Goodbye FY07..Hello FY08
Well this is my first post for the new financial year and also a good time to give you a bit of a review of what I got up to in FY07. It was a busy year to say the least and the other day I sat down and went through it all as part of our annual review process and it's amazing to look back at the last 12 months and realize just how much happened. So below are the major highlights for the year.
- TechReady 4 - this is our semi-annual geek gathering in Seattle and this financial year I went to two of them. One in July and the other in February. I must admit I prefer going to these events in the US summer because the weather in Seattle in July is always good and it's light until around 10:00PM which for me means golf at 5:00 in the afternoon! Sweet!
- TechEd 2006 - For TechEd I spoke at the student day; was track owner for the Security track and did a session on Anti-Malware Technologies in Windows Vista. It was a great TechEd I thought with 5500 paid attendees. It was great to have one in Sydney for a change so I didn't have to travel to far.
- Ready Launch Tour - This is what we called our LOVE tour which is "Launch of Office Vista and Exchange" Get it LOVE..Anyway we toured around the country talking about all the goodness in the new wave of products namely Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007. I was involved with content generation for the event and delivered a Office and Vista deployment session as well. It was a good event and we had the opportunity to chat and catch up with many of you during the event.
- Consumer Launch of Window Vista and Office 2007 - In February we had the general availability launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007 down at the Museum of Contemporary art in Sydney. I was manning the TV & Movies pod just doing demos of Bigpond Movies and Media Centre stuff. It was a fun event and at the staff event later in the day we had Rogue Traders play live which was pretty cool.
- Technet Update Events - During the year we did three of these events and judging by the feedback we've been getting you like what you've been hearing. We feel this is one of the best vehicles we have to get regular contact with IT pro's and talk about what's coming in the latest wave of products. We plan to run more of these in FY08 and also add a web component to these as well. During each tour we plan on recording at least 2 of the cities so they can be played back on demand for those that missed out or couldn't get to the actual event.
- Security & Management Seminars - As Security tends to be top of mind we ran another security seminar this year and I was a key content reviewer and spoke on Windows Vista Security Enablers; namely Bitlocker and User Account Control. This was a paid event which I don't really agree with but you get that!
- Community - I presented to many User Groups and other communities on a wide range of topics including Windows Vista; Office 2007; Security; Longhorn Server and Infrastructure Optimization. I don't have the exact number of presentations I did during the year but I know it was a lot.
- Odds and Sods - On top of all these events I installed Windows Vista what seemed like hundreds of times; installed Windows Server 2008 many many times and upgraded and swapped hardware during the year. I did heaps of expense reports; traveled in taxi's; flew on planes; stayed in hotels and everything else that comes with traveling.
This is by no means all of it but hopefully it gives you a glimpse of a day in the life of an Evangelist. When I got to the end of my review and looked back at all the things that we did during the year I was like man I'm tired..
Anyway as Frank would say time to "Keep moving Forward" into FY08.
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