ChuckDoherty.com

I just got back home following a long and hot week in Orlando where I attended Microsoft’s annual TechEd conference held at the unfathomably large Orange County Convention Center.

Here is some of what I learned while I was there:

• Anyone riding a Segway scooter indoors looks very silly, and doing so outdoors is not much of an improvement.
• Trade show exhibitors who rely on hired local eye candy to lure the unwary into their booths are invariably touting products that have little appeal on their own merits.
• A post-turkey-lunch discourse on XML parsing techniques has more sleep inducing effect than a mug full of Nyquil.
• There is very little that people will not do in order to get a free T-shirt.
• Orlando is too hot by half.
• There is most definitely a caste system in service-sector America. Those who are born to parents of Hotel Housekeeping will never cross the great divide to become a Function Hall Waiter. I am not sure if those two groups could even communicate without a member of the Smartly Dressed Hispanic Supervisor With Walkie-Talkie caste serving as an intermediary. There is one great equalizer though; whether you are at an All-American Denny’s or an upscale French or Italian restaurant with a culturally-appropriate Matre D’ at the front of the house, back in the kitchen everyone communicates in Spanish.
• Most of the performers at the major theme parks are very, very talented people. Not much more than the luck of the draw separates hundreds of these gifted, hardworking and beautiful people from the handful of performers that become rich and famous. Try spending a few minutes gracefully dancing while standing on stilts and smiling while ill-behaved children tug at your costume to see if you have what it takes.