Am headed to Barcelona - DPM 2007 is launching !!! - All Backed Up - Site Home

DPM 2007 has RTM'd ... and announced at Storage Networking World in Dallas in October.

DPM 2007 is generally available this month (November) - making its way to distributors, channel partners and Microsoft licensing vehicles as we speak.

But now comes my favorite part ... the DPM 2007 product launch.

I have been looking forward to this for the entire 23 months of my Microsoft career.

This is my first real product launch as a Microsoft employee - although I have attended most big ones since Windows 95 as a customer or partner. But DPM 2007 is why I joined Microsoft, so I have a very cool seat at the center of the storm. And as such, I will try to share my daily adventures and impressions for November 9-17 at Microsoft Tech-Ed IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain.

As glamorous as Barcelona might sound - my adventures will be fly to Barcelona, taxi to the hotel next to the convention center - walk between the convention center and the hotel for six days, and fly home. The longer version is:

Friday/Saturday	Fly Dallas to Paris (just passing through) to Barcelona leave Friday 5PM ... arrive in Barcelona 3PM Saturday afternoon
Sunday	find English-speaking church for the morning Setup DPM demo for VP keynote Setup DPM demo for GM keynote Setup DPM demo for my classroom Setup DPM demo at DPM booth Confirm DPM VPC's in hands-on labs
Monday	VP opening keynote, including System Center with a short DPM demo GM keynote on System Center 2007, including DPM demo learn how to say "my product launched today" is Spanish
Tuesday	DPM demo and overview session DPM chalktalk-Q&A around protecting virtualized environment fix some problem with something that will go wrong somehow
Wednesday	DPM technical session on protecting Exchange Windows deep-dive on Windows Server 2008 file and storage Deep-Dive Q&A on all things Data Protection Disaster Recovery strategy session for Exchange and a customer meeting on DPM 2007 crash in my bed after three days of adrenaline / coffee and endless Q&A
Thursday	Instruct lab on protecting Exchange with DPM 2007 DPM technical session on protecting SQL with DPM 2007 talk in auto-pilot and run out of business cards from the thousands of people wanting DPM and having one-off deployment questions
Friday	Bare Metal Recovery demonstration for DPM 2007 DPM chalktalk-Q&A around protecting virtualized environment tear down my demo kits and sleep like a baby
Saturday	fly home to Dallas - will take off at 10A, watch an entire season of some TV show from DVD, do absolutely no work besides a wrap-up of the week, and land at 3P in Dallas. If my boss has any mercy at all, I'll get a comp-day or two in the short week of Thanksgiving. If not, I may bring home a rare 72-hour virus from Europe that will keep me on my Xbox and off my PC until Nov.26.

Somewhere in that week, there will be some press/analyst and partner/customer meetings - and I truly do love to hang out at the DPM booth so look for me there. I will try to attend a few sessions from my friends in SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange and Virtualization in case "backup" comes up. And I will make a point of eating the local cuisine.

But this week, between now and then, I am trying to bake as many last pieces of content, key customer/press/analyst briefings, etc. as I can before I get on a plane Friday.

See you in Barcelona - or cyberspace