As Barney from “How I Met Your Mother” would say “Legen…wait for it…dary!” Andrew Bettany put together a legendary event for us in York. Professionally organized with a keen eye for detail and perfection. All attendees had name tags with the Get On The Bus logo on them. The University of York found sponsors for the event who put together a “goodie” bag, also ‘bus branded’, for all attendees. Sandwiches and assorted snacks were also provided at a pre-event reception, and the session was held in an auditorium with stadium seating. More than 150 people attended the event, or should I say participated in the event, it was an incredibly lively evening with many questions.
Tjeerd did his Windows 7 demo and David presented on Exchange Server 2008. Tjeerd had some technical problems during one of his demos. Of course, he handled them gracefully, but I know that Tjeerd was upset that the session didn’t run smoothly because he is a perfectionist. All in all, I think the audience was still amazed by the many cool features Tjeerd squeezed into 30 minutes of Windows 7.The audience loved the great new features in Exchange too, especially mail tips and the new way emails will be archived (say goodbye to pst files).
With only 10 minutes left before we had to leave to catch the bus to take us to the train that would take us to Belgium, I had a question and answer session on certification exams. As I’ve said before, I love questions. The harder, the better. I love it when you challenge my thinking so I can make our certification exams as good as they can possibly be. So, I was in my element, and so, apparently, where the attendees. I was asked questions on everything from which exam should I take to why didn’t we have “expert” level Office 2007 exams to what are we doing to ensure that the exam content is real world and relevant. There were so many questions in fact that I didn’t get a chance to answer them all, which makes me very sad. If you have a question for me, please ask. I can’t answer them if I don’t know what you’re wondering.
York—no pudding and no peppermint patties but lots of people interested in the new features of Exchange Server 2010 and Windows7 and the ins and outs of our certification exams. Seriously, the event was legendary!