Notes of Day 1:

• Las Vegas is in Pacific time, I live in East Coast time. So, I am wake at my normal 5AM (EST) and by 6AM (EST) clamoring for coffee! I know that Treasure Island has a Starbucks (the reason that this hotel gets 4 stars!). So, I grab some money and head down to the hotel-lobby. Of course, I don't know where it is located, so catch hold of a security fella and ask. He gives me directions to get to Starbucks and proceeds to tell me that they don't open till 6 in the morning. With a perfectly honest horrified look, I mention that is way past 6 AM. It is few minutes.... for me to register the fact that it is really just around 3 AM! Too damn early for coffee! What a perfect start.
  
• Breakfast was served with Eggs.... hmm.... I was hungry! and the Eggs looked so yummy! Lent was out the window!
  
• Kick off and Keynote by Ray Ozzie, Scott Guthrie and Dean Hachamovitch, talking about the latest, greatest and whats new in the web-technologies.
  • It was fantastic to see Silverlight apps in some incredible applications such as Hard Rock Cafe - Memorabilia (the Deep Zoom technology).
  • The keynote also declared the release of Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1, IE 8.0, and Expression Studio with Blend 2.5. Whee! Woohoo! Right, Right!
  • At this point, I am simply happy to be here to listen to all these release proclamations! Also, these bits were readily available for downloads!
    
• After pigging out on a good lunch, I couldn't wait to get my paws on learning Silverlight 2.0. So, rest of the afternoon was spent, listening to Eugene Osovetsky (Working with Data and Web Services in Microsoft Silverlight 2), then Joe Stegman and Mike Harsh (Building Rich Internet Applications Using Microsoft Silverlight 2). These two gave a really good kick start into the development of Silverlight applications. Of them all, Joe Stegman is an awesome speaker!
  
• By the end of the day, my fingers were itching to start twittering about Silverlight and developing something. Instead we head to Tao for a fantastic party. Now there is a party! Open bar with Champagne (Yeah! Lent is so out the window! Thank God I am not Christian, so breaking Lent was not too bad! I might still go to hell, but I hope I am forgiven! :))