LA is a great town for a conference. This year I took my wife down with me.
The conference is 5 days long and theoretically, I suppose I could have capitalized on parties every night…
To start with, we met with some other attendees and discovered an awesome sushi restaurant buried somewhere in town called R23. My colleague Daniel Neremberg will exchange photos with me and I’ll put these up on Facebook when I get my hands on them.
On Monday night, we attended the Windows 7 Springboard party at the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. This was a great site for a party with a rooftop terrace, burining outdoor fireplaces, tiki torches, a rooftop pool and several beanbag waterbed style seats. I also posted something I am particularly proud of, a photo which was taken with Mark Russonivitch and myself hoisting brewskies. :) See below:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/photo.php?pid=3197611&id=528766180&ref=mf
The night was spent among peers, colleagues and friends and we had a great time.
On Tuesday night, we did a little party hopping which took place between the Conga Room club at LA Live and the Lucky Strike Bowling Lanes nearby. The party at the Conga Room was hosted by Double Take Software and featured a live Rock & Roll and Blues band where the CEO himself went to town playing the bass.
Not to be outdone, Windows Embeded hosted a party of their own at the Lucky Strike Bowling Lanes nearby where IT folk could tear loose and have a great time and relieve some stress at the same time!
Although I heard that on Wednesday there were more parties about town, I decided to chill with my wife. We visited North Hollywood and took some pictures of the Celebrity Stars on Hollywood Boulevard and at the Mann’s Chinese theatre.
Tonight was the traditional closeout party at TechEd. It was themed “Jam on IT” and was held onsite at the LA convention center. Fun was had by all and the peer networking was enjoyable. Afterwards, my wife and I once again decided to head out to North Hollywood where we were pleasantly surprised that there was a movie premiere taking place at the Mann’s Chinese Theatre. Christian Bale was present for his movie premiere of Terminator 4.
My wife and I decided to take a tour which only ran $35/each where we got to see many celebrity houses in Beverly Hills, we got to see many famous locations in Hollywood including The Velvet Room, House of Blues. and the Polo Loco where Brad Pitt had his first job dressed as a chicken…
The evening ended with a meal at “In and Out Burger”.
http://www.in-n-out.com/
Here we experienced the “Double Double” and ordered it “Animal Style”. For those who do not know, In and Out Burger features a very simple menu with approximately 5 or 6 items. The delight and surprise of this hidden jewel is in their secret menu. See below:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2255321_out-burger-using-secret-menu.html?ref=fuel&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=ssp&utm_campaign=yssp_art
More juicy TechEd details to come!
Read the complete post at http://owsug.ca/blogs/brad/archive/2009/05/15/Partying-it-up-at-TechEd-_1320_-Learning-can-be-fun-too_2100_.aspx