I – along with a good chunk of Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team – am in Calgary for the fourth leg of the TechDays Canada seven-city tour. TechDays Calgary is taking place in the BMO Centre on the Calgary Stampede grounds. Wanting to be a good guest, I decided to observe a local custom:
I haven’t worn my flaming cowboy hat in ages!
As far as I can tell, I’m the only attendee who brought a cowboy hat. The only other similarly-haberdashed people on the premises are the Calgary Stampede staff and the washroom signs:
There are a number of Christmas-related events taking place at the BMO Centre before and after TechDays, so the place is all decked out for Christmas:
The isn’t a Santa Claus on site, but we do have IT Pro Evangelist Rick Claus delivering goodies:
…and Rick’s session has drawn quite a crowd:
Another well-attended session was Introducing ASP.NET MVC, which was delivered by Tom Opgenorth:
Here’s the ASP.NET MVC room, already filling up a full 15 minutes before the start of the day:
Tom ended up speaking to a room packed to maximum capacity:
The people who couldn’t fit into the ASP.NET MVC sessions were still able to catch the proceedings on a monitor outside the room:
Meanwhile, next door, Developer Evangelist John Bristowe delivered the Practical Web Testing presentation:
And one door over, Adam “Adam Bomb” Carter (the first guy to suggest to me that I get a job at Microsoft) spoke at the Inside the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 session:
Here’s a scene from the speaker prep room that reminded me of the Sesame Street song One of These Things is Not Like the Other:
“Look! I’m at a conference, watching the proceedings of another conference!”
And just outside the speaker prep room, Rob Burke and D’Arcy Lussier chat:
Things seem to be going well, if IT Pro Evangelist and TechDays man-in-charge Damir Bersinic’s thumbs-up is any indication:
And down the hall, the Ford Flex featuring Microsoft’ Ford Sync technology awaits some passengers:
Someday, arranging for conference wireless will not be an arduous, expensive affair, but in the meantime, we set up these hard-wired internet access stations. Note the anti-bacterial lotion beside the laptop – a sign of these H1N1 times. If I’d had any foresight, I’d have bought a lot of Purell stock:
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection and Global Nerdy.
4 replies on “Scenes from TechDays Calgary”
Call me an idiot, but what does the “sunset” symbol on the Cowgirl bathroom sign mean? I’ve been racking my brains here.
Donald Simmons: It’s the logo for Child-Friendly Calgary. I assume it means that there’s a baby-changing station in the bathroom.
Wouldn’t the Diaper symbol (present on both signs) indicate the presence of a baby-changing station?
So the symbol on both signs (that’s not a person in a wheelchair) is what, a diaper with a safety pin behind it? A) it doesn’t look very much like a safety pin B) who uses safety pins on diapers anymore?
When I saw that symbol, I only noticed it on the Men’s sign. My best guess was it was a penis behind a banana-hammock-style swimsuit. Sort of a universal symbol for “you’re doing it wrong.” Then I saw the same symbol on the Women’s sign and was at a complete loss.
Regarding the “Child Friendly” thing, maybe you can change a diaper in both but only the women will be friendly about it 😉