My presentations at TechEd New Zealand went well. At TechEd US, I was more comfortable doing the Data in SOA talk and it got a slightly higher eval score. Of course, that was the talk that I was expecting to do and that I had spent some time writing new content for. Metropolis was a last minute add since Pat couldn't go. At TechEd NZ, I was more comfortable doing the Metropolis talk. Pat spent significant time working on Data in SOA for TechEd Europe and I just picked up his updates en masse. It's a great talk, but I wasn't as comfortable as I had been doing my version of the talk.
After my presentations, I attended an architect dinner with local architects. I had some fascinating discussions with some of the attendees, saw a presentation on EDRA (i.e. the project formerly known as "Shadowfax") and participated in a great panel discussion.
Yesterday, we flew to Sydney, met up with my mom, and took the train to Canberra for TechEd Australia. The train was nice because Patrick could get up and run around as much as he wanted, plus we got a great look at the country side - we saw several kangaroos. Canberra is very cold - though the sun is out now - and walking to find a place for dinner last night was quite chilly. The cab driver who picked us up at the train station was a hoot. We asked her what had been here before the capital moved here and she replied "What should be here now, a sheep paddock". I wish I had gotten her name so she could give us a ride back when head back to Sydney. The hotel is underwhelming (the perils of late registration) but the event hall is pretty cool. I spent a morning with a Meta analyst this morning, lunch with the local field architect and my Metropolis talk is about two hours.