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.
I’ve been at this “blogging” thing since the start of November 2001, which makes this…
At his recent Madison Square Garden rally — yup, the grievance-fest where they let their racism…
Here’s a set of videos produced in the first (and hopefully last) Trump era that…
Of all the dunderheaded things the Republican party will do should Trump win the election…
View Comments
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 ;)