Wow, what a launch. The day felt like a mini TechEd with a buzz I haven’t noticed for ages at an event. I hardly sat down all day, didn’t get a chance to see James’ session on Powershell, Steve’s Security talk, or Andrew talk about SQL Server. I spent all of my day in the community lounge chatting to loads and loads of people (or meeting TechNet plus subscribers in the VIP lounge with Viral). Check out Jane’s photos from yesterday. I do agree – certainly a WOW day…
Darren picked up on our Virtual launch too. This is a great new idea we’ve started…
Click here to enter the Virtual Launch Experience
So why do a Virtual Event?
1. To give you choice – to consume information in the way you want to.
The Virtual Launch Experience (VLE) gives anyone who cannot take a day out of the office or prefer to consume information on-line the opportunity to still experience launch. The VLE will be live from 19th March 2008 until the end of June, so you can access content whenever and wherever you are. Anyone who attended can also revisit the event.
You can choose the content you wish to consume and view as much as you would like. Sometimes its frustrating when 2 sessions are running concurrently and you have to decide which one you want to see more. You can even reduce your carbon footprint: no travel needed
2. You can experience all the elements of a physical event – online
· Keynote address by Steve Ballmer – who wasn’t in Birmingham by the way
· An interactive 3D Silverlight event guide
· Microsoft product and sponsor booths, with videos, presentations, brochures, and special offers
· Community exhibitors that allow you to connect with the companies and groups
· Breakout sessions for deep diving into the 2008 Launch Wave technologies
· A virtual backpack to store and download exhibitor content
· A unified event interface to effortlessly navigate your virtual experience
3. Built using all 3 launch products
The VLE is a rich internet application (RIA), designed and built with Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio, hosted on Windows Server 2008 accessing SQL Server 2008, and presented in Microsoft Silverlight.
4. Your feet don’t hurt
Mine do. Thanks goodness it’s Easter…
