Huge TechEd Berlin

Oh Wow. 

I’m in Berlin and at the Messe – which is huge.  I mean HUGE. This is where the 6500 bags are packed.  The pile in the bottom corner was about 6ft high

and this is where you’ll check in tomorrow The roof is about 100ft high and the whole place is about the size of a football pitch

The Community lounge is being built and the TLC area is massive and looks overwhelming.  I’ve only seen the floor plan and read thousands of emails about how it’s going to look.  But to see it here, being constructed is an amazing site.

But I’m really delighted about these pictures.  Why?  Because I decided on the final colours for each technical topic and “My colours” are in the Interactive theatres, the Hands On Labs and the TLC.  And I’m rather pleased about that.

Daft eh?

Technorati Tags: teched berlin

Consolidated Social media

I was  talking to a client today about social media options and going through various tools that she could use to extend her traditional marketing into Digital marketing, and going through the different tools that she could use to get going.  I talked about Facebook and Twitter and ways to use each of these.

“Do I need to do both” she said? “They seem very different”

This reminded me of the post on the Twitip blog comparing the two

Facebook appeals to people looking to reconnect with old friends and family members or find new friends online whilst Twitter on the other hand, encourages you grab ideals in byte-size chunks and use your updates as jumping off points to other places or just let others know what you’re up to at any given moment.

On the surface, these seem to be completely different applications: one is for relationships, one is for news.  Or is it?  There are some great tag clouds here which give definitions of each service.  Twitter definitely appeals to the moment, and facebook doesn’t.  Or does it?

I think that Twitter can move from point in time status updates to relationships.  Several folks who I’ve been having a conversation with entirely on Twitter, have over time moved to email, facebook and LinkedIn relationships.  The Twitter notifier from Live Writer, announces each blog post, to Twitter and the facebook app for Twitter, updates facebook.  so there’s synergy with my updates across totally different styles of applications.  And the interaction from people from both applications suggest that each approach is valuable.

So it’s possible to have links between the immediacy of the Tweet, and the longer relationship from Facebook.

Is any one preferable to the other?  Or should a more consolidated and co-ordinated approach be used?  you decide

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Facebook,social media

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

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

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

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

Facebook phishing 101 #epicfail

This guy needs some lessons in how to construct a reasonably realistic phishing message…

There’s not even a fraudulent link to click.  The Facebook email address resolves to notificationzj4oo4lta4c9@facebookhomelogin.com  (now who owns THAT domain I wondered? ) So I went to whois.net for more information.  The domain name is registered by Go Daddy and at domainsbyproxy.com and only registered 2 days ago!  Domains by Proxy hides your personal details if you don’t want any of your data exposed – or don’t want to be found.

So a total fail here on this phishers part.  They have a fair way to go before they get to the level of success from the phishers who published Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo accounts on the web this week

But all the same – be wary of stuff like this that appears in your inbox.  And delete it with a flourish

Social media services down right now?

I was trying to get onto Facebook today and noticed that the service wasn’t available – perhaps a Denial of Service attack was happening.  Bummer, I couldn’t find out what everyone else in my world was doing and wondered if it was just me having the experience or if others were suffering.  So I went and had a look at a neat little service called Downrightnow which tells you which of your favourite web applications are available and how long it has been since the last interruption.

Facebook was indeed down, (well it was when I first looked at it) – but it was the other services in the list that caught my eye.  I fully expected Live Hotmail to have no service disruptions and I suppose 4 weeks since the last disruption is fairly impressive.  But look at the box below.

Well done Yahoo. An impressive display of uptime against your competitors and a nice comparison to all of the others

Now back to my witty and pithy Facebook status updates…

Technorati Tags: downrightnow,facebook

Tidy sized photos in PowerPoint

I’ve been working on the master slide deck for the next Connecting Women in Technology event which will be at Dell on Wednesday and I wanted to include a slide with all of the project team photos.  I asked everyone for a photo, and placed them into the slide.  here’s the result after much fiddling around with sizes and layouts.

You can see that all of the photos were different aspect ratios, sizes and forms, and looked a bit of a mess.  So the wonderful Jane Lewis helped me out with a cool feature she found in PowerPoint which allows you to add pictures to shapes.  Within a few minutes, she had turned the mess above into this:

Much better.  So how did she do it? 

Well is you search for Picture Sort in PowerPoint help you get to the “Add a picture to fill a shape” link in PowerPoint which takes you to this link.

In simple terms, you:

1. Select your shape
2. Select shape fill option | Picture
3. Browse for your photo
4. Insert it as a fill

So simple eh?  You can also think about using Autocollage (from Microsoft Research)  for the slide – but in this case our  team photos didn’t come out so well. 

Sometimes the simplest things are right under our noses aren’t they?

Technorati Tags: Powerpoint