The trip was awesome. Greg Brill and Infusion were great hosts, from picking us up to the airport, to feeding us, to keeping the training interesting and fun. The first night, they even treated us to catered BBQ on a rooftop 17 stories above Times Square. Yes, that was as cool as it sounds.
They weren't kidding when they called it "Sleepless in NY," though. They started us off with a Sharepoint/MOSS overview Friday night (before the food), getting us all to bed around 1 AM for our 7 AM wake-up call. The following day focused on a wide range of topics, including Sharepoint specifics (like the Business Data Connector and Excel Services), WPF, and Silverlight. Then, Saturday night, they gave us the assignment: By 10 the next morning, in groups of 3, we were to develop something intended for contribution to the open-source Community Kit for Sharepoint.
While the other teams attempted projects with a fairly broad scope, my team decided to define a very narrowly-scoped project, so that we could be assured we would deliver a fully working prototype. The additional benefit to this approach was that we were likely to finish quickly, so we'd hopefully get some sleep and be fresh for our presentation to the judges.
In around four hours, we created a simple web part that implemented Digg-style content rating using a custom site column. This got us in bed around 2:30 AM, so we were ready with a high-energy presentation the next morning. The judges really seemed to enjoy our idea, and Ed, the presenter from our group, did a fantastic job presenting the solution, but we didn't win. The prize actually ended up going to a team that really did pull an all-nighter, and they certainly deserved it.
The competition for Insomniac (the laptop) was a Sharepoint quiz show. I was actually one of the first to get eliminated, so no laptop for me. That's cool - everyone still got a Tom Bihn Brain Bag and a couple books.
Hanging out with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell, as well as the talent from Infusion and MVP's and Blue Badges they had as judges was a blast. As my flight was one of the last ones out, I even got to enjoy Carl's musical talents as he jammed on an Infusion guy's guitar to pass the time waiting on his train. I recorded a few minutes of Carl's impromptu concert on my Creative Zen Vision:M, downloadable here (not the best quality in the world, mind you. Cheap mic, and the Zen only records 4 bit, 11 Khz PCM).
Overall, I had a blast - The weekend gave me just what I wanted in terms of challenge and networking.