitors offering a Drive Imaging Solution.

Again Storagecraft recognise the IT Community through their Storagecraft IT Edition allowing IT Technicians an inexpensive way to Image Systems before working on them and completing P2P, P2V and V2P.

Support the companies that support the community – If you’re at Tech.Ed go and see the Storagecraft team in the Expo Hall, if you’re not, make sure you contact Storagecraft today to sign up for a demo in your capital city and to become a reseller.

Again, I would like to extend my personal thanks to Steve West and the Storagecraft team for their generous support of the SMBiT Professionals Association.

Tech.Greg

If you’re yet to RSVP, please email me ASAP so that we can extend the booking should we need to.

Details

Where: Sage Restaurant
Time: From 7pm to when we get kicked out
Address: 5/20 Queensland Avenue, Broadbeach

Please bring cash as splitting the bill on cards can get messy.

Hope to see you tonight!

Tech.Greg

In all seriousness though – staying at a serviced apartment instead of a hotel means the cost is kept down.  Shopping at the local supermarket for things like breakfast cereal, and some late evening snacks will save you a heap of cash and having a few drinks in the fridge means you can avoid the crush at the bar if you want a drink before bed. 

You see, I used to own a Dell XPS M1530, nice machine, it took some rough treatment (see below), but I didn’t survive my fall back in June 2008.

So RIP Dell XPS M1530, and hello MacBook.   Its aluminium, so it will dint, but not break into multiple pieces.

To avoid Corey and other Microsoft fanboys fainting for there being a Mac in their sessions, it has now been branded with an “Im a PC” badge. (I’m still not sure what the problem is, after all, Microsoft are a software company.. and their OS runs on many different Intel Machines)

Tech.Ben Working Hard

Tech.Ben...A PC??

and yes, it runs Windows 7 really well.

Tech.Ben
(The guy with a MacBook)

Apologies for the sideways action, Wayne Small decided to get creative!

On the way back to Jupiters, I was called aside by the cat calls and wolf whistles…hmm – I wondered what this could be – only to realise it was a swimsuit competition.  They had a number of fine ladies dressed in very little parading in front of a bunch of geeks.  I could see their tongues falling out of their heads as each new lady walked by.   It was certainly funny to see.

I don’t think they realised what they did by having this competition on during TechEd with 2500 IT Geeks around… oh wait maybe they did and maybe it was just fantastic marketing on their part…

Time to run – my session is on at 8:15am this morning and everything is good to go.  See you there!

SMBiT Professionals Dinner

4 Microsoft Quadrants in the expo hall with a large Microsoft Stand in the middle with the exhibitors around and the dining hall at the North end.

Whilst walking around I bumped in to this strange looking fellow….

So, what are the totals after this whole week of shenanigans? Well Wayne put the call out to the community, and the community certainly responded.
Wayne ended up with a final Posse of 91.

And Steve’s posse…. well …. what can we say…

We had the pleasure of interviewing Steve after his last event, and here his thoughts about the Battle of the Posse and Tech.Ed 2008.

Well, that’s all folks for Tech.Ed 2008.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed the live coverage of the event and it’s been something different. It’s certainly been good fun for me, and it’s definitely something that I think I’ll be doing more of going forward.

Any questions, queries, moans, groans, complaints or comments are always appreciated. Email teched@techedlive.com

Until next year – Safe Computing.

Tech.Greg