Ian Hameroff : Windows 7

What? A Bus Tour Across Central Europe?

ianhamer — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:49:28 GMT

Hello world!

I’m being serious.

I’ve just resurfaced after spending nearly two weeks in a “executive keynote demo bunker”, building out a cool demo rig for a big upcoming event (wink, wink). Man, I had a beard and everything, and mostly sustained myself with Starbucks coffee, good humor, and the thousand degree temperatures that come with stuffing a bunch of demo hardware gear in a Building 31 office (READ: no fancy server room HVAC).

Luckily, we were able to squat in our GM’s office (who’s currently on leave), to construct a wicked 3 server, 2 client environment featuring the RTM code of every fan’s favorite, Exchange Server 2010.

But, before we get to that, I think it’s worth bringing you up-to-date on my next pending adventure (and I did choose the word “adventure” on purpose).

Starting November 2nd, from they wonderful Dutch city of Amsterdam, I will be “Getting on the Bus”.

To be clear, I’m not heralding the fact I plan to use the public transportation system in Holland.

I still might, but that’s neither here nor there.

What I am doing, is joining the second week of the two week, 11-city European road show featuring Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010.

This is being driven (no pun intended) by our pals over in Microsoft Learning, as part of the whole “Born to Learn” program.

But, wait!

There’s more!

When I say I’m “getting on the bus”, I literally mean I’ll be living on a bus for 5 straight days.

That’s right.

Me, and a team of heavy hitters across Windows, Windows Server, the Certification Program, and (yes!) Exchange, will be doing events during the day, and like any good rock tour of the IT kind, we’ll be boarding the bus that evening to make it to the next city before dawn.

I think there’s a Grateful Dead song that comes to mind here.

“So, what kind of bus is this?” you ask.

This is no mere mortal bus, or even an R.V.

Instead, it comes from the cats over in the U.K. called Jumbocruiser.

We get to spend our travel timing on a Premium Double Decker, model T300, bus, which sleeps up to 16, and offers such amenities as “especially spacious downstairs” featuring “deep and comfortable seats”, and our own personal bunk complete with curtain, video game system, and snappy sheets.

While the video I linked above gives one perspective, fear not.

I’ve just received my new Flip Video camera, which I intend using to provide as close to daily vblogs of “life on the bus”. I also just ordered a cellular aircard for some data link capacity for the times I’ll be starring out the window, watching the German country side go by, and checking e-mail.

Wow, eh?

As I will be terminating my bus journey in Berlin, I feel bit like the Olympic Torch relay for our grand launch at TechEd Europe 2009.

To that end, here’s my tour of scheduled appearance cities (in case you want swing by):

Monday, November 2nd – Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tuesday, November 3rd – Frankfurt, Germany
Wednesday, November 4th – Munich, Germany
Thursday, November 5th – Vienna, Austria
Friday, November 6th – Prague, Czech Republic

More details on the actual events and locations of can be found by visiting http://thebustour.com/thebus/tour-dates.

You can even track our progress through the Live Bus Tracker (powered by Glympse). As I write this post, the bus (a/k/a Career Express) is en route across France, traveling at 60 MPH:

The gang has even recorded a short video of me for their blog, to give you a sense on what the heck I’ll be doing throughout the 2nd week of the tour:

After all of this, I’ll be settling in Berlin for the week of TechEd Europe, and looking forward to getting a chance to catch up with folks over there (especially after the big keynote).

Well, in those immortal words utter for seemingly a million years at the conclusion of every Saturday Night Live guest hosts monologue:

“We’ve got a great show…er…bus tour! Exchange 2010, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are here. So, stick around, and we’ll be right back!”

Cue music.

-- hama

Get Into the “New Efficiency”. I Did!

ianhamer — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:10:16 GMT

Wow!

What a crazy run it has been, as we’ve been ramping for a number of milestones for the big launch.

For example, I’ve spent this week building out a real killer Exchange Server 2010 demo rig for some important, upcoming events. In addition to that, I have been conducting briefings with top tier tech press reviewers, showing off the Exchange 2010 RTM experiences.

Before that, it was all about The New Efficiency, and helping deliver content, presentations, and yes, even a demo or two, as part of this virtual launch event.

What?

You haven’t been up to thenewefficiency.com yet?

If you need some motivation to visit a pretty cool “virtual launch experience” (that’s what the all the Web 2.0 cats call these things) featuring the line up of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010, well, check this out:

That’s right: it’s me!

Among the Exchange 2010 sessions I deliver on such things our integrated e-mail archiving, retention and discovery capabilities, I’m doing the Exchange demo in Chris Capossela’s keynote.

To check out my online performance, in my Microsoft “dress blues”, just go up to http://www.thenewefficiency.com and click on the “Watch the Keynotes” icon:

And, select the “Technologies for the New Efficiency" with Chris Capossela” option. You can watch the whole thing (which I do recommend), or just fast forward to 35:10 to see Chris hand things over to me.

In the demo, I highlight:

Outlook Web App
Integrated IM and Presence
Conversation View and the Ignore Conversation
Voice Mail Preview
Outlook 2010
Personal Archive
Transport Protection Rules, and
Multi-Mailbox Search

It’s a good line up, and I hope you enjoy it. I also hope you’ll explore the rest of the Exchange 2010 content (including my two other sessions).

One fun fact: the Microsoft Studios set used to recorded this demo, once served as set for the MSNBC talk show, the Ron Regan Show. And, they used a bunch of gel in my hair…I swear, it could have stopped a bullet.

More to come on the fun…wait till I tell you about my bus tour of Europe the first week of November!

-- hama

E14, eh?

ianhamer — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:42:41 GMT

Well, here's a little more insight on what I've been working on these days:
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/01/13/450397.aspx

Way more to come over the next few months.

Nevertheless, it is nice to finally have some things to talk about publicly.

Meanwhile, time to get back to work. I'm hoping to get my work laptop up to Windows 7 Beta 1 (build 7000) before the end of the week. Just digging out from 3 weeks of holiday. Once I've got my head above water, it's Win7 time.

I am also tempted to pick-up a spare SSD for my Dell Mini 9, and give the netbook a crack at Win7. It was very strange using the Mini 9 over my vacation and Windows XP. Had to almost relearn a few things being that it has been almost 4 years since I used XP on a regular basis. It's like riding a bike, right?

-- hama