Well its great to be helping out in an area of TechEd that I know really well, and I know lots of experts in UC so it’s good to catch up with old friends from around Europe.

I’m also pleased to be helping out at Interact09 as this will be my third Interact event and my second this year.

The sessions are really up close and personal, the conversations are amazing and the swag is nice.

But the really great thing about Interact is the opportunity to influence the Product team directly.  The techy part of the team too.  The guys who actually write the stuff.

And I think that’s the main value in my opinion.

We invite people who are influencers in their own UC circles.  Bloggers, Tweeters, customers who look after UC installations – and people who work with UC, whether in Support or Sales will all have really good interactions with the UC product team.  And they listen to you, your concerns, your comments and your questions.  

And that feedback goes into the pot for the next version of the product.

And that’s why you need to attend.  Hopefully there’ll be Interact sessions at a place near you soon.  I’ll let you know if there are…

I continue to be amazed at the behind the scenes logistics at TechEd Berlin and the massive amount of work involved in making this event run smoothly.

I know about the fact that we need to feed 7200 people and that we need someone to look after that – but its the other ‘stuff’ that has blown me away.

Crew Catering.  all the folks in black need to be fed.  There’s a separate restaurant for over 500 of the folks in black

Cleaning.  The toilets need to be cleaned, the rubbish bins need to be emptied and the floor needs to be vacuumed.  It’s a good idea to clean the toilets during the sessions, so that they are free in the breaks when needed.  This cleaning army is all scheduled by Theresa

All the crew have walky talkies.  There are over 330 Motorolas at the venue which all need to be charged.  Everyone with a motorola needs a little directory printing so you can contact the correct person.  We have 2 guys on site looking after that at all times. 

The team of bag stuffers.  A small team of people who have put all of the free things into your delegate bags.  You all have the same items in each bag.  These items need to be delivered / printed / couriered to the area behind the registration desk before the event starts so that all of the bags are ready in time.  The empty crates / boxes packing need to be cleaned out.

Security.  The teams of people checking your badges as you go through are all briefed by the team so they know who to let where.  All of these need to be scheduled so they all get chance to have a break, get lunch etc etc. 

Registration.  The team of staff processing registration need to be briefed on procedure, which items to check, need training on how to process a registration – and what to do if there’s an anomaly.  And they all need to have coffee breaks too which needs to be scheduled.

The Learning Centre.  The whole hall needs to be managed, the TLC experts need to be scheduled so that the correct folks are at the booth at one time and there are no gaps.  The folks from the product team need to be scheduled outside of their session times.  This all needs to be coordinated.

The Exhibition hall.  All of the exhibitors need to arrive before the event, set up their stand – the correct stand which has been ordered/ designed or delivered according to the plan.  All of the goods have to be couriered, the electricity points must be in the correct location to match up with the stand design which has been agreed as per plan for weeks. An amazing task

The Community area.  All of the competitions need to be coordinated, the gifts purchased and delivered to the correct part of this massive venue by the correct day to be delivered to the correct hall.  The signs need to be placed in the correct place, to match the conference guide map, and the directions should also point to the correct place.

I could go on and on and on about this – there would be so much to talk about – but having seen Teched as a delegate, a Microsoft speaker, and now a member of the Teched team, its fascinating to find out that the things I’ve taken for granted about the event have been carefully planned, discussed, documented and choreographed for months before the event to make it as good as we can possibly make it.

And for 6 days only.

Wow…

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?

I’s fascinating to be part of the Tech.Ed keynote and walk-in show production and watch just how many different things have to be coordinated.  In addition to the stage and set design, lighting, video placement and view orientation (where to put the seats so that everyone can see the stage) there are many many strands that have to come together.

All of the speakers, demo people, assistants, script writers, coordinators and production team need to be backstage.  That means backstage passes.   Which means the registration codes need to be changed so we can track how many people will be backstage.

The passes need to be designed, and security need to be briefed so that they let the correct people with the correct passes backstage.  The videos, sounds, and back up hardware and process needs to be installed, loaded tested. What if one bulb bursts in the projector for example.  How many seconds delay is acceptable?  Where do we place the lights? The podium? The screens? The repeater screens?  Who makes the final decision?

The timings need to be tight.  Really tight.  The walk in session needs to finish bang on at 15:29:30, ready for the keynote announcement to roll.  The keynote must finish bang on time, ready for everyone to get to the Berlin wall celebrations.  Each part of the script needs to be tested.  This section will run for 180 seconds, roll video.  video for 240 seconds, cue voice over, cut to main speaker etc etc.  I now know what it must be like for TV acting.  This is so tightly choreographed, rehearsed, practiced, consulted, re-written, feedback, discussed.  All for a 90 minute presentation.

It’s amazing.  And I’m involved in decisions that I’ve never taken before.  Will there be clapping?  thigh slapping? choreographed audience participation? Shouting? Singing? (please no!)  how about a quiz?  Shall we get some audience members on stage? What swag or giveaways shall we have.

All of this is carefully planned, thought out and structured so that everything runs totally smoothly from 3pm November 9th.

Which isn’t very far away now.

And I’m not in Berlin yet – time is running short now and we haven’t all come together for rehearsals.  So far all of this has been done electronically.  By email and phone calls.  And it’s all coming together perfectly. And it’s amazing.

I’ll blog more over the weekend from Berlin with some pictures of the rehearsals and the build of the Tech.Ed event so you can see how something as huge as this is built in a couple of days.

Off to Berlin!…

Long before Microsoft, I used to work in a company that paired the very junior in the organisation with the very senior.  It served 2 purposes.

It helped the junior staff understand organisational challenges or running a medium sized business and gave them confidence in dealing with people working at much senior levels to them.  But more than that, it gave the organisational leaders an insight to the challenges of starting out in the organisation, the problems of junior menial tasks , lack of responsibility and decision making at lower grades.

The most beneficial pairings were when young females were “mentors” to the senior male managers.  These young women had such a fresh approach to every day tasks that often, a totally new process was implemented.  A refreshing change.

But I thought that this approach was limited to smaller organisations, and the big guns stayed away.

So I was delighted to read that Dell have adopted this reverse mentoring approach where female middle managers coach the senior male leaders. 

The programme helps men to understand the ways in which women approach their roles and to develop appreciation for their different styles of working. Sales, for example, is typically seen as a function more suited to male traits, but women have key selling skills that are often over-looked such as listening, collaboration and diplomacy.
The pilot has helped to remove some of these misunderstandings and, given Dell’s male workforce, a greater appreciation of their female colleagues’ skillsets. The firm calls this ‘inclusive  leadership’,

What a brilliant piece of leadership Dell, a very refreshing approach to an age old problem of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Thank you for taking the lead.  Now all of the other companies in the “Connecting Women in Technology” need to follow suit.  Because with the big guns in the Technology industry leading, many other smaller or less enlightened companies will eventually follow suit…

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

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!  

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

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

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…