Post HH{H} Launch Thoughts

OK so todays been a busy day.

Got up at 5am for a 6.30am Train to Birmingham for the Microsoft UK Heroes Happen {Here} Launch. The train journey was pretty uneventful and I even had mobile internet for a fair chunk of it.

Upon arriving at the venue it was apparent that this was an MS event. Big banners with the Hh{h} marketing everywhere.

Registration went very smoothly and considering we didn't arrive till 8.50 we were able to make it to the keynote / marketing bonanza ;) Whilst sat in the keynote I had a rummage in my initial swag bundle and to my dismay there was no notepad! Eek! Here was I with a new Microsoft Pen but no paper and to add insult to injury my laptop was low on juice to my initial train journey. Not Good.

One thing I also noted early on was that there were alot of attendees, and I mean alot. So much that at the start of the first session my fears were realised, there were more people than seats in the sessions, I only got to attend the first session by one seat.

This then lead to quite a few tweets on twitter about the situation, and the lack of power for laptop users, whats the point of wifi, which although slow did work, if you have no power... Of course unless you're Chris Alcock with a super battery addon ;)

I have to say the quality of the presentations were very good and were very much aimed at being launch demo's. This isn't a bad thing, very quickly I was able to find out what VS2008 would mean to me and things I could do with it.

In particular I thought the Linq talk by Mike Taulty was very good. He knew his stuff and delivered the content very well. I think I said the phrase "no way" and "really", and perhaps at one point "shut up, no" as you do. I think I am now in love with Linq and can't wait to play with it... say tomorrow night :D

Anyhow the day progressed and I even found a plug socket upstairs to get a quick 30min charge. I then got even more MS Swag, MSDN mags and such and then finally what I had been waiting for.... The Software.

The Hh{h} software pack is in my opinion very professional, it fits well and comprises of an evaluation version of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, SQL Server 2008 ctp 5.0 and Visual Studio 2008 Standard.

I was happy enough to get a full version of VS for at home finally which is great, the other software I know I will VM for testing and developing at home, in particular I really do like IIS7 and have been using it in Vista for over 7 months, to be able to host development sites locally on a server edition of windows I know will vastly increase my deployment knowledge.

What the software suite also included which I actually missed originally is an "Application Voucher" which allows you to get an evaluation copy of SQL Server 2008 when it's released. This is good and for me anyway lets me think I haven't missed out too much with SQL 2008 being delayed.

My day rounded up with attendance at a session on IIS7, which covered alot of what I had read / seen previously but also covered some of its other new features and how / to use them. In particular I hadn't realised that as of IIS7 IIS will not be constrained to only being updated with a new Server OS release, IIS8 for example will probably come out on Windows Server 2008. Also new modules for IIS7 will be released on their website in particular the new media throttling one was demo'd and looked very good.

The day drew to a close and the closing session touched on the future of programming in parallel. This is a very important and was very aimed at developers, I enjoyed it none the less.

It was then meant to be the community reception and I did attend for a while. However alot of people seemed to just leave and there was no real air / buzz about the place. There didn't seem to be a lot of mingling or good conversations going on. This was disappointing and I did expect more, there was an abundance of drink but no food, maybe this didn't help.

Anyway overall I did enjoy the day, alot of travelling and very little sleep is beginning to take its toll on me but it was worth it none the less. The question now is do I play with Linq tonight.....