‘And the Oscar goes to……..’
Excitement on the bus as we pull up in front of InfoSupport in Veenendaal, The Netherlands. We are surprised and humbled by the bright spotlights, a red carpet and two giant golden Oscar statues. Tonight is a night at the movies, and it is Oscar night. I’m awestruck and forget that I’m holding a large box of T-Shirts as I make my way across the red carpet. I need to take a ‘second shot’ at that, this is NOT a movie star appearance and I’ll need to work on ‘playing the part’ better :-).
Just over 100 people await, they are enjoying hot dogs, brownies and pop corn. There’s a large screen showing our Bus LiveTracker, they’ve been watching us make our way to the event. Then the music plays – Born in the USA – and we start. Thomas de Klerk from InfoSupport opens the event, Janett Garcia-Riseland, our director of marketing and sales, welcomes everyone and Liberty dives into The Truth about Certification. InfoSupport have given each speaker a special musical intro it seems, Ian takes the stage and as he gets ready to go into Exchange Server 2010, we laugh as we hear Elvis sing ‘Return to Sender, address unknown’. ‘That will NOT happen in Exchange 2010 and I’ll tell you why’ is Ian’s defiant response. Ian makes true on his promise and details both the IT PRO and end user benefits of Exchange Server 2010.
Stephen is listed as the ‘feature movie’ and after a Dutch song (Zeven Levens i.e. Seven Lives), Stephen goes into Windows 7 with no holds barred. It is exactly what the audience wants him to do, by show of hands the vast majority have installed and reviewed Windows 7 and from the questions Stephen gets it is clear people are eager to hear more about what deployment looks like, the tools that can help etc.
I linked to one of InfoSupport ads last week when we visited their Belgian office, here’s another that is extremely funny. I love the spirit of innovation, creativity and knowledge, but it all comes alive as these people insist on making IT so much FUN. (Max, you are very talented, hope you will use your powers for the Good side of the Force in future ;-))
After such a fantastic Night at the Oscars, we are in high spirits on the bus. We continue our journey and are now headed towards Frankfurt, Germany. We get a few hours of sleep on the bus, to arrive and wake up at 2:30 AM in Frankfurt. We sleepwalk towards our hotel rooms, actually, Ken sleepwalks towards the Konferenz Raume – does he feel he needs to present again? :-)
By the way, have you read Bob Simms ‘Unauthorized’ blog on QA’s website? I really recommend it, it is extremely funny and reading it is my favorite start of the day! Keep it coming Bob, you absolutely rock!
The Oscar of course goes to InfoSupport, for running such a creative and energizing event, everyone had such a good time!