Participating at TechEd and ITForum has long been a tradition at U2U. I think it is now for the 9th time in a row that we have a booth at TechEd. It was again nice to have all of the U2U colleagues there for a week and besides having them learn as much as possible, also get to know them better during the social events. I do not spend a lot of time at the office, so there is plenty of catch-up for me on the socializing aspect during that week. Thanks again all you guys and girls for again a wonderful week and a great business year @ U2U. It was not the same without my friend David who died in the summer. I still miss him a lot these days but I know he certainly would be very proud about the Belgians doing a great job in Barcelona.

This year, David Gristwood kept me very busy during the week delivering 6 sessions of which three of them with my buddy Ted Pattison. It was great to talk to all of you. I enjoyed myself a lot during the delivery of the sessions and I hope that there was a lot you have learned. The interactive sessions on the best practices for building SharePoint solutions and the dos and don'ts for making SharePoint available in the company were great. I really enjoyed the last session where Ted played Jerry Springer with the microphone. Nice memories!

Last week, I also delivered my first IT Forum session talking about best practices for deploying OBA applications. Although too early probably for most people (not me for once :)), the delivery went great.

What's up for me now? Well, it is book writing time all the way until the end of January. Lars and I start making good progress with the chapters on the new forthcoming MS Press book titled 'Inside the Index and Search Engines: Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007'. I like the new cover layout for the upcoming MS Press books. We have two months to complete all of the chapters and as it seems, it is going to be a nice collection of my and Lars's experience on what you can accomplish with search inside MOSS 2007.

Last week I also met Mike Fitzmaurice. For those of you readers who have not seen Mike lately, he has gone through a though diet and looks fabulous. The new Fitz has arrived :). Fitz and I are preparing for our trip (expedition) to Antartica in 3 weeks. I am getting quite nervous about this, but it I know it is going to be the experience of my life.