Ok, so the trick to having a new battery is that you still have to charge it occasionally.  But thankfully my notebook (paper one) and pencil still worked so I managed to pickup lots of nice tips from Scott Guthrie, all of which I'm sure you can find on his blog already.

However, my favorites were:

MaintainScrollPostition.  Add this to your Page tag to have the browser restore the scroll position after a postback.

DefaultButton. You can set the default button for a Form or a Panel.  Useful for a search panel at the top of the page.

OnClientClick. My JScript skills are more rusty than my ASP skills so I was very pleased to see that I can use this to do simple confirmation/cancellation dialogs.  Eg:  OnClientClick="return confirm('Are you sure you want to bomb Beirut?');"

Cross Page Postbacks. I knew about this but sort of forgot it.  Could be most useful for a search page.  Not sure if you can specify a target though.

RSS Toolkit.  I already have a job to add some content to a community sight from an RSS feed.  The RSS Toolkit will make this pathetically simple.

And lots more.  I can't wait to get back to work and implement a few of these on my current project.

I asked Scott at the end of the session if it would be ok to re-present his slides at a user group event and he was very agreeable to that so I think it's about time we had another meeting!

I'm feeling inspired enough to attempt some live blogging.  That's what TechEd (and a new working notebook battery) does for me.  So, I'm sitting in the the Sky City theatre waiting for Scott Guthrie to start his ASP.Net Tips & Tricks session - his final one for TechEd NZ before he flies off to Australia.

And I'm using Windows Live Writer which is awesome.

More soon.

TechEd 2006 is a blast already.  I've only managed to get to one session so far - Paul Andrew on Workflow Foundation (checkout the article on Paul in Computer World) - but everyone is in a great mood and things seem to be working really well.

This is the biggest TechEd ever - about 2200 attendees plus loads of presenters, sponsors, partners and other assorted klingons :].  It was a little tight for room after the keynote when everyone flooded out of the room at the same time, but otherwise, it's not too cramped.

The Hands on Labs - where I am spending most of my time - are working really well.  We had the room three quarters full yesturday afternoon and today there has been a steady stream of people filling in time between sessions etc.  There's some really great labs to do to - eg, the ones on LINQ and ADO 3, and Workflow Foundation. 

The yellow Intergen shirts certainly get peoples attention, especially when we travel in herds!  I'm a bit scared of travelling alone though in case I get picked on.  (I'll post a photo as soon as I get a mo).

If your missing out on all the fun of TechEd because you couldn't get tickets then take a look at http://www.techedlive.co.nz/ for a live feed of news and activities.