Atlanta/Raleigh ASP.NET Web Platform Firestarter Follow-up & Recording

Still recovering from last week’s road trip with my peer Rachel Appel. The trip was epic in a number of ways, not the least of which was the fact that it had the most power surges/outages that I’ve ever experienced in a given week of presenting.

For those who weren’t there, or didn’t catch the discussion on twitter, Rachel and I were presenting the last two events in our ASP.NET Web Platform Firestarter series last week, in Atlanta on Thursday, and in Raleigh on Friday. Thursday’s event was simulcast over Office LiveMeeting (and I’ll be posting a link to all the videos once they’ve been posted), and was going pretty well until mid-day when we suddenly started getting power surges at the Alpharetta office that repeatedly knocked out 2 of 3 of our projectors. And unfortunately, the projectors did not want to start back up again from the podium controls.

The fix for the projectors (courtesy of our IT Pro Evangelist peer John Baker) was simple, if awkward. We had to climb up on one of the tall chairs (bar stool height), unplug the projector, plug it back in, and then hit the power button. My thanks to the kind attendees who held onto the chair as I climbed, lest we end up with an instant entry for the FAILBlog video of the year.

We got somewhere around a half-dozen of these surges, across several presentations, but managed to limp along and finish the event.

That would be bad enough, but it doesn’t end there. No, fast forward to Friday. We’re in Raleigh, NC, and most of the day has gone quite smoothly. But just before the last session of the day (which I was scheduled to present), the power goes out. But oddly, not all the power. Just enough to send the projector into a conniption, while still leaving the lights on in the room. The A/V folks at the conference center tried valiantly to get the power back for us, or at least get the projector working, but after 20 minutes, we decided to pack it in, and send folks home. Naturally, 10 minutes later, after using a lift to get to the projector (which was mounted 10-12’ overhead), they got it working again…probably by unplugging it, and plugging it back in again.

So for the folks who attended our event in Raleigh, I promised you a link to the session you missed…click the link below to be taken to the recording from Atlanta:

Effective Websites with ASP.NET

Thanks to all the attendees from Atlanta, Raleigh, and online, for your patience with our power issues. Hopefully 2011 will prove more reliable from an electricity standpoint!