Jamie R

Yesterday my friend Ross and I made the trek up from Colchester up to Birmingham to attend Microsoft’s “Heroes Happen Here” launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 at Birmingham’s ICC. Aside from the 4 hour train journey and getting up at 4:30AM, it was a great day. I learned a lot and the seminars I found pretty useful.

However, although the day was good with a lot of free stuff (including free lunch and beer), I am pretty disappointed in some areas:

• The promise of “full” promotional versions of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio turned out to be untrue. The promotional software delegates were given included a 365 day trial of Server 2008 Enterprise, a copy of the SQL Server 2008 Standard CTP (full version hasn’t been released yet but we will get a 365 day trial of it when it has) and a full copy of Visual Studio 2008 Standard. I’m annoyed by this, because there was no word from MS or anyone before the event stating that we would receive evaluation copies of the software. With previous launch events, delegates have received full copies of the products being launched.
• The organisation of the whole event I thought was pretty shoddy. Some staff didn’t know what another did (communication was bad) as well as about 12:30 the upstairs entrance to Hall 3 (the upstairs gallery), was closed off due to “the hall being prepared for lunch”. However, my lunch as a delegate on the IT Pro track was between 12pm and 1pm. I went in another door to find the whole of Hall 3 packed with people.
• There wasn’t enough time between the seminars. At one point, I got into one of the seminars I wanted to go late because I had to get through a lot of people doing pretty much the same thing as me.

It was a really good day overall. However, I would like to see a separate event for delegates attending as “IT Pros” rather than developers. If there were two different events rather than one event trying to satisfy what both camps want, then there would be a lot more focus on what each camp wants to see and do. The seminars were good and I thought were fairly thought out. Having said that, one of the seminars started late and things over ran and the whole presentation wasn’t delivered in it’s full entirety. Some of the seminars I wanted to go to I couldn’t because they coincided with another one I wanted to go to or was already in, so this was a shame.The closing session talk was by Simon Peyton Jones, and looked into the need for today’s applications needing to be able to support multicore processing architecture. ‘Twas really interesting.

The whole event was free (with the exception of the train ticket), so I can’t really complain in a sense. It was a good day and I’m really glad I went.

Jamie.

I have just learnt on the BBC news website earlier today of the death of Leon Greenman. Leon was one of the last surviving survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two. He lost his wife and son in the camp, and after the camp was liberated returned to England and has dedicated his life to telling people about his story in Auschwitz and campainging for equality. I met him in 2004, and I really wish I could have met him again. He really was an inspriation.

Rest in peace Leon.