Just seven days to go before the start of TechEd Europe!

• The session voting is now complete: over 1100 of you took the time to pre-select which sessions you were likely to attend. Nobody is tied to the choices they made, of course, but this information is invaluable to us as we can make a fairly accurate assessment as to which sessions are likely to be the most popular and schedule them in rooms with plenty of space.
• All 572 sessions (breakouts, hands-on labs, panels, birds-of-a-feather and chalk-and-talks) are now scheduled with room details and times. I've updated the spreadsheet I made available last week, and it now includes session code, title, time, location, abstract and speaker details: handy for download to your mobile device for reading on your travels.
• The attendee forums are now live on the attendee site. If you're attending the event on your own, why don't you post a note in one of the country forums and arrange to meet up with some of your compatriots? The UK guys have an excellent thread going already, and will I'm sure make quite a party as they did in 2002! This is also an excellent place to post any questions about individual session tracks or the overall event content. A number of us from the event planning team are monitoring the various forums, and you can expect to see a response if it's something we can help with.
• Once again, a reminder to submit your blog to TechEd Bloggers - they'll be attempting to keep up with all the blog entries and publish an aggregated feed of all entries, so if you're not attending TechEd Europe you can pick up on some of the best information by subscribing to this RSS feed.
• Don't forget to bring your wireless card with you! Onsite is an 802.11b wireless network that for the first time covers the entire site except the dining area and exhibition hall. Make sure your machine is patched with all critical security updates to avoid being forcibly disconnected from the environment, and ensure your personal firewall is active. Further details on how to setup your environment, along with a free anti-virus software trial edition, are available from the attendee website.

I omitted one tip from last week's guide to making the most of TechEd: read the abstract as well as the title when you make your session choices. Reading through the feedback from previous years' events, it's clear that some people were disappointed when a session didn't cover what they were expecting, even though the abstract gave an accurate portrayal of the subject matter covered. It's an easy mistake to make, compounded by the fact that the mini-guides included in the badge holder only contain the title for each session.

From my perspective, six months of technical content planning is finally at an end, and I'm anxious to see whether we've made the right decisions in picking sessions and building the keynote. The fun's about to start! See you there...