Typo patrol got off to a very quick start. One of the flyers in the attendee goodie bag is from a company which offers two free months of service to PDC attendees. The first step in obtaining the service is "Just signup and mention the PDC by January 31, 2008."

Okay, just hang on while I fire up my time machine.

Bonus grammar typo: signup is a noun; sign up is a verb.

The second typo is kind of important. In all the PDC documents (including the voucher to pick up your attendee goodie bag), it says to go to Kentia Hall. This is incorrect. If you try, you'll find a locked door. The goodie bags (and all other Kentia-related services) are actually in Parking B, which is next to the south entrance to Kentia Hall.

Other PDC 2008 notes:

  • The badge colors are the same as they were in 2005.
  • My talk is scheduled for Wednesday at 3:00pm in room 406A. I will be available in the Windows 7 lounge after the talk, where I will remain untl Ask the Experts begins, at which point I will move to the Windows 7 Ask the Experts table. I will also be in the lounge on Thursday morning until noon. And if you see me wandering around the PDC or just sitting at a table pretendng to do work, feel free to come up and introduce yourself. You're not interrupting anything. (If I didn't want to be interrupted, I wouldn't be out on the floor!)
  • I stopped by the Geeks with Blogs booth since I subscribe to their master feed just to see what everybody is chattering about.
  • In the Speaker Prep room, there's a monitor showing real-time speaker feedback statistics as the results are counted, complete with trend lines (ooh, everybody loves Anders) and attendee comments (uh-oh, technical problems with Bob's talk really hurt him). It's oddly fascinating for about 30 seconds.
  • It may be due to language problems, it may be due to poor training, or it could just be laziness, but Microsoft's attempt to reduce the environmental impact of the conference has not been a rousing success when it comes to waste diversion: The compost bins are littered with glass and plastic waste. Glass bottles, plastic bottles, and milk cartons go into the container recycling bin; plastic waste goes into the trash. We've been doing this in Redmond for quite some time, so it's frustrating seeing people get it wrong and spoiling the entire batch.
  • I learned of a new species of animal: The Overflow Room Vulture. These are people who don't decide ahead of time what talks they will attend, but rather hang around near the overflow rooms and attend whatever talk shows up there. The theory is that if a talk overflows, it must be pretty good! (Of course, this assumption is not always correct. Talks which the organizers know are going to be popular are assigned larger rooms. An overflow indicates that demand was higher than expected; it's a relative measure, not an absolute one.)