I don't know if Microsoft didn't give the session presenters any of the session materials ahead of time, or if the presenters just didn't bother to run through the demos, but the sessions in both the IT 300 and Developer tracks were just awful - I can't speak to the IT 200 track; neither I nor my compatriots attended any of those sessions.

First of all, even in the IT 300 track - the supposed advanced track - very little information beyond a basic walkthrough of anything was given.  Second, even thought it seemed like we were watching someone walk through a hands-on-lab for the first time (constantly referring back to their steps), things still went wrong.  When something happened that wasn't specifically spelled out in the steps that were provided, the presenters were lost.

If you're new to the field and want to get a decent look at the minimum you need to know security-wise these days, I'm sure you'll get good use out of the day's events.  If you've been in the field for a while, and you're looking for in-depth insight into how Microsoft does security, you'll probably want to save yourself the time, and pop for some other training at a later date.

Just my 2 cents - I would've posted this last week, but I've been constantly on the move since Thursday morning... I'll be back on the ball this week; promise!

- G

For all of you that weren't already an hour late for something this morning, don't forget to set your clocks ahead an hour (if you're in a timezone that does that sort of thing)!

- G

My last post on this topic has thus far generated more aggregator traffic than any other post since the PDC.  Both Adam Kinney and I were wondering why these tips were being relegated to the newsgroups, without a blog counterpart.  Well, it seems there is a blog counterpart - it just has stayed quiet for much too long.  Markus Mielke (MS, Avalon) apparently has a blog up on Longhorn Blogs, called Making Avalon Perform.

The Avalon performance tip I blogged last month has gotten a little longer and somewhat clearer, though if you understood it the first time, you might not get much more out of it.  However, this seems to be a blog you want to be watching.

Personally, I'm waiting for Scoble to mention this as an example of why everyone should use RSS - there's no chance that “Making Avalong Perform” would have remained as a bookmark after going dark for so long, but as an RSS feed, I picked up their new content the same day it was posted.  That's the whole point I suppose, but it's still pretty cool.

- G