Well the event is over and I've finally got a chance to blog about it! Yesterday Nathan, John, Rod, Arthur, Steve and I presented to nealy 300 people MOSS 2007, Live Communication Server and Exchange 2007. We had individual slots each focusing on certain products, and one user scenario where we put all the pieces together and had SharePoint, LCS, and Exchange all working in one demo. We'd spent the past 2 or 3 weekends, a few evenings, and many emails putting the hardware and software together for this slot which probably lasted only around 45 minutes but I feel was one of the most important of the day. Without it people would have seen why each of the products were good and nice on their own, but not how they were great together.
At the last minute I'd been asked by work to go to Switzerland/France until Tuesday, and with the event on Wednesday I knew this might cause some complications. With the snow coming down in Geneva, and our plane being delayed longer and longer I really did fear I'd miss the event. Luckily at close to midnight on Tuesday the plane finally set off, and I arrived home at around 3am Wednesday morning. Not only had I arrived though but so had the snow. I think it followed me all the way from Geneva! After around 4-5 hours sleep it took an hour and thirty minutes to get from one side of Reading to the other. It's amazing how a litle snow just messes everything up in the UK. Usually bad weather would have meant many people not bothering to turn up for a free event, but not this one! The place was packed!
On arrival I found out that while setting up the demo network and servers the previous night one of the servers had blown up. This is contradictory to what Nathan had told me when I called from Geneva to check everything was running smoothly! "But if I'd have told you it had blown up I didn't think you'd have come back!" he said hehehehehehe.
So after Nathan managed to source another server, build it and get it all set up and running , apart from one small hiccup at the end of the user demo it all went fine.
We had a few comments that there was no content on Vista, and I can understand people mentioning this as it was title an EVO user group launch, but in our defense there isn't currently a Vista user group, and to be honest we didn't have enough time really to cover the other three products enough anyway.
Thanks to everyone who came along, and to those who personally came up to me and said how much they were enjoying the event. It's always nice to know that what you are doing is being appreciated. Also of course thanks to the other guys who organised it. I must admit I tried to convince them to put the event back a few times while we were trying to get the user scenario demo working but I'm glad we didn't now!
Here's a few photos of the day...
Also Darren Strange from Microsoft holding the first copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate in the UK :-)
