TechEd Exchange Day

Here we go with the Day 2 update, promptly written on day 3 in the Messaging area. The big deal this year is Monad, MSH, PowerShell or whatever it will eventually be called. Peter O’Dewd is really pushing to call it Exchange Management Shell as its current big deal at TechEd is all about managing Exchange. It is quite a big deal for the dev guys who have time and time again demonstrated monad oneliners replacing entire pages of vbscript. This is a near keynote-sized page on Powershell.

And this one is straight from the Exchange folks, something to get you started. If you’re going to 2007 you need to start learning monad, hope this helps:

Fun with the SBS Family

Jeff Middleton arrived at about 5 PM and had the misfortune of asking me for directions. I was sitting right next to the door he could have gone through, but having never gone through it myself I sent him down the same path I’ve been taking all day long. Long story short, I sent him onto a mile long trip with multiple escalators for something that was LITERALLY around the corner. He appreciated the exercise.

We did moral support for Anne and her CRM birds of the feather thing. It was mostly the free food factor but I will not miss a moment making fun of CRM so I went along as well. So let me share my CRM story.

Vlad the CRM Evangelist

If there is anything to me it is most certainly my passion as the undying evangelist of Microsoft CRM. Wait, wait, stick with me here. I went along into the birds of the feather session with Anne, Susanne, Terry and Jeff and as we got to the meal hall the sessions were organized by a bird… so here is what got me beaten:

Anne: I wonder where I’m at.

Susan: Well, which bird  are you?

Now nobody asked me but picture what went through my mind thinking about what the official bird of CRM is. Then, the mifortunate quality of thinking out loud, turning to Susan:

Vlad: Umm, a CRM bird. Whats that bird that sticks its head in the sand at the first sight of problems? Ostrich!

I would like to state for the record that I got physically assaulted after making that statement. But as I explained to Anne, its not really that I dislike the technology as much as I dislike the people who promote it. But I’ll let pictures speak for my venom. Below are two pictures, one is a birds of a feather session of the people with a product that is actually used by human beings, the other is MicrosoftBS Dynamics.

Guess which one is CRM?  

Mobile Party

Went to the mobile party and thanked them for producing the awesome devices that promote the sale of servers in the SMB – god knows we can take all the help we can get to make people go away from p2p. The party was at the Boston Harbor Hotel and it was spectacular (unlike the nightshot features on my camera).

But forget about the view – this is a geek occasion, right? Here is the REALLY cool stuff. The entire party (music, PA, giveaways and all the other stuff was handled from a single SmartPhone plugged into a mixer and a single speaker. You can’t top that.

Vista Evangelism

With all the Microsoft goodwill I figured I’d give Vista a shot again. Below is a pic of Jeff Middleton after yet another great Jeff oneliner. You had to be there but allow me to set it up for you anyhow. As Vista completes setup it has a progress bar that updates the status of the installation and provides a wonderful waving background. Almost as if it was a transporter. Jeff’s observation on the progress bar:

“I got him in the stream Jim, but I need more power to Scotty!”

Hope you’re a trekkie. 

The IT event of the day

I spent entire day 2 in meetings with the Exchange dev teams in a deep dive on the features, direction and Q&A on whats new, whats next and whats going on. Of course I’m under the NDA as far as it’s concerned but screw it, here are all the juicy details (picture is worth a thousand words). Enjoy the back of Missy, Martin and Mics head.