I left TechEd this morning, actually too early, catching a 7:12am flight from New Orleans to Denver. Which meant a 5am alarm for me, not the most fun after being out with some fellow MVPs last night at the New Orleans Aquarium.

This was a short TechEd for me, combined with SQL Saturday #22 in Pensacola. I was gone 5 days from home, across a weekend, and that was a long trip. So even though I had a great time and enjoyed seeing friends and learning a few things, I was ready to come home. I missed a few sessions that I wanted to see today and tomorrow, but I’ll try to catch recordings online.

TechEd is a crazy conference, a zoo as I noted on Tuesday, with 10,000+ people gathered in one conference center. It’s a big Microsoft conference, covering all sorts of products and technologies. It’s always seemed to me that most of the focus is non-SQL products, with lots of Windows, Exchange, and infrastructure technologies. There are some developer sessions, and definitely some SQL ones, that’s the minority. Even with the Business Intelligence conference co-located with TechEd this year, it seemed that this wasn’t a big SQL conference.

That’s OK, and I had some good sessions on SQL that I saw. I spent one day going to a few regular SQL sessions, and then Tuesday in the BI area, checking out some speakers. The lessons learned from the Canadian Royal Mint was an excellent session and I’m trying to see if PASS can get that session at the Summit this year.

A few of my SQL friends go to TechEd to work on other technologies. Buck Woody (blog | Twitter) said he tends to avoid SQL sessions and go to lots of Windows ones on things like clustering, AD, areas that he does some work in. I had other people hit sessions on hacking, on Integrated Communications, and a few people check out Windows 7 Phone sessions. I think the latter went just to try and decide if they wanted to buy one later this year.

I don’t know if this is a great networking conference for people, unless you already know lots of people going. I did meet a few people, and met a few new Microsoft people, but for the most part I reconnected with people I already knew. Since I only see many of these people 2-3 times a year, it’s a good chance for me to say hi, and perhaps convince a few of them to write me an article or two.

I wasn’t thrilled with the New Orleans convention center, since it felt really long and narrow, requiring a lot of time to get to sessions, but the town was nice. It’s neat walking around downtown, people were friendly, and there’s a lot of history there. I barely scratched the surface, but I’m looking forward to going back in August for SQL Saturday #28 in Baton Rouge and spending a couple days in New Orleans.

Next year TechEd North America is in Atlanta, a city I’ve never spent time in and I hope I get to go again.