Dave is such a tease!

You haven't lived until you sit on the floor at Preservation Hall in New Orleans.

It's like going to church.

Only they play Jazz music.

It's an sensory experience you can only have in New Orleans.

First you enter from the noisy and dirty Bourbon Street area where you pay your $5 to and older woman who watches the door with a careful eye.

Then you filter into an old, grungy room. If you're lucky you get to sit on one of the seats (some of which are old seats out of wrecked cars). If the seats aren't available (they rarely are) you can sit on the floor or stand in the back.

I sat in the front on the pads. How close was I? Well, let's put it this way. Spittle from the trumpet was landing on me. I could touch the sax player's knees.

The experience is unlike any other I've ever had. People are respectful and quiet. Like I said, it's like being in church.

The history sinks in. There's soul to this place. It's been on PBS, after all.

Then the band walks in. The leader says "welcome to Preservation Hall. We have a few rules. No smoking. No flash photography." etc. Then they begin to play.

I'd try to tell you what a treat it is, but how do you express with words what a saxophone sounds like played by a master? I don't think you can, so I'll simply say:

Church has begun.

It always amazes me to learn who reads my weblog. Hi to the MSDN Magazine gang! And, yes, Kerry, you should start a Weblog (Kerry Gates is the publisher of MSDN Magazine). Having a life is +not+ a good excuse. Of course, if +I+ had a life, maybe this weblog would be more interesting. Now that's a condundrum to be sure.

Mark Lucovsky at Microsoft said today that Web services have a way to go.

It's interesting that Microsoft is now taking such a stance.

Did Microsoft use Web Services for the past two years to hide the fact that Microsoft didn't have a competitor to Java that was shipping?

TechED report #1.

I'm working the Deep Training booth at Microsoft's TechED conference in New Orleans this week. "Are you interested in .NET training?" Traffic is light. Attendance is running about 6,000 people at this biggest of Microsoft-centric developer/IT shows. That's down from 10,000 last year and 12,000 the year before.

That said, there's a great deal of excitement. I've talked with a bunch of major IT/developer managers at companies like Pfizer and John Deere and they say that their early .NET tests have shown that .NET lets them write more code faster with fewer bugs. So, the corporate types are starting to move .NET out of the research stage and actually building projects with it. That's good news for Microsoft, but for the exhibitors here it's not happening fast enough.

Most vendors I've talked with are expecting the next 12 months in the tech business to be pretty difficult. Most aren't expecting .NET to be used in large projects until 2003 and possibly 2004.

But, the excitement is there nonetheless. Maybe it's cause they see future excitment. I talked to a few former Java developers who say that ASP.NET is easier and faster to code in. It's the first time I've heard Java guys say they are moving back to a Microsoft platform.

Is there much new here at the conference? No. Heck, you can tell Microsoft doesn't have much to say when neither Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer show up for the opening keynote.

Walking around the show floor, there are a lot of companies hawking various development and IT tools. The most popular stuff? The Compaq Ipaq booth. Geeks love their toys.