My PowerShell Summit Experience – Part 1: The Arrival

Finally after a few years of saying “Yeah I should go to this” and never pulling the trigger, I decided it was time to attend the PowerShell Summit in Bellevue. I was so anxious to attend I actually bought my ticket and had all my accommodations done in November. I remember in prior years seeing tweets, watching videos and hearing folks rave about how awesome the conference is.

The Flight

Flying blows. No way around it. My flight was six hours long, traveling from dreary and rainy New Jersey to…Seattle. On my flight I ended up getting wifi due to extreme boredom, which only worked about 50% of the time. Boo United! I ended up tweeting random crap about how much I hate flying throughout the flight to my own amusement. Helped past the time at least. I also rented “The Last Jedi” on iTunes but did not realize until I started watching it that it did not include the deletes scenes. Total fail.

As I was exiting the plane, I heard someone behind me say “Hey Dan”. I turned around and met Jim Birley .a fellow Jerseyan and very cool dude. Too bad I was so oblivious during the flight that I missed his PowerShell tee-shirt. From here, I caught a Lyft to my hotel (Seattle Marriott Bellevue) and was on my way.

Hotel and Socializing

First off, Bellvue has some beautiful scenery. I almost wish I had time to take a hike, but I think I would rather cram my brain full of PowerShell instead. I got to my hotel around 6 PM, and checked Twitter to find people were downstairs hanging out. I was pretty tired from the long flight, and the introvert in me was screaming “Nooo, stay here where there is no people” but I decided to go down to attempt to socialize. I walked in and immediately saw Adam Bertram sitting down and decided to introduce myself. To me, Adam is a rock star and has been one my inspirations for writing. Adam was one of the few people who probably recognized me, which is pretty good considering I have never met anyone here in person and I was wearing a hat/hoodie. We immediately hit it off and talked shop. The party moved to the bar where I met some other people like Will Anderson, Marc Kellermen, Francois, Josh Duffney, Mike Kanakos, Mike Tenske among others. Oh and I met the one and only Don Jones who when I mentioned “Oh we have interacted a few times on Twitter” gave me this expression of “Well, I have 15,000 followers so I MAY not remember you”. Don, like everyone else is here is SUPER down to earth. I mean the bottom line is we are all IT nerds hanging out, drinking, and talking shop. Sure, some of us are probably geniuses, but I haven’t gotten a whiff of superiority. Needless to say, it was a lot of fun meeting a lot of faces you have interacted with online.

Side note: If I ever come again I am wearing a tee-shirt every day with my Twitter handle. It would make life much simpler. 

After a few beers I decided to call it a night so I could rest up for the rest of the week. A lot of people still to meet and stuff to learn!