Xbox shopping for Tech.Ed Berlin

31 Xboxes

3 Rock Bands

5 Guitars

6 Guitar Stands

6 Microphones

100 of these cool connectors

All getting ready to load onto the truck to set off and drive to Berlin on Friday (tomorrow).  So don’t try to buy an Xbox in West London this weekend  – we’ve cleared out all the shops

It’s noisy crazy here at Fitch today as the buzz builds.  This is the last day that the whole team are here – they start to fly over to Berlin on Sunday to get the event ready for the event.  So it’s a happy energised, excited time.  And I can’t wait!  

Technorati Tags: Teched Berlin

Teched – last few hours to register!

It’s really heartening to know that in these days of doom and gloom and economic misery, that there are glimmers that the situation might be getting better bit by bit.

After gloomy forecasts, TechEd Europe is very very nearly sold out.  Wow.  Oh wow.  If you were thinking about booking, you probably only have a day or so to get your registration completed.  Amazing.  I feel very proud indeed of the efforts of  the team.  Well done to all of the Fitch crew for working so hard to make this happen. 

No wonder they got an award

 

Technorati Tags: Fitch,teched berlin

Time for an Anytime Upgrade?

I bought a PC with the wrong version on Vista on it earlier this year.  My mind was on other things – like setting up Amastra and thinking about the the OS version wasn’t exactly top of my mind.  I needed to upgrade it one day, but I didn’t  quite have the time. Tax and Company Law took priority over techy stuff

So I’ve been reminded about Windows Anytime Upgrade.  (Search for it in the Start search dialog box and you get this screen)

  Click on the link, put your new product key in, reboot, and there you are with the OS you really wanted in the first place.  now I can buy that storming Ferrari Netbook I’ve had my eye on for a while – and get the right OS on it too

It works for Windows 7 also by the way

 

Technorati Tags: Upgrade Windows,Windows Anytime upgrade

The unsung heroes of Teched Berlin

We’re marching to a close of the planning process, everyone has been engaged, from Claire who looks after the food the snacks and the parties, to Kate, who prints the conference guide, to Theresa who manages the cleaning schedule and makes sure the bins don’t overflow and that the toilets are cleaned regularly, to Aine who manages all the flows of cash in and out.  The team are all doing their designated tasks and it’s moving along like a well oiled machine.  At least it seems like a well oiled machine to me – I’m just a newbie who is tightly integrated into the amazing process of running a major event.  And it seems to work well, but we have no idea just how well everything will go until the event is over and the last attendee has left the building.

So that’s why I was so delighted to remind them all of Chris’s blog post about his experience at the Apple developer conference last year.  I’ve forwarded it round the whole team – they are the people dressed in black at teched events, usually running around with walkie talkies – making sure that everything runs smoothly.  They are truly the unsung heroes of the event, making sure 6800 people have a really great experience during the week.

6800 folks – the event is almost at maximum capacity – so if you haven’t registered, you’d better get your skates on – and register now before the event gets too full to accept any more!

And thanks to Chris Haaker for making the team smile at a really hectic time in our planning process – it’s really great to know that’s its appreciated by the people who attend…

 

Technorati Tags: teched berlin,chris haaker

Pesky PST’s in Outlook 2007

Wow, I’ve had fun and games today.  We’re 2 weeks away from TechEd Europe, and suddenly, I can’t access my Outlook calendar.  Oh Eek.  Most of my Tech.Ed mails and OCS meeting requests in Outlook – all those years at Microsoft have trained me to be efficient and consolidate everything into one place to sync with my Windows phone.  And everything is on this PC – my backups are 2 weeks old, and I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of emails which I NEED for Tech.Ed.  I started to panic.  Every time I tried to access the Calendar, Outlook hangs.  Yikes.  So I put my support hat on, this is what I did.

I tried Outlook repair – No, that wasn’t it

Then I tried Windows Update – Nothing recently could have affected it.  Heck what was it?

Outlook Tasks / Notes / Mail all worked –  it was just the Outlook Calendar wasn’t working.  I downloaded MFCMAPI to see if I could see anything out of order with MAPI – but after going a bit cross eyed, I gave up.

Then I had a brainwave.

I’m running 2 Outlook profiles at the moment, one for my business, and a separate one for my Microsoft Tech.Ed login.  The TechEd login profile works perfectly so I knew that the Outlook binaries were all fine.  Which pointed to 1 thing.  The PST data file.

I use Hosted Exchange, and I could log on perfectly to  Amastra OWA, so the issue wasn’t at the server end – more damning evidence for the PST file.  My online profile mailbox was 300mb, the PST 850mb. 

Bingo.

So a quick rename of the Outlook.PST file to Outlook.old, restart with the correct profile, and my PST files are rebuilding nicely.  I’ve wasted 45 minutes but I’ve saved hours and hours of work

So I’m really pleased and relieved  that I’m using hosted Exchange so I have a copy of all of the mails on the server – which have suddenly become much more important now I’m running my own company – and I’ve learned a salutary lesson to practice what I preach and do my backups much more regularly.

Phew…

Technorati Tags: Outlook 2007,PST

Create your learning roadmap at Tech.Ed Europe

We’ve decided to do something different at Teched Berlin this year and give attendees who have never been to any teched before the opportunity to maximise their time there.

We’re running sessions which we’ve named “Teched 101” which are sessions designed to navigate your way around teched if you’ve never been there before.  We’re running these sessions on Sunday afternoon and also on Monday.

Additionally, for attendees who want to know the path through to all of the sessions, we’re creating a learning roadmap for you to download.  It’s going to be available on the schedule builder, and I’ll be uploading track roadmaps as we finalise them, so if they’re not there now, then they will be there soon.  Here’s an example of a learning roadmap for a session in the Mobility track.  If you attend the session in bold, then it’s recommended that you attend the other sessions on the list.

MOB01-DEMO	What’s New for Developers in Windows Mobile 6.5
MOB301	Create a New Experience with Widgets for Windows Mobile
MOB303	Adding Life and Intelligence to Windows Mobile 6.5 Applications
MOB401	Game-Changing Memory and Performance Improvements with Windows Mobile 6.5 and the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework
MOB05-IS	Come Meet the Windows Mobile Team!
MOB305	Making the Most of Windows Mobile 6.5 Gesture Support in Managed and Native Code

 

And the great thing is, you’ll be able to access your learning roadmap before the event, so you can hit the ground running with all of the sessions you want to attend – before you leave the UK.

Well – you will if I get my act together and put them all into the session grid.    Back to work…

Technorati Tags: teched Europe

Get the extra scoop at Interact Berlin

One of the great things about Tech.Ed is that I get to spend time with people who love my favourite technology – Unified Communications.  And at Berlin this year, we are running INTERACT2009 on November 9th – day 1 of Tech.Ed.  INTERACT2009 is an invitation-only event for leaders in Unified Communications which is held on November 9, 2009 in Berlin, Germany.

INTERACT2009 is your opportunity to find out extra information from the product teams – information that you don’t get to hear about in the press.  Its a great chance to find out what’s behind the product decisions that Microsoft make.  And it’s not an open invitation.  This is an exclusive event and it’s aimed at community-leading IT professionals known for their technical acumen in the Unified Communications space and their activity and influence in local and online technical communities: speaking tours, authorships of books, articles and blogs.

You’ll be able discuss technical issues with these leaders as well as product team members and leaders for Microsoft unified communications technologies. INTERACT2009 provides the opportunity to have the technical discussions you just can’t have anywhere else. Off the record.   And as this event is at Tech∙Ed Europe at the Messe Berlin, you won’t even miss any unified communications sessions by attending INTERACT, and as an INTERACT attendee, you will receive a pass that allows you to attend Stephen Elop’s keynote at Tech∙Ed Europe – even if you haven’t booked your pass to attend Tech.Ed itself

As this event is all about networking and discussion you’ll receive access to a readiness kit of on-demand content (at http://connect.microsoft.com/interact2009) to prepare you for the day’s discussions.  You’ll have the chance to ask the questions you need answered and network with other leading IT pros, Microsoft product teams, and partners in technical sessions all day long.  You’ll have the chance to network with other professionals facing similar challenges and opportunities – and join an ongoing program that keeps the connection going with a series of engagements designed to connect you to the experts and get you answers to hot questions.

So if you’d like to spend Monday 9th November immersed in technology, email me at eileenb@amastra.co.uk, convince me why you should be there, and Ill send you an invitation

And I’ll look forward to seeing you there and talking UC all day with you

 

Technorati Tags: Interact2009,UC,Unified Communications

Teched Content process – the Matrix

Now that the content has been locked, finalised and the copy is winging it’s way over to the printers for the conference guide, I thought I’d share with you the teched Europe content process from my perspective.

At the end of June we issued the call for content across Microsoft, to the product teams, people who have presented before, MCT’s and MVP’s we had a deadline for this content to be submitted by the end of July.

We appointed track owners to look after each physical track, gave the tracks codes (UNC, DAT, DEV etc) and connected the track owners with the track advisors at corp.  Track advisors are on hand to connect directly with the product teams and help the local European track owners with resources etc.

In early August, James and I started to hold track reviews with each track owner – 50% of the content was in the event tool (which runs on SharePoint by the way).  We talked about topics with the track owners, and how these should be categorised in the tool.  If you’re interested in Virtualisation for example, some of these sessions, are in the SVR track, some of them in MGT track and some in Green IT. So if you search, you’ll find them all.

Mid September was the close date for sessions, we reached the 100% content deadline.  over 1200 content pieces submitted for 300 breakout sessions and more than 100 interactive sessions.  We asked the track owners to create a list of waitlisted sessions that we would squeeze in if we could.

All of the speakers received their notifications for their sessions and James and I moved sessions round to accommodate speakers who were not planning to be there for the whole week, so couldn’t present on Friday or Monday for example.  James created a master grid and then the fun started.

Here’s the master grid so you can get an idea of what we’ve been working on for the last few weeks…

The top area indicates the 15 breakout rooms, the bottom area indicates the 6 Interactive rooms.  Each track has a different colour.  So with each of the large tracks having at least 20 sessions, you can see that the server track (purple) there is one session slot which contains at least 1 purple session.  So far so good.

We placed the overview, level 200 slots at the start of the week, and the level 400 slots towards the end.  We made sure that a speaker wasn’t speaking in a breakout room at the same time as an interactive session and made sure that the speaker didn’t do 2 sessions back to back (unless he requested it)

We then made sure that there was a good mix of Developer and IT Pro content in each session slot and that if there were 2 sessions from the same track in the same timeslot, then the topics were different (Exchange and OCS for example).  we then checked across all of the abstracts in each timeslot to make sure that there weren’t any similar sessions across different tracks.

We moved sessions around to make sure that the learning followed a path and that the sessions made sense to follow each other.  So far so good eh?

Then on Friday, everything locked, no more changes as we had to put each session into a room. This is the tricky part.

We have 1 room for 1000 people and 2 rooms for 200.  The trick here is to get the most popular session into the largest room and work down from there.  and that’s where you come in.  Teched attendees fill in a survey and vote for their sessions.  We take the most popular session and put it in the largest room.  But there’s an issue.

There are some sessions that we have not published externally – the product teams don’t want us to (product announcements etc) So you can’t vote on these.  So we’ve got to make an educated guess on how popular these are going to be.

There are also some sets of sessions that MUST go in the same room (hardware for the demos).  but some of these sessions are much more popular than others.  These need to go in the same room, in the correct order, taking into account learning paths etc.

So getting these into one grid, making sure that we have no speaker clashes, no room clashes, no topic clashes, 1 session per room, no speaker overload and the right sessions in the right rooms, and interactive rooms all colour coded with the right track has been a HECK of a job.  James and I worked all weekend to make sure it was right. And boy, I do hope it IS right

So, as long as we don’t get 900 folks attending a session that only had 20 votes over the last 60 days, we think we’ll be fine.  Hopefully. Fingers crossed.  Everything crossed

So now you know what I’ve been doing for the last 3 weeks.  Interesting stuff eh?

Now onto the next task at teched – accommodating all of the internal meeting requests, adding some repeat sessions where we think the sessions are going to be very, very popular, and creating the learning plan. 

But that’s a job for tomorrow.   My brain is totally full and in stack overload after doing this all weekend.  Today, now this is all finished I’m going to lie down in a darkened room with a VERY large glass of wine.  Phew!

OWA – simply impressive

I’ve talked before about how the simple additions to software can really make a difference to my every day working life and OWA 2010 has blown me away so far.  First one is the Out of Office alert – which pops up before I’ve sent the email.  I can now decide whether it’s worth sending the mail at all… 

The second feature that really blew me away when I first used it for real is the threaded conversation view.  I LOVE this feature.  I can see the whole thread, including bits of the thread that I’ve deleted – in one stream – right in my inbox.  Fantastic concept.  Here’s what it looks like.

  There are a few other screenshots here and information here and here if you’re interested. Simple – but really effective, and that’s what makes this such a great version of the Exchange Web client… 

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2010,OWA

Social Networking tips – The Good, the Bad and the Time Wasting…

 

So many folks have jumped onto the social networking bandwagon and have registered with every site available, and many are wondering how the heck they manage to keep up with all of the information.  After all there are only so many hours in a day for you to keep up with all of this flood of information.  I’ve put together some tips which may help you find your way around.

1. Be consistent

Try to maintain a regular pattern with your communications on the web.  Burst blogging (or tweeting) techniques are annoying to your audience and add extra load to your day.  If you have a relatively easy day, then post date some of your blog posts so that your readers get a regular update.  Aim to Tweet regularly too and maintain the connection with your audience

2. Don’t get overwhelmed

There are so many different social networking sites out there that it’s so easy to become overwhelmed.  If you spend all day on Twitter, or try to keep up with all of the status requests on Facebook you won’t have any time at all for the rest of the things you need to do.  You need to learn to cut out all of the unnecessary messages.  But how?  There are some users who seem to have no life, outside of their online presence, and other users – with a marketing campaign to follow, who smack of desperation.  Try to maintain a happy balance, filter out those messages you don’t want to see, and be ruthless with the unfollow button.  Do you really need all of those friends?

3. Syndication – is it really necessary?

You may have accounts on multiple sites and rush round updating them regularly with the same information.  Why not try a syndicator like http://ping.fm which updates multiple sites at once.  However, there may be friends who follow you on many of your social networking sites and who may not appreciate the same information on each of their sites. 

4. Don’t dismiss forums

People  come to forums for advice.  Often they are unaware that there are other resources available.  If you contribute to forums, make sure you cross reference your information to your blog.  It drives traffic to your blog, and connects up the different resources.  You can also point people who ask questions on forums to other social networking sites to help them

5. Be Generous

If you have knowledge – share it!  There are many, many people out there who are thirsty for knowledge.  Share it appropriately.  Be professional and courteous and remember, not everyone has the same level of knowledge as you have so don’t flame them unnecessarily.

6. Don’t expect instant results.

Your followers will visit your blog / follow you on Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn and come back if they like your content.  Don’t expect to get thousands and thousands of readers in a day.  Expect to build up gradually.  Ignore all of those twitter followers that promise 1000 followers a day.  They are automated bots with little value to you. 

7. Dealing with undesirables

If someone wants to connect with you and you don’t want them to, don’t feel guilty about denying the connection or blocking the follow on Twitter.  Generally the person is not notified that you have rejected the connection and if you have blocked them, they will not be able to contact you further.   Don’t encourage abuse by accepting connections you do not want to.  It’s time wasting and demoralising

8. Get Connected

Like syndication, your blog has your personality stamped onto it.  So advertise it.  People want to connect with you.  Place a link to your blog on every online profile you have.  You will drive traffic to your blog.  If you have a twitter account, refer to your twitter handle wherever possible on online sites. 

9. Sell if you can

If you are selling something – don’t be afraid to talk about it, evangelise it, discuss it – but don’t allow your desire to sell overwhelm your voice.  Buy me, buy me, buy me soon becomes wearing to your readers

10. Interact

Social Networking is not one way traffic.  It’s the interactions between the participants that make social networking – social!  Take advantage of the connections you make to forge new customer relationships and enlarge your virtual network.  People with a common interest will follow you, so will really appreciate the personal connection from you.

Here are some social networking links that you may find useful

Blogging for business – Part 1

The systematic approach to social strategy

3 Effective social media strategies

Small business Twitter tips

Social media marketing and the Start up business