The first day of the general conference is now complete.  It started off well with the keynote featuring Bill Baker.  He wanted to show us the "Golden" CD of SQL Server 2005.  When he tried to get it out of the case, it broke in half - very funny!  Kent Tegels mentioned the T-Shirt toss in his post.  He neglected to mention his "wise guy" comment during this.  As Bill was going through the list of "verbs" on the back of the shirts, Kent blurted out that one of them should be "SHIP".  Everyone loved it!

I actually got to attend parts of sessions today!  I attended Erin Welker's "BI for the Relational Guy" and Larry Chesnut's "Consolidate, Elevate, Dominate, but don't Procrastinate with 64-bit" sessions.  These two people are my colleagues and did a great job.  I also presented "Hop on Board the SQL Server Express".  Roger Wolter, the PM for Express, attended the session and really was instrumental in answering some of the questions that were brought up by the attendees with the latest information.  This is one aspect that I truly love about PASS - often the PM or Dev who worked on that particular piece of SQL Server is in attendance and can provide not only the answer, but also "why" it is the answer.

I spoke to several people who went to the Hands-On labs and the PSS Service Center.  If you are attending, check'em out because I heard reelay good things about them.