Last Wednesday, the 30th April 2008, we held the VBUG Newcastle Heroes Happen Here Community Launch Event.  We were very pleased to have speaking for us, Richard Fennell and Rik Hepworth from Black Marble and Iain Angus from Agilisys.  The evening was full packed, information overloaded and a full compliment of swag was on hand.  Rik started first and covered Windows Server 2008,  ably followed by Iain who covered SQL Server 2008 and Richard rounded off the sessions with Visual Studio 2008.  Each had only 45 minutes to cram in as much information and very well they did it too!  Its extremely difficult to get so much information into such a short time and still manage to stress the focus on the most salient points.  Pizza was on hand to provide sustenance to the whole crowd and the evening ended with a veritable delight of swag.  On the night we gave away five launch packs (including licenses for VS08 Standard, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008), two copies of Vista Ultimate with SP1, three TechNet Pro subscriptions, and each attendee left with at least an exam voucher and a Channel 9 Guy!!  Many wondered what Channel 9 is and were duly informed!

All had a good night, saw some excellent content and left with swag.  Big thanks to our new venue hosts - The Castle Gate - this venue is held in an old Power Building from the old Newcastle Tram System and  they have some great sized rooms, including a large hall capable of seating 550 ish people.  If you're looking for a reasonably priced venue in the centre of Newcastle, check them out!  We hope to be back there soon!  

To view the slides from the event go to - http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Publications&subsection=Conference%20Papers