Yesterday, I kicked off my working time in Auckland with an IE7 demo in the keynote at Microsoft Connect, a Microsoft-sponsored conference for IT Pros and Developers. Despite my normal pre-show jitters, the demo went fine with people even giggling at my jokes and applauding for features (the new printing stuff always brings down the house, even though it's just a bug fix really.) The guys from MS New Zealand did a great job with the conference. They really have to cover a lot of ground since Microsoft has so many products; as a result, in many ways, I think they have a better view of our entire line than we do in Redmond.

I also had an interview with Juha Saarinen, a writer for ComputerWorld and PC World. Fortunately, I had some advanced warning of what he was going to ask (ain't blogs great?) He seemed like a good guy with fair questions. We'll see how the reports turn out.

Grandhi and I hung out with partners and the guys from the Microsoft New Zealand sub later in the day and had a surprisingly good Mexican dinner at Mexican Cafe (clever name...). Gotta watch out for the Agavero (tequilla liqueur) though. It goes down pretty smoothly. (Sean, you're evil.)