48 hours of Advanced Technical Support

from Microsoft people who know what the hell they're doing.

I got to work with Microsoft Azure, HDInsight, Hive, Power Map, Microsoft Query against Hive Cluster.  Very cool weekend.  Unique learning experience and I made new friends. About 2/3 made it through.  

The data came from data.seattle.gov  and some of the presentations are very cool.  The suite of business tools was astounding.

I was also interviewed, along with my new friend and the only team mate who survived.  I was so glad she showed up this morning.  That wasn't a sure thing.

But even though I didn't present any of my "findings," and our presentation was, well, very much less than "strong," I was able to actually make it through the process from end to end, and replicate it.  That was what was most important for me - to learn.  So, my new friend and I went up there and gave a 3 minute presentation on our little PowerMap visualization (tres kewl product!), and then sat down.  No way was there any real insight into what we created, but jaizus!  some of the presentations really made it through a process.  They were awesome.