Transmissions from TechEd USA 2009 (Day 4)

I got the final evaluation results from my session. Out of some 15 Business Intelligence sessions, mine was the fourth most attended session with 169 people attending. Based on 35 evaluations submitted, it was ranked as the third most useful session with an average satisfaction score of 3.46 on the scale from 1 to 4. For someone who does presentations occasionally, I’m personally happy with the results. Thanks for all who attended and liked the session!

I took it easy today. I attended the Scott Ruble’s Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Charting and Advanced Visualizations session in the morning. This was purely Excel-based session with no BI included. It demonstrated different ways to present information effectively in Excel, such as with conditional formatting, bar charts, sparklines, etc. Next, I was in the Learning Center until lunch.

In the afternoon, I decided to do some sightseeing and take a tour since I’ve never been to LA. I saw Marina Del Ray, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Beverly Hills, Sunset Strip, Hollywood (and the famous sign of course), Mann’s Chinese Theatre, and Farmer’s Market. Coming from Atlanta and knowing the Atlanta traffic, I have to admit that the LA traffic is no better. In Atlanta, the traffic is bad during peak hours. In LA, it seems it’s bad all the time. Movies and premieres make the situation even worse. There was a huge movie premiere at 7 PM in the Chinese Theater with celebrities arriving with limos. This jammed the entire area. There were at least two movies being shot in different parts of the cities. But the rest of tour was fun. LA is one of the few cities in the world where almost every building has a famous story behind it.

This concludes my TechEd USA 2009 chronicles. Tomorrow, I’ll have time only for a breakfast and packing my luggage. I’m catching an early flight as it would take me four hours to fly to Atlanta. With three hours time difference, I’ll be hopefully in Atlanta by 9 PM and at home by midnight.