The other day I attended a Microsoft event. It was a free event held by Microsoft to showcase new products and give some technical detail and demo the products.
These are good events to attend. They are free. So... go for it.

What I find funny, interesting, and amusing are the people who attend these events. You would think that the audience would be IT professionals like myself. I was in the minority. An IT professional, in my opinion, is someone employed in the industry working steady for a company. They guys were more of the bottom feeder of IT pros.

On the evaluation form, you had to checkbox your role with your company. One of the choices was "unofficial IT guy". Yes, no kidding. I would say most of the audience should have checked this box. However, I suspect most of their inflated sense of self worth compelled them to check "IT manager".

Excluding myself, the collective number of situps executed by these guys cannot exceed double digits. Which is ironic based on the number of guys wearing sweatpants (with tucked in shirts I might add). Not much low carb dieting going on with this group. By the way, Microsoft caters in pastries for these events. Those small plates that are designed to carry about 2 items... piled high with cheese filled danish and blueberry muffins.

The speaker attempted to engage the audience by asking who was self employed. A number of hands went up. Allow me to translate "self employed". These are the unemployable. They have various personality traits that polarize them from corporate america. They tend to be anti-social, arrogant (always believing they are smartest dude in the room), or can't deal with morning (staying up late playing Warcraft online). Self Employed means they try to pick up projects for small companies or individuals fixing their computer problems. Hey, I don't begrudge them on making a living. My point is to be a bit more self aware and you might find a better gig.

Another observation was that the audience was mostly white males between 25 and 60. A few women and a few men of color. I am not sure what this says, but it was interesting.

Have you seen Bill Gates these days? Compare his appearance today with the photo above taken in the late 70's or early 80's. Bill has even assimilated to the real world.