On Tuesday I took a day off work and went to a couple of TechNet events which were running in Newcastle. Big thanks to the guys at TechNet for answering many requests to visit the North East and visiting us in Newcastle, I hope the MSDN team are planning some events in Newcastle, cos we'd love to see them here too!
This was not the usual type of event for me and to be honest most of the content in the main session of the day - "Creating and Managing a Virtual Environment on the Microsoft Platform" was outside the realm of my job and professional experience, however I did find it very interesting. The way in which Steve Lamb and James O'Neill delivered the session, 90% live demos with 10% slides was very good, and I appreciate the amount of hard work involved in delivering that type of session. Big thumbs up guys and I think it is an excellent way of delivering content.
Links from TechNet On The Road:
The evening session was a very enjoyable and consumer oriented session delivered by James Senior and Matt McSpirit. This session covered Windows Vista, Xbox 360 and Media Center. This was a great and relaxed look at how users can use the technology for home orientated tasks such as Photo storage using Live Photo Gallery, make DVDs using DVD Creator, Movie Maker. They showed some of the features of Photo Synth. Gave a good demonstration of Media Center, and Media Center Extender on XBox 360, Sideshow gadgets and James had a LG Z1 laptop which has a SideShow panel in the lid (see my earlier post - CES - So Many New Toys! - Windows Vista SideShow). They gave away a couple of copies of Windows Vista Ultimate - One through a Guitar Hero II Challenge (in which Matt was soundly beaten by an attendee!) and the second through a text competition.
One of the most interesting pieces of technology on show was Windows Home Server which is a server for the home, which stores your music, photos, files, backups and is remotely accessible. This looks really cool and is certainly added to my ever growing wish list :-). For more information see the guys' blogs:
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