I call this time of year conference season and it’s actually been underway for a little while now. E3 felt like the starting gun for me and this weekend, the Imagine Cup worldwide final in New York City really gets things going from a Microsoft perspective. This year, about 352,000 young people from around the globe signed up to compete and next year will be the 10th anniversary of what has become the premier youth technology competition. Sharon Chan posted a preview of the event today and Steve Ballmer appeared on CNN to talk about it – even better, they had some of the student showing off their projects. It was great to see Cy Khormaee who I met at the US Finals showing off the Windows Phone app his team has created to diagnose Malaria with over 90% accuracy.
Tomorrow, I head to Los Angeles for our Worldwide Partner Conference which sees us get together with over 14,000 of our closest friends. Having spent 4+ years working in our partner group in the UK, it’s a chance to see some old friends and as far as I can tell, they’ll not be able to miss me when I get there. More details on that soon but if you’re heading to WPC in LA, feel free to ping me on twitter (@stevecla) if you’re interested in appearing on this blog or Digital WPC. I also have a session on Monday afternoon, talking about NUI as part of the Designing The Future track.
A brief stop back in Seattle and then I’m off to Denver for MGX – our annual, global sales and marketing meeting. Again, a great chance to see old friends in a great city and to hear from our presidents and other execs about what the next year holds. Inevitably, I’ll not be tweeting or blogging about that event 
Blogging on the road is always a challenge but I’ll be doing just that, continuing to post at least once a day and likely more – with video and photography from my trusty Windows Phone Mango. As I mentioned, I’ll be looking for stories while on the road so feel free to hunt me down or ping me with invitations for beer and chat or even to just have a play with my Mango!
