For some reason, as I fly from LAX to ORD, I cannot seem to find any of my photos I thought I took of the masses who welcomed the SWAG Express, err.. the Career Express as it pulled in to TechEd, but I still have some after-swag-attack photos, so I can definitely share those.

Previously on the Bus, on Day 10, we had an enjoyable night out on the town to get back to the bus by 3:45AM for Departure to get in to LA.   We made it back literally just in time to grab our bags from the hotel, board the bus, and definitely in my case – to go to sleep.

Awaking 30minutes from the Convention center, I made sure to alert the Tweetosphere of our location(s) so they could prep for a Swagtastic arrival, which they frankly did quite a good job of relieving us of swag!

The type of community and engagement was just great, and amazingly well received.   People immediately entered into conversation, catching up with old friends or meeting new ones.

I had the opportunity to attend a session too! My first and only session for TechEd09, was Ken Rosen’s session on MCITP is the new MCSE, where you (me) need to watch out when you attend sessions.. you just might get called up to answer a community question ;)

With the bus tour at it’s end, the one thing that was everyone’s mind when talking about it was, asking how it was.   While I will do a full post-mortem and additional high-lights, here is a brief description of the bus tour.    zOMFG! Amazing!  That’d be the first point to say about an event and experience like this.    If you’ve ever had the opportunity to have your eyes opened to not only aspects of community you may have never seen, but to see that which is otherwise perceived as uniform being implemented so differently across communities in the north, the south, east and west.   Things are done in unique and interesting ways in every type of CPLS, ITA, and even in training businesses from coast to coast.    

When the bus tour was announced, I was gangbusters set on trying to win this, and this is even before I would realize the full depth of the experience, but once I did I yearn for it even more.     I evangelized about this opportunity constantly within the community (and my local community) to encourage them to take advantage of this, because while this may come along again, you’ll never have been part of the first one, and that first makes all the difference!

I look forward to something like this being done again (EMEA?!:)) and definitely the opportunity to get out in front of more members of the community, helping them connect with each other and just grow, grow grow!   The friendships, relationships and all the people I met cannot be replicated, cannot be bought and the experiences will be stories and legends to tell for years to come!

I want to thank all of you for following along and reading of our adventures cross country, cross community, and for making an investment in yourself through education.

Welcome to Las Vegas Nevada!  Wow, what a trip up until this point. 

Caveat, you may notice this is a week late, running on full tilt right from Vegas to TechEd will do that to a person especially when I don’t turn on my computer for the entire time! (Go Mobile!)

So, what brings you to Vegas? Up until this point, when I thought of Las Vegas, I didn’t think of training, certification or education, let alone it being an education destination.  But that is exactly the type of thing which Robert of NetCom has arranged here at the Flamingo Hotel!

Hands down, this is quite possibly one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.   To start the day off, we did our demo-type thing as we normally do on the tour, but that was hardly the beginning of this adventure in education.   After that finished, we had the opportunity to see one of the classrooms which they provide training in, located inside of the Flamingo hotel!   More so than it simply being located inside of the hotel, there are many of these training rooms offering educational packages of all types, which typically run a full class along with a full roster!

What really made things even cooler after this point, was our Journey to KVVU TV 5 Fox News where they would interview Ken and Robert about the types of things NetCom  is offering.

So, now here is where we get to the really fricking cool part, which I was semi-floored when I heard about it.  I don’t know about you, but every one I know is under heavy ‘travel restrictions’ whereby any aspect of education that cannot be serviced locally is not possible due to the cost of Airfare, Hotel, Food in conjunction with the actual cost of the class itself.    That is a severely major challenge we all face within the industry, whether public, private, vendor or customer.    So when I heard about what Robert and NetCom were offering, it was ‘like whoa’ to quote Keanu Reeves ;)

From what I gathered (If I’m mistaken, well, I’ll try to update it then ;))  The training is sold as ‘Destination Education!’   Whereby your airfare, hotel and food are all included in the cost of the training program, and looking at some of the prices of these classes they offer I found it cheaper than regular classes offered by some other training institutions (insert ‘whoa’ here)

Not to mention I’ve heard they do some kind of aggressive model whereby in 6 days you get the equivalent of ~2weeks of training if your days are 10-12hrs or so, in a far shorter time you get that level of depth, exposure so your time and your employers aren’t wasted.   But let’s not forget, at the end of the day after your training is all said and done for the day… You’re still in Vegas!

So check them out, as I certainly will be looking into further (Ooh, I wonder if they need any trainers… hee :))   As an extra bonus! I’ve included an outtake of our crazy time on the bus while Ken and others were being interviewed.

Incase you cannot make it out, I am filming Ken and Robert being interviewed, while Chris Rue films me filming them, as Tjeerd films Chris Rue filming me filming them, while Liberty takes a picture of them filming and taking pictures of filming and photographing.  It’s all very sane. :)

What do you get when you combine the Phoenix hot sun desert, a BBQ and Training?  You get the indoor Technology Round-up Barbeque featuring Training To You!

I don’t know about you, but I love getting greeted as we get off the bus! It gives you that special kind of “We’re cool” feeling, because perhaps that’s further reinforced by the fact that we’re so cool?! :) (Can you be cool when it’s 100 degrees outside?!?!)

It was great to meet Tim and Brandyn as we exited the bus, on a Saturday afternoon, to also be greeted by students of their programs at the door, and then to be greeted even more by this massive table of coolness as we step inside! Oh my! So coordinated, organized and the attendance was just amazing (read: Saturday Afternoon, Phoenix 100 degree day – These people could be outside, but instead they attended this great educational set of sessions!)

One thing about Training To You is that they’re not shy about giveaways! The giveaways were just astounding with prizes prizes prizes to be won by so many! Not to mention the amount of swag we were giving away, everyone walks away a winner!

Just like the event earlier in the day, Harold Wong delivered the presentation on Windows7 which was well received, infact I can call it super-well-received, and it was quite spectacular and lots of laughter and engagement :) For what it’s worth, during Harold’s Bitlocker To Go demo, I BitLockerToGo’d an 8gb USB drive I had in my bag :)

We also were blessed with the presence of another Microsoftie who attended, Rick Taylor @slkrck who brought some light to our day as well as being a beacon to those in attendance :)

As the day drew to a close, the attendance was great, the interaction was excellent, and the audience was absolutely amazing.   The whole experience was perfect and I’m glad we had the opportunity to meet up with Training To You and partake in this unique experience in beautiful Phoenix Arizona!    I encourage you to check them out if you’re in the Phoenix area as they provide training solutions which will be with you for years to come, through relationships and through the education you learn.    That brings Phoenix to a close, and here I sit in Las Vegas writing this!   Look forth for the new stories coming soon! :)

What do you get on a Saturday, last week of Finals on a 100 degree day in the Arizona Desert? (Alright, it’s Phoenix but it’s still 100 degrees). Oh, did I mention that this is a Saturday at 8am?

What you get is some people who are passionate about their education, certification, their future and the future of technology, oh and Windows 7 :)

The folks at Glendale Community College in beautiful Phoenix Arizona we’re excited to see us when we arrived!    I didn’t get as many pictures as I would have hoped to, but my camera was charging so these are the ones I was able to get near the end!

This was quite a competitive game of Are You Certifiable, the likes of which we’d never seen! The teach of the group came out on top, and everyone else… came in as a solid tie for 2nd place: Result? Everyone wins, since we give prizes to 1st and 2nd place :) Elise ran quite a rocking game as shown here.

While there is a beautiful picture of the campus, and of Tjeerd here walking with campus instructor MCT, Janet Brooks here is the low down on what I wasn’t able to get as a picture!

We were honored by Microsoft Presenter, Harold Wong @haroldwong who talked all about the cool stuff available in Windows 7 as well as Windows Server 2008 R2.   He didn’t bore us in the realm of slide death, and instead took it to the core with demo after demo, real engaging and the interaction and questions taken with the audience were great!   The whole of the experience was great, and the students and faculty were excited by the whole event and prospect.   Their future wasn’t set in stone, and still isn’t, but the opportunities have presented themselves in a whole different light, so the future is most definitely now!

So, thank you Glendale Community College for the beautiful weather, passionate discourse and the ability to distribute swag to you :)    We’re on the road now rolling towards Vegas and only time will tell what goes on before we pull into Los Angeles for TechEd at 8:30AM with the Swag Express!  See you all there! :)

What do you get when you have a bus load of SME’s, technology people, education zealots and Certified Professionals and coop them up?  You let them roam free in Santa Fe!   One thing, you may notice that these photos are much better than previous photos.. reason being: I had to use my camera (which only works in well lit areas) because my iPhone was bricked when I woke up in the morning and it took me several hours to recover ;)

We started our day in Santa Fe with lunch at The Shed where we ate some of the most interesting and amazing food in our journey.  And considering we are in New Mexico, the authenticity was not to be questioned!   

We went on a walk around Santa Fe, the gnarly trees above were found in the Shed’s sitting area, but we carried out into the streets!  Came across this cool Designs by Alex sign :)

We came across this weird and interesting mailbox… for some reason, it was worth taking a photo of… Infact, multiple photos, but that is neither here nor there :)  After this point, we got on the road to Bandelier National Monument!

Welcome to Bandelier National Monument…! Be careful for Mountain Lions! Got an amazing shot of the bus here with that beautiful background! It was a cloudless sky, and a day filled with not a whole lot of wind (So, can I say hot? yea I think so :))

Another random shot of me (Look ma! no eyes!) That beautiful shot down below is of an ancient day office-block.   This is where people went to work, as you can see those are open air cubicles for the people to work and attend to daily business.  I think that’s actually a call center!

Yea, this is my classic dating photo, right? It shows how adventurous I am, and look I’m a property owner! I have a hole and a ladder to climb in to! Oh, and do not handle the bats!

This is one of the first flat screen televisions – It’s obviously Organic LED (OLED :))

Watch quietly as the MSLearning team treads softly into the dark.. softly.. softly…

It was a great day, beautiful sights, decent food!  We finished with Dinner at Atomic Grill! On a side note, it appears that Atomic Grill supports Windows Live ID on their website – Wow, quite an updated Website and Restaurant! :)

To sum up dinner, it was a great dinner with a lot of variety.  We were cared for by an amazing waitress who was working –every- table in the place, constantly on the run and she did a spectacular job!  They had some amazing artwork on the inside and have a menu leaving you with options, options and options!    After a quick rush back to the bus we proceeded on to Phoenix AZ where we are now as I publish this!