Millions of potentially useful PCs in the developed world are literally going to waste and with them millions of wasted opportunities.
Okay, you've probably seen this kind of stuff before but like me, you may have not actually done anything about it. A flier in our staff shop caught my attention though and made me think two things:
- I can tidy up my spare room!
- I can help schools and communities around the world
With our roadshow complete, I thought I would tie up a few loose ends from the week.
- By Friday we had run out of Gear Up books which were in high demand. You can grab your PDF version or order a hard copy from the
- The presentation from the afternoon session is
- I'm trying to secure partner access to the Office video used during the intermission but no success yet. In the meantime, there are some great EVO videos (and slides) at our site.
- Get
- James Akrigg
- Steve Marsh
- Chris Parkes
- Ben Tamblyn
- Christian Longstaff
- James Senior
- Matt McSpirit
- David Overton
- Mike Pallot
- Emma Goddard
- Julian Datta
- Steve Clayton
I'm delighted for Richard Jones of who won the for his fine work on developing on Windows Mobile.
I met Richard quite some time ago when I was working on our mobile business development focus with UK partners and he immediately struck me as someone who was passionate about technology, specifically mobile, but allied that to a keen commercial interest.
He's helped Anglia deliver some great solutions using Windows Mobile and the associated developer tools.
"Over the past few years, I have worked with Windows Mobile using the .Net Compact Framework and SQL Compact building tools to streamline the process of building Line Of Business Applications.
My team and I have worked on ways to streamline the process of building reliable partially connected applications and came up with a tool called 'DataMaker'. Datamaker automates the production of the data layer, simply point the tool at a SQL table and it does the rest, churning out reliable Compact Framework code.
This has rapidly speeded up delivery of reliable mobile applications.
As a result we have 2 of the 11 on Microsoft.Com published this week. In addition we have a
RTM'ed yesterday to coincide with the final day of our EVO tour of course where the Outlook Voice Access demo was IMHO, our best demo.
has the details and links to some cool including Nikon.
So that's it. The EVO wave is done and coming to you very soon.
I expect there was a big party in Redmond yesterday as the Exchange boys know how to enjoy themselves. I was in town for their RTM day of Exchange 2003 and it involved a lot of margaritas and cigars. Less said the better.
In association with this, there is some great new Exchange content online at such as:
- Going 64-Bit with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
- Enterprise Messaging with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
- How Microsoft IT Designs Its 64-bit Exchange Server 2007 Infrastructure
Over the last week we've met with almost 1000 partners across 5 locations and delivered something quite different a - 90 minute presentation full of demos, not PowerPoint.
Feedback has been great and we hope to get out on the road again in 2007.
In the meantime, it's off home for the team via plane, train and automobile as our driver, , left us this morning.
If you attended any of the events and have questions or comments I'd love to hear them here.
Don't forget to check out the team blogs too!
The final leg of the tour and we're honoured to have Professor with us to introduce us to our Scottish audience. With over 250 attendees registered we're hoping for a full house finale and have a few surprised up our sleeves.
We've positioned this screening as Certificate 18 given the hardcore demo nature of the content.
Just leaves me to say thank you to everyone who has attended this roadshow to date and for all your feedback. See you in 2007 for the next series I hope!
My friend emailed me last week to say that my blog was on the BBC...
almost. I actually thought he was joking but this evening I got around to watching the YouTube clip of the BBC's Thresher piece via . Okay, I didn't actually make it on but the Blue Monster cartoon as it's become known did which made me smile a lot.
The cartoon is really gaining momentum internally here as I had two people ( ) randomly email me saying they thought it was great and they want to use it in their email signature. I also saw it on an external blog that I forgot to link to and now can't find..
.though I'm sure it will show up again.
I'm planning to write a paper on this to submit to BillG and depending on how my content creation goes over the next few days, I may post it here.
Working for Microsoft's sometimes gives you access to gig's that you just can't miss. Though I haven't been invited backstage with U2 yet, I did get the chance to attend the summit last week in errr, London. I had a fully booked week but given Colin Powell was on as the final act I did some schedule juggling to be there.
It was worth it as he delivered a great session covering leadership, world peace, diplomacy and more. He told a great final story about how him buying hotdogs as he left the UN made him have faith in the ability of the US to be admired by the world. Two other take aways:
was much less impressive for me.
- Followers get the work done
- Reward with the human touch
To be fair this may be been my fault as I'd never really heard of him before and he didn't introduce himself (vs. Powell who really needs no introduction). He also blotted his speech for me by suggesting the innovation Microsoft had delivered in 20 years in Windows with 20,000 engineers was to change the colour of an icon.
It got a laugh but a cheap one in my view and insulted the work of many people who do quite a bit more than change a colour palette. His views on organizations and how they will change and have to change in the new world economy were refreshing but sadly by then I'd tuned out :(
Before Ricardo though was for me the best speaker of the day - . A man who spoke from the heart with passion and great stories.
That's all you really need I think though he had so much more than that. His speech on the eve of the Iraq war is now legendary. The speech was recorded in shorthand by a single journalist.
No recording or film of the speech exists. The is astonishingly good and well worth a read.
"'We go to liberate not to conquer.Key stuff I took away from his 45 minute talk and Q A:We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them.
- He had an astonishing memory for dates and people's names
- He mentioned the loneliness of leadership
- "Better that they do the task well than you do it perfectly for them"
- To lead people you have to love them
- "If you're going to screw up think about standing and explaining in front of me at some point in the future as i will inevitably find out"
- Understand two up in your organization what is required (i.e. your managers manager)
- A country without education is no country at all - we need to provide the best education for our children that we can
You may want to as well given the reviews on Amazon.
Ben Tamblyn, James Senior, Julian Datta, Matt McSpirit, Chris Parkes, Steve Clayton, Steve Marsh, James Akrigg
Bus loaded and troops fed. What a diet :)
A great session today from Ben, JamesA and Chris and now we're off to Edinburgh for the final leg of the tour.
What did we learn today?
- Exchange is still in beta
- Manchester had the most up to date audience (XP and O2003)
- Lots of partners have MSDN/Technet but didn't know that they could download the release code of Vista and 2007 Office System
...
We arrived at the in Manchester this morning bright eyed and bushy tailed though and as venues go, this is our best yet. Even better than the Bristol IMAX with a screen that must be 30ft high and 60ft across. Vista looks lovely on it and the boys worked their magic again with the A/V.
I've never worked with a better crew that these guys.
Back to the show though and we're about to kick off with hometown crowd so looking forward to some humour and references. Their "soundtrack" single is playing the intro music and the lights are about to go down.
Here we go again!
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