MVP Summit Done

And so the MVP Summit is over. All I can say is… WOW. I’m conflicted whether I ought to write this or not seeing how its akin to saying “nyah-nyah, you didn’t get in” but perhaps it gives you an idea of what the benefit of being a big community contributor is all about. MVP Summit was basically TechEd if it had a future-vision superpower. Incredibly in-depth discussions, explanations and questions followed by mockups of technologies, ideas, solutions, problems, restrictions, business realities and user experience concerns. This is unlike anything I’ve ever done before and wow.

First and foremost… the Exchange team… holy… Ok, I’m starting to sound like Chris. I literally have no words for the type of stuff they showed off. The best I can explain it is by comparing the MVP discussions to the big “Epcot Ball” (actually spaceship earth) where you’re taken on a trek through time to see how people communicated. All the way from the cavemen to the future. Well, Exchange team did that today, in terms of comparison what KC and Kristian showed us today… well, Exchange 2007 is the caveman. I’d love to talk more about this and believe me, it takes a lot to make me speachless, but this did it. WOW.

I also had the very good fortune of being invited / not kicked out of the SBS and Centro sessions. I spent half my day yesterday in WSSG and got to see where Cougar, Centro and the rest are going. I was extremely impressed with Cougar and what I saw, I am still skeptical of the performance potential of this thing (heck, we can hardly keep Exchange 2007 running on two Dual Core server grade processors with 8GB RAM ) but I guess only time will tell. Centro… I kind of feel validated in everything I say and everything I believe about the state of the IT Professionals in the SMB community and I think Microsoft sees it in much the same light. I get beaten up when I say it out loud so I do wish them better luck in pitching that one. One thing is for sure, Kevin Beares rules. Not only did he organize multiple kickass events and get us together with everyone, he even promoted his WHS event like the folks that work on the Las Vegas Strip… “Slap, Slap… Here you go, 2B, check out the home server”; Seriously though, Kevin kicked major butt and I’m sure Susan is well on her way to sending him a bullet proof vest with some life insurance.

Well, my bottle of Koolaid is running low (one is on its way to you Mark) so I’m off to California / SMBTN now. I’m helping Michael C. with the mobility presentation tomorrow, running the Message Consulting bootcamp-ish presentation on Saturday. Disneyland on Sunday?