Day -1 at Tech*Ed #tee09

Updated 12th Nov: I've been made aware that some people have taken this post as an overall criticism of Tech*Ed 2009 and it's organisation.  It most definitely is NOT.  Having been many times there are plenty of things to be positive about, and the list below is only those things that I thought could improve.  A posting on what was good, would go on for ages :-)

Registration but also some sessions. But despite the usual high standards some worrying #fail issues:
* no feedback forms on the website
* no ppt slidedecks on the session details, i evaluate sessions by the number of slides, this seriously handicaps me
* the session rooms I've seen so far feel small. I am worried this will turn into Hamburg '95 again when you ended up queuing for 30 mins before, or missing out. It seems there were some full sessions (there always are!), but not like '95
* S-Bahn station walkway to the venue was locked
* session rooms are all to one side of the venue, therefore there's no natural transition via CommNet or the Exhibition (or the coffee facilities)
* the schedule tool does not load the speaker name, so if you've selected a session because of the speaker you cannot see that in your calendar
* the website sucks on a mobile phone. Because of java and stuff i cannot use it to plan sessions. This is a bigger issue as in the past we've even had a mobile app that had ppt and sessions abstracts to browse offline !!!

Good changes though:
* Not Barcelona again!
* no wasted water bottles, instead we get a jerrycan and use water coolers
* i'm back in a comfort zone

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset or angry, just disappointed that my start to Tech*Ed was harder than it should have been