Building Community One Brick At A Time

Some of you had asked for the presentation I used on the Bus Tour.

Thank you again all of you who attended the sessions.

With Windows 7 now available to everyone, we are beginning to hear more and more requests from IT Professionals for content they can use to get their support teams and users up to speed on the end user features of Windows 7. We have spent a lot of time creating this content and you can find it various places like the Windows 7 Help and How To page, Springboard Series IT pro Tip and Tricks and the Microsoft Learning site, but we know there is a lot of content out there and you want a simple way to find it.

To help you find this information quickly and easily, we have updated the Enterprise Learning Framework (ELF) with content for Windows 7. ELF is a is a web based tool that helps corporations develop a training and communication plan for employees during a Windows 7, Windows Vista, and 2007 Microsoft Office system deployment. The tool helps you find content for three different audiences, Information Workers, Influential Information Workers, and Support. It also helps you find the right content for topics you are interested in, within particular deployment timeframes. ELF even gives you the ability to generate customized email messages or a Microsoft Office Word document that you can send to your users with all content you find.

The Enterprise Learning Framework is a  great tool to help you prepare your end users and your support staff for Windows 7. You can find the tool here.

Until now there were a couple of ways to determine if your applications were compatible with Windows 7 – you can test everything, look them up one-by-one in the Windows Compatibility Center, or inventory your production machines using the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 and synchronize your inventory with hosted compatibility data from Microsoft and ISVs. For about a year, we’ve been posting regular updates to the Windows Vista Application Compatibility List for IT pros and even though compatibility between Windows Vista and Windows 7 is pretty high, there has still been huge demand for a Windows 7-specific list. If you already have a list or inventory of the applications you want to move forward in a Windows 7 deployment, the new Windows 7 Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals lets you download a spreadsheet of known vendor-supported applications so that you can query the list against your pre-existing application inventory. This list represents a sample of the total ecosystem focusing on top products as defined by customers and deployments with a public statement of support provided by the vendor.

There is compatibility status listed for both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, plus each application’s major and minor version numbers are listed to help normalize your data queries. Since October (yes, last month) we have already collected more than 5500 applications and the list is growing every day. If you are working through a list of hundreds or thousands of applications, this list will help you validate your applications more quickly. We will be updating this list regularly, so keep checking back to avoid any unnecessary testing. Click here to download the spreadsheet and get started.

If you are in the process of testing in-house developed applications, download the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) and use its in-box evaluators and test tools. Although we released ACT 5.5 back in April coinciding with Windows 7’s RC release, there were no changes needed to support the RTM version of Windows 7. Even though you will see an occasional “RC” in ACT’s reports, ACT 5.5 is the RTM-supporting version.

To access these and other application compatibility resources, check out the Springboard Application Compatibility Zone where we host the latest application compatibility content for Windows 7.

What an amazing week here in Berlin. We had over 60 sessions presented by over 80 different speakers on Windows 7 this week.

We had hundreds of people stop by our Springboard Series on TechNet booth and the Talking About Windows booth. Since we localize Springboard in 10 languages we had a cool time showing demoing the site in all of the different languages. I also want to give out a huge thanks to our STEP (Springboard Technical Experts Program) members who helped to work our booth. These amazing guys came from Ireland (Aiden), Bolivia (Miklos), New Zealand (Erdal) and the UK (Justin) to help support Springboard and Windows 7.

I even had a chance to be part of the Pre-Keynote. Check out the video of the bus arrival with keynote hosts Hyper-D and Hyper-T.

We met tons of IT pros excited about Windows 7 as well. We worked with a STEP member named Alex de Jong from the Netherlands. Alex asked the delegates at Teched EMEA about their Windows 7 experience. Alex manages NGN, the Dutch community of IT Pros. To learn more about Alex and all he does for the community, follow him on Twitter at @alexdejongngn. So ready to see the cool interviews and hear what over 100 IT pros from all over the world had to say about Windows 7 and Springboard? Check out our Talking About Windows events page under the TechEd EMEA event listing here. (Also a huge thanks to his crew, Ed Wens and Michel van den Einden who did all the camera, editing, and production).

 
Also, make sure to check our our newest Engineering and IT pro videos on the main page from Lidiane Souza, Greg Lambert, Stephen Hall and Peter Menadu.

Tuesday night was our Springboard Party at the Water-Gate Club. Over 300 It pros from around the world showed up to party and share their love of Windows 7 and Springboard. It was a great time with great music courtesy of DJ Joey Snow and DJ David Lowe. Thanks again to our co-sponsors on the Windows Server team and TechNet+ team as well as everyone who showed up to celebrate with us.

It was a week of listening to amazing speakers, everyone asking great questions,cool demos, people working in HOLs all day and getting certified that evening, amazing food and people passionate about all of our products. All of this and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Our motto, “Life Without Walls” really took on a whole new meaning for me as I stood in front of the wall and outside the Brandenburg Gate on Monday.

Thank you Berlin for an amazing time.

Stephen

Mark and I at the Springboard Party at TechEd Berlin

For those of you reading our newsletter, following our Twitter feed or blogs, you are aware that I the Springboard Series partnered with Microsoft Learning for the “Get On The Bus Tour” The goal was to bring information on Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 and Certification. So, I agreed to spend 5 days working, traveling and even sleeping on a bus.

I have to first start by stating what an amazing group of people I had the chance to work with. From Ken Rosen, Tjeerd Veninga, Liberty Munson, to Brad McCabe from the MDOP group and Ian Hammeroff from the Exchange team. All true professionals who can speak to attendees from 18 to 80 at any event.

The bus tour during my week onboard visited Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Munich in Germany, Vienna, Austria, Prague in the Czech Republic and then a final stop in Berlin where I am am now preparing for TechEd.

We spoke to IT pros in Amsterdam, made a visit to the local Dell office and ended the day with a event complete with a red carpet and real “American style” popcorn where WIndows 7 was the main event. We spoke to groups of IT managers in Frankfurt (where I learned knocking on a table at the end is a good thing) and to a high school in Vienna were we spoke to around 100 students about Microsoft, technology and the career paths. It was amazing to see the excitement and enthusiasm around our technology.

We visited Munich were again much table knocking ensued and then on to Austria where we did sessions for our TDM (Technical Decision Makers) around the cost savings and benefits of the new products.

Finally, after a long nite and short sleep, we arrived in Prague where we spoke at the new Football (soccer for our US readers) stadium where we got an great behind the scenes tour of the stadium.

Times are tough all around. So bringing this opportunity directly to the people who can best benefit from it was a great experience. The many questions and thanks I received from all
who attended really made the cold, the lack of sleep and the long days well worth the time spent.

Thank you again for all who attended our events. I have made some great new friends and have learned so much from all of you. I look forward to seeing some of you here in Berlin during my stay.

To see more photos and videos from the tour visit the Bus Tour site here.

Auf Wiedersehen for now.

Stephen

PS-

Also huge thanks to Melissa Bathium our tour coordinator, Bob Simms our contest winner and of course to Celine Allee and Janett Garcia-Riseland for sponsoring this amazing event.

Coming to TechEd EMEA? Well make sure you stop by the Springboard or Talking About Windows booths! Why? Well, in addition to all the cool information on Windows 7 we have to share with you we have tons of cool opportunities and prizes!

Talking About Windows booth

• Attendees who find the Talking About Windows Video crew and record their thoughts about Windows 7 will have the opportunity to win prizes.  Videos will be shown in the booth on the TAW plasma and on the TAW web site. Plus some cool prizes!
• Talking About Windows Interviews - Come hear from our community experts and ask questions live during our video podcasts. Stop by for a list of speakers and times.
• Live MVP Call – At 10 am on Wed, join us for a live MVP call with Karen Anne Young of the MVP group and Graham Watson of Culminus.

Springboard Series on TechNet Booth

• Springboard Series Community Influencers Party
  Tuesday, 10 November, 17.00 – Midnight
  Hosted by:  Springboard Series, Server & TechNet+
  Audience:  MVP, TechNet+, MCT, Microsoft
  By invitation only
• Springboard Series Learning Plans - Complete a Springboard Series Learning plan for a chance to win a Flip HD video camera

Plus we have swag and other cool opportunities so stop by, say hi and learn about all the cool information we have to help you Discover, Explore, Pilot, Deploy and Manage Windows 7.

See you at the show!

Stephen

I had the great pleasure to be a judge at the Windows 7 72 hr Film Festival last week. Saw some amazing videos that were all shot and completed within 72 hrs. Thanks again to everyone who participated!

Here is one of my favorites from the competition.

To see all the entries visit http://www.youtube.com/user/Win7FilmFest 

Enjoy!

This post was written by Devrim Iyigun, a Senior Product Manager here in Redmond.

I had a chance to attend Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009 last week in Orlando, Florida. For those of you who are at the early stages of deploying Windows 7, looking for some insider information and did not have the opportunity to attend the conference, I have a great resource I would love to share with you.

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009 is one of industry’s largest and most important annual gathering of CIOs and their senior IT leaders. This year’s event focused on how business technology can help customers return to growth by balancing cost optimization and risk mitigation. Microsoft was helping customers to understand how they can realize the benefits of Windows 7. With the general availability date for Windows 7 being October 22nd, this year’s event was quite special for the Microsoft team.

One of the Microsoft –sponsored sessions that took place is Windows 7 Early Adopter Customer Panel. In this highly visible discussion, featured Gartner Research VP & Distinguished Analyst Michael Silver facilitated the panel around Windows 7 planning, deployment and customer experience with Windows 7 Early Adopter Customers: ADP, BMW, Energizer and Pella.

The panel includes discussions about topics of importance for enterprises considering the move to Windows 7 such as application compatibility and deployment goals. ADP, BMW, Energizer and Pella share their perspective on business drivers to adopt Windows 7 and the benefits they expect to achieve with deploying Windows 7. These companies also share their deployment experience and recommendations for companies new to Windows 7 deployment.

This is your chance to get valuable insider information from Microsoft Customer industry leads.  Please click here for a replay of this webcast.

For more enterprise company case studies, information on Windows 7 cost savings or our webcast series just visit our Windows Enterprise site.

For all of your Windows 7 IT pro information, visit the Springboard Series on TechNet. The destination for Windows desktop IT professionals to Discover & Explore, Pilot & Deploy and Manage Windows 7.

Beginning today, 26 October, the Springboard/Microsoft Learning “Get On The Bus” tour will kick off an 11-city European road show that will begin in Milan and end at Tech-Ed Europe in Berlin on 9 November. At each tour stop, you’ll get an exclusive preview of Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), Med-V, App-V, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. The Career Express tour spotlights new training and certification opportunities that will sharpen your skills on next year’s hottest technologies.

Join us at a stop near you for technical training, professional networking, hands-on experiences, and real world guidance from industry experts.

Where will the bus be? Tour Dates:Milan, 26 Oct | Zurich, 27 Oct | Paris, 28 Oct | London, 29 Oct | Brussels, 30 Oct | Amsterdam, 2 Nov | Frankfurt, 3 Nov | Munich, 4 Nov | Vienna, 5 Nov | Prague, 6 Nov | Berlin, 9 Nov

We even have a web page showing you exactly where the bus is right now.

We have some great Microsoft and community experts presenting on all the topics. I will even be on the tour doing the Windows 7 sessions starting in Amsterdam Nov 2nd. So if you can’t make it to TechEd EMEA this will be one of your best opportunities to meet the experts and see the new technologies from Microsoft live and in person.

For more information on the bus tour visit The Bus Tour or follow the Twitter feed here

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave this past year you probably know that today is the official market launch of Windows 7.  While Windows 7 has been available to commercial customers since July, this milestone marks the point where the final release is now available to the general public through retail purchase or preloaded on new PCs.

It has been quite a journey—from the first beta release in January, the Release Candidate (RC) in May through the final RTM in July, IT professionals have played in instrumental role in helping make Windows 7 the best performing, most reliable and most secure Windows operating system ever.  Thank you for all of your feedback, suggestions for improvement, and support during the development process!  If you haven’t downloaded the 90 day evaluation release, you can find it here.

We hope most of you are taking the steps to prepare for adopting Windows 7 into your environment—assessing your hardware, testing your applications, and learning about the new deployment tools.  You can find helpful guidance and resources on the Springboard Series on Technet, including our recent article on the “Five Steps to Application Compatibility Readiness.”  Take a look at the Windows 7 tab, and browse through the “Discover & Explore,” “Pilot & Deploy” and “Management” sections.  In addition, you’ll find great technical drill-downs in the “Top Task” zones down the left-hand side of the site.  Finally, be sure to visit www.talkingaboutwindows.com to hear back stories from the engineers responsible for Windows 7 development, join in the conversation with other IT professionals working to adopt Windows 7, and find local events where you can join your peers and learn more about how Windows 7 can help you streamline client management.

We also understand that as an IT professional, you are often expected to offer voluntary IT services to your friends and family – which can be painful and a little thankless to say the least!  So to help you get ahead of those time consuming requests, we thought we would point out how Windows 7 will help people avoid problems and quickly remedy issues without expert intervention—um, yours to be specific.  Check out this month’s feature article, “Why You Want Friends and Family on Windows 7” for a walk through of the new features and other capabilities will help keep users PCs healthy and productive and make it easier to resolve any issues that arise.  You can find more helpful information about home use of Windows 7 in the “IT Pro at Home” zone.

We want to take a moment and thank all of you who tested the Beta and the Release Candidates. We could not have made this great product without you. We also hope that you’ll join in the community

Thank you

Stephen Rose – Sr Community Manager

Wondering what my Windows 7 sessions will be on? Now you know! (and knowing is half the battle!)

Click the image below to hear a webcast I did for Align IT in Canada on Windows 7. Special thanks for my interviewer Ruth Morton.

Kyle and Erdal talk Win 7 and Netbooks

I have had numerous requests to share my TechNet+ “ShamWow” video. I am finally giving into the pressure.

Enjoy