Keynote - Day 1

Monday, October 17 (am) - Ryan (more coming Monday late night)

Breakfast was simple pastries and bagels. The orange juice cups were clear dixie type cups, max capacity of 2.5 or 3 ounces...way too small, even the wait staff agreed.

Post breakfast there were 2 - 60 minute sessions. I have been happy to see drinks available most of the time and lunch was better than I expected. No skimping on the chicken dish or very chocolaty cake (nice presentation too).

Southern California has a lot of flowers, or at least the tourist packed areas near Disneyland has them everywhere.

(see the conference center behind the flowers)

Keynote - day 1

The first day's keynote was close to 2 hours long. Usergroup managers were given prime seating...only surpassed by what appeared to be special invitees (bankers, press, corporate bigwigs), they sat in the center in the first few rows, we were off to the side.

The chairs were setup for the presentation to hold 3,000 people...we were roughly at capacity. Three large screens in front with the stage, 2 massive screens 1/2 way back for those in the nose bleed section.

Take a look at Simon's badge. Unlike most of us managers who have 2 ribbons (User Group Manager & Certified Professional), Simon has 10 or 11 (speaker, press, etc.) quite impressive!

Macromedia CEO Elop mentioned ColdFusion in his presentation. The mention was brief at best and I assume it will come up again in the 2nd day's keynote.

A quick dig at Microsoft's attempts to build a good interface and user tools, still trying.... ...TRY AGAIN!...

Adobe CEO Chizan also mentioned ColdFusion I think

Another speaker talked about new architectures, notice CF at the bottom next to Java and .Net...see, they haven't forgotten about us!