I spent all day Monday hanging with almost all of the Canadian RDs. If you were wondering who we all are, you can find nine of us at http://msdn.microsoft.com/canada/rd/. Or check the individual pages such as http://kate.regionaldirector.ca. (If by chance you're reading this blog entry at http://kate.regionaldirector.ca, then you need to check out http://www.gregcons.com/kateblog/ which is my regular home.)

About the picture: I hate it. What can I tell you, I hate pretty well all pictures of me but the ones that people get hold of electronically I hate even more. Enough about that until I managed to replace it with one I can stand.

What do RDs talk about when you get us all in a room? Business challenges, personal challenges, what's coming in Whidbey, what we're excited about for Longhorn, patch management, and a bunch of other stuff that's under NDA for a while yet. We also talked about user groups, Deep Dives (like this Smart Client one in Toronto or this Web Services Security one in Toronto; there are some in Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Toronto too) and conferences. VSLive starts tomorrow, then all the TechEds through the summer and the Microsoft Partner Conference in July. Lots of chances for us all to get on stage. We also talked about the things we do beyond speaking, webcasts, and other community touches. Things like my Code Guru column, the RD column on MSDN, books, and developing content. Most people never think about where all the whitepapers on MSDN, the Hands on Labs and PDC and TechEd, and the presentations for tours and events actually come from. Sure, lots are written by Microsoft people, but plenty are written by smart folks who are really into the topic, and a lot of those are RDs. And of course, we talked about our day jobs and the work we're taking on. Don't forget, pretty much all the RDs are available for consulting gigs although some of us are less available than others.

Looking forward to the next one already.