First official day here in LA; I ran into Chris Sells at the Westin this AM. He's one of my favorite Microsofties and I'm sorry that I won't be here for his presentation on Friday. If you're still here then be sure to catch his presentation.

Bill Gates keynote: A lot of excitement around the Windows VIsta and Office 12 demos. Really cool stuff: with Office as we know, there are many features that are rarely used: the 80% uses the 20% most of the time. Thinking is sometimes that people don't need all the features in there: where does Office go next? As these demos show, Office 12 is partly focused on surfacing these cool features so there basically as easy to use as e.g. File/Save. Very cool; my slide decks will definitely benefit.

Jim Allchin keynote: More cool demos, especially the much needed Super Fetch. Then Don Box, Anders Heljsberg, Chris Anderson showing Linq, etc. I know Don from my involvement with Band on the Runtime. He remains one of my favorite speakers and I hope to catch at least one of his sessions this week.

I'm getting ready to go to the Microsoft Community Team booth (#36). If you're jazzed about online community and want to help us do it better stop by and chat.

George