I attended Novell's Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City this week. I always enjoy attending this conference in many ways more than any other. I had hoped to blog some from the conference but my schedule was so full all day and into the evening that I just didn't get to it. You can view the keynotes from their site and download the slide presentations.

I like the way they handle the breakout sessions. They always have some really popular sessions that overflow the biggest rooms available. The way they handle it is to make you register for the sessions you want to attend. While it doesn't keep people from just registering for everything it does help avoid some of the room crowding problems I've experienced at other conferences. Once the session starts and seats are available you can get in - but they still use your badge to only let as many people in the room as they have chairs for.

Laura Chappell's sessions are always some of the most popular. I was able to attend one of her sessions entitled BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop): Troubleshooting "The Network is Slow". Her sessions are always packed and I was on the waiting list for this one but did get a seat. You can find the slides to her talk along with sample trace files for Ethereal and a whole bunch of good information on the packet-level site.

I have lots of notes from other sessions and I will be doing several articles for various publications that I'll post links to later.