Off to Vegas!

In eight hours time I'll be heading off to Vegas. Got a pretty hectic schedule once the MIX08 conference kicks in since I've got a whole bunch of interviews to do for my new video podcast site The Daily.Net Show (which doesn't officially launch until April).

Contacting people for interview requests has been a real revelation. Microsoft get a lot of flack for a lot of things, but I've been amazed at the level of co-operation from people who are 'rocks star's in the Microsoft development world, all of whom have responded quickly and positively to simple email requests. Hard to imagine a Corporate Vice President at another company responding to an email within a few hours, effectively saying 'I'll be happy to do an interview'.

So far Scott Guthrie (Corporate Vice President, .NET Developer Platform), Scott Hanselman (hanselminutes.com), Jeff Sandquist (channel9.msdn.com), Adam Kinney (Silverlight evangelist), John McLelland (Microsoft Partner Huddle) and Mike Ormond (Microsoft UK Developer Evangelist) have all verbally agreed to take part so it's just a question of trying to co-ordinate things once we're all in Vegas. I suspect this is where things might fall down with so many things going on, but people have happily given out cell-phone numbers so I'm optimistic that most of it will happen. I'm a fan of all these folks so I feel very lucky in having had such a strong, supportive response.

On Sunday I'm having brunch at Bally's with good friends Susan and John Brock from San Diego. They are coming up to Vegas especially to show me around, which is, as the Americans would say, 'totally awesome'. We're going to have a lot to drink on the Sunday, visit The Star Trek Experience on the Monday, and do a quick 15 minute helicopter tour of the Las Vegas Strip at night on Monday evening. This last activity is primarily in the hope that I can get a nice opening shot of the conference venue from the air for the video podcasts, before the Brocks have to make a long drive home back to San Diego later that evening.

The conference itself officially starts on Wednesday but on Tuesday I've got a couple of interviews tentatively arranged, registration for the event itself (which is at same hotel I'm booked into all week - The Venetian, and a pre-conference Silverlight treasure hunt in the evening.

My luggage is an even bigger nightmare than usual. The tripod, all the camera and sound gear, together with my heavy video editing laptop, my ultraportable email and note-taking laptop, my 'self-promotional' wardrobe (t-shirts promoting the new web site which I'll be wearing all week) and business cards mean there's very little room left for anything else in my luggage. Despite taking little in the way of clothing I still have three large pieces of luggage to haul around.

The alarm clock is now set for 5.30am tomorrow morning, and the flight gets into Las Vegas early Saturday afternoon local time. If I get the chance to shoot anything before the event itself kicks off (assuming the equipment still all works when I get to the other end) I'll publish it here, otherwise all video will be the work-related stuff posted at The Daily.Net Show.

And just to round this post off so that it's vaguely 'personal' rather than 'work' related: here's a link to a video that made me laugh out loud. Optimus Prime performs 'Evolution of Dance' Tribute. Worth watching to the end for the pay-off! Enjoy!