Last week, I travelled to Microsoft Campus in Redmond to present at TechMentor. I was kindly invited by Sami Laiho and Dave Kawula, the two chairs of this event, for two identity-related sessions.

On Wednesday August 8th, I stepped on a plane towards Seattle Tacoma Airport at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Delta gave me a good seat for this 10-hour flight and I got some serious work done. I arrived at the Bellevue Hyatt Regency late and because of the 9-hour time difference, I went straight to sleep as soon as I laid my head on the pillow…

The next morning, we were off to the Microsoft Campus! The bus took us from the hotel straight to Microsoft’s Executive Briefing Center (EBC) in Building 33.

I enjoyed a little breakfast and some soda. I checked out the agendas for the rooms and then prepared for my sessions in the speaker room (Lassen). With our TechMentor credit cards, Dave Kawula, Orin Thomas and I decided to get some lunch in Building 9.

At 2:15PM, I started with the first of my two presentations in room St. Helens. For 75 minutes, we discussed the security implications of virtualizing Active Directory Domain Controllers.

At 3:45PM it was time for Azure AD Connect to shine in room Cascade. All the way through 5:05PM we had fun talking about synchronizing objects and attributes to Azure AD and how to put the mS-DS-ConsistencyGUID to good use when restructuring Active Directory forests.

We took the bus back to the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue and decided to go grab dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, before going to bed early. I decided I deserved a beer for delivering two nice sessions and knocking ‘Speaking on Microsoft Campus’ off my bucket list.

The next morning I went to campus early again, but decided to enjoy Microsoft Campus, the Microsoft Visitor Center and the renewed Microsoft Store on Campus. I had never been to the Pacific Northwest in this time of year and decided to soak up the sun and 30 degrees (Celsius) temperatures. I took a walk from the Microsoft EBC (Building 33) to Building 92, crossing most of the Microsoft Campus. While in the Microsoft Store, I couldn’t help myself and got a Surface Go.

Back at Building 33, I took the bus back to the hotel and went to bed early to get ready for the trip back.

Coincidentally, all four TechMentor speakers from the BeNeLux; Peter de Tender, Sven van Rijen en Peter Daalmans and I, booked the same flight back to Amsterdam, so we made our way to the airport together, enjoyed Delta’s Sky lounge together and enjoyed the flight back together.

Thank you!

Thanks to all the people attending, sitting in on my sessions and, of course, the people who stuck around after my sessions for the interesting discussions. Thanks to the TechMentor community for making this trip enjoyable, and of course, the speakers who are always fun to hang out with.