Category Baltimization

The time is finally here! With Exchange 2010 on the horizon (Oh, and that I’m back from being out for three weeks… ) the time is finally here to finally be able to begin re-embracing Exchange

Incase you missed it, I’m a hardcore Exchange guy.  I first got into Exchange as a means to do certain functions which the mail systems at the time were unable to support, so I adopted the Exchange model in the Exchange 4.0 Timeframe (Oh, and MSMail but I won’t go there ;))

And for everyone who was ever involved in Exchange, you’ll know that like Star Trek Movies, there are good movies “Wow, that was amazing!” and there are bad ones “Wtf?! That was terrible! Oh, it’ must be an odd/even thing!”    We all experienced that with Windows versions too.  NT3.1 rocked, 3.5 sucked, 3.51 was decent, 4.0 was great, and in the Desktop Space.. Win95 was ‘eh’ win98 great, winME, WTF?! (And albeit I personally liked Vista, enough people seemed to have enough issues that it didn’t make it too technically feasible)

Well, these same rules did apply in star trek movie terms to Exchange (Yes, my very own beloved Exchange) whereby Exchange 4.0 was great (first…?) 5.0 was horrible.  5.5 was SOLID! Exchange 2000 was a nice intro, but Exchange 2003 was immaculate (for its needs) and Exchange 2007.  Well, lets just say, you’ll notice I haven’t talked about Exchange 2007 for the most part in the past 6 years.. Ever wonder if there was a reason for that?

So, it brings me great honor to say Exchange 2010 (E14) is going to be the rock which we all know it to be.    So like you, I will look forward to all the great solid things, like a management interface, configuration management.. things not being done as a SEVERE afterthought.  Pretty solid usability (Oh, and at no point have I ever disagreed with the UI/UX Experience, so my good friends in E2K7 UI/UX, none of this is a knock against you, you just had to ride the bad movie train ;))

Look out.. this blog may start to cover more Exchange related things again, considering most of my most frequently visited hits tend to be around messaging, an area I was forced out of by a terrible movie ;)

I think it’s important to make this particular distinction because a lot of people are obviously very confused about me in general!   So I’ll try to set the record straight!

For those of you who do not know me, I am extremely shy (Okay, not ultra-terribly-masterfully whereby I won’t leave the house) but I’m pretty damn shy!   Put me in a setting where I don’t know a single person, and I’ll be that guy off in the corner all alone :(  [That is an accurate representation…]

So the first thing you’re going to say is.. “Bus Tour? TechEd?! Dancing on Stage at Jam Sessions? I totally saw you with a tambourine jamming to Joey Snow! …Aren’t you a user group leader?!  You totally gave me a voucher, and my friend and interrogated me if I was an IT Pro or Developer!  Stop Yelling USB Drive sizes and throwing them to me?!” 

Okay, I’m not sure there were people who didn’t want the random swag (I tell you, dancing and handing out vouchers mid-strut is pretty cool ;))

But it bears sharing, that I like a number of people… are contextually shy.  Or respectively… Contextually NOT shy (Tech!shy?) :)    Yes, it is true.  If I don’t know anyone in a ‘crowded bar’ or something in some type of social setting I am –screwed!- hands down!   But apply an ‘assumption’ to the context  “There is a somewhat chance or probability… that they might ALSO be involved in technology?!” (It helps if you’re at a Technical Conference, or conference after party) and then all bets are off!

I like many people suffer from a condition known as “I don’t want to bother you on the off chance that we share absolutely nothing in common”  The fact that every single person in the world uses technology in one shape or form is not enough to override this feature, because just because you’re a ‘consumer’, does not mean you are a ‘user’ or beyond.    So, wearing a geek shirt usually raises the bar “ooh, potential geek! lets engage them!”

For the 2000+ or so people I met and talked to this past week, don’t go thinking I’m all mr sociable (the action, not the cracker)  because of what you saw me do, infact you can do it yourself, just commit to being ‘socially acceptable in mutually underlying company’ = win? :)

So, if it’s not a technical conference or technical event I likely won’t approach you (Great, right? ;)) so feel free to approach me, I’m very approachable albeit often oblivious :)   Who knows if I’ll break the Tech!shy to reach into other contexts, if that happens, oh my! :)

Oh, and I had an absolutely amazing time meeting each and every one of you! Especially you guys: Detroit, Ottawa, Tampa and DC – You guys were great :)

Here I am, at TechEdNA09, walking around the Partner part of the floor and I come across the Cisco Booth “Hey, want to play our game? Just answer a few questions and you could win a Flip Mino Ultra Camera!”  I’m always game, for well, playing a game so I definitely took the opportunity to try to play.   For those of you not familiar with this game, it’s a basic touch screen of a question and 4 selections (A, B, C, D) you have to choose from.

Once you press continue the game starts, and you’re off!   Well, it took me 7 seconds (Yes, 7 seconds, because I’m an idiot! But I’m only an idiot once, and for a VERY short amount of time)  but seriously, it took me 7 seconds to decide “oh, I should hit the ABCD at the bottom and not the ones on the actual questions! Oh well, hey I’m tired! Leave me alone!) all that.. in 7secs ;)

So, I answer begin going through the questions at this point… Yay! answer, answer answer, wow look at all that Cisco Marketing Value Add proposition, UCS Value? Total rock! Got that!

(It’s a good thing I got my Ph,D. in inferred marketing knowledge, understanding of how questions are typically written, and I teach “how to answer questions” classes ;)

So, 26 seconds after my little ‘wtf where do I press’  hiccup, I finish the game.

Immediately after I finish the game the person running the game said “zOMFG! That’s the fastest anyone has done it” I’m paraphrasing a little bit here ;)

She says my chances of winning are fairly high… that’s cool, taking that into consideration and the fact that I’m already here I say the most expected thing you’d want in a booth as a vendor “Hey, since I’m likely to win this, tell me about your UCS value add!”

And here is where the fatal words come about, “Oh, err, sorry.  I’m just a booth babe!”

DoH!   Many discussions ensued around this during the week because apparently, I expect more of the people in the booths “Hey, there’s an attractive woman working in a high tech booth, they must know their product pretty solid to be there”.  Yes, I do make that assumption and will continue to make that assumption (high-tech is hot?! :))

Ofcourse, when it is clearly obvious I tend to not be ‘confused’ (there was a booth run by women in cocktail dresses? I don’t remember the product, because well, I’d rather talk to people who give off the impression of knowing their stuffs? k thx bye!)

Fortunately, every other booth I encountered run by beautiful women happened to be deeply technical and could discuss not only the product at a high level, but dive into the weeds with the best of them.   (If you were fortunate to meet up with the intelligent “babes” like those representing Accusoft Pegasus, AT&T DevCentral and  DevExpress you benefited intellectually for the better!)

Disclaimer: I do not ever refer to the term ‘babes’ outside of quotes, unless I’m talking about that movie with the pig, or somehow am strangely referring to a small group of extremely small children.  But I had to fit it within the scope of the “Booth Babe” phenomenon which I frankly was oblivious to, because I find that Women in Technology tend to be extremely accomplished and typically well distinguished.

The lesson I hope you take away from this is, assume intelligence and beauty over just chalking it up to a booth babe and the “Is there a man I can talk to?” as it’s rather demeaning not only to the individual, but to all women who invest in themselves and their futures.

We are  fortunate, that beauty and brains are simply a natural mixture :)

If there’s one thing about TechEd in my experience (Apparently, my experience isn’t everyones experience.. infact, I’m not sure ANYONE else experiences this ;)) is that it is a whirlwind adventure of constantly being on the run, on the go, and occasionally… getting heckled by the competition (Erk, can I call that ‘product’ competition? We don’t sell Laptops and Dell doesn’t sell storage [snicker ;)] :)

I like business cards, as they’re a good way to stay in touch with people you’ve met, definitely, right? Oh and Twitter, that’s good for it too.     But what if you don’t have any business cards? (ran out on the 1st day;)) I adopted the model of taking a photo of you and your badge.. Win?!

Because I wouldn’t want to publish anyone’s image and name without their permission, I’ll instead give you this one! (and this lovely story.. strangely retold many times throughout the show by others ;))

Meet mr Dell Guy, I didn’t catch his name (too blurry) but he definitely caught that I work for a competitor (Hey, I’m here as an attendee!) was my common response when assaulted! Even though I did have a number of lengthy and high quality NetApp related conversations, I had just as many good quality Education and Community conversations too.   But you don’t care about that! You care about the heckling! :)

Being at the front of the line, literally in the front as a drawing is called is always a good way to find out if you’re a winner, or… if you’re going to be publicly called out on.   Oh and a competitor being mic’d to a large crowd yelling out NetApp every other word, perhaps that is just good times. ;)

For what it is worth, I did not win the laptop they were giving away (Which mr Dell did say “You can’t win!”) as I scoff being a mere ‘attendee’ :)  Although if you’re interested I did win Flip Mino Ultra from Cisco (Notice Cisco in the background) – I’ll discuss that later in another story ;)

I wish I had more time to get around and enter into drawings or try to win mega-big prizes, but it was not in the cards.. I barely could pack all the swag I DID end up taking home, so no harm no foul! :)

For some reason, as I fly from LAX to ORD, I cannot seem to find any of my photos I thought I took of the masses who welcomed the SWAG Express, err.. the Career Express as it pulled in to TechEd, but I still have some after-swag-attack photos, so I can definitely share those.

Previously on the Bus, on Day 10, we had an enjoyable night out on the town to get back to the bus by 3:45AM for Departure to get in to LA.   We made it back literally just in time to grab our bags from the hotel, board the bus, and definitely in my case – to go to sleep.

Awaking 30minutes from the Convention center, I made sure to alert the Tweetosphere of our location(s) so they could prep for a Swagtastic arrival, which they frankly did quite a good job of relieving us of swag!

The type of community and engagement was just great, and amazingly well received.   People immediately entered into conversation, catching up with old friends or meeting new ones.

I had the opportunity to attend a session too! My first and only session for TechEd09, was Ken Rosen’s session on MCITP is the new MCSE, where you (me) need to watch out when you attend sessions.. you just might get called up to answer a community question ;)

With the bus tour at it’s end, the one thing that was everyone’s mind when talking about it was, asking how it was.   While I will do a full post-mortem and additional high-lights, here is a brief description of the bus tour.    zOMFG! Amazing!  That’d be the first point to say about an event and experience like this.    If you’ve ever had the opportunity to have your eyes opened to not only aspects of community you may have never seen, but to see that which is otherwise perceived as uniform being implemented so differently across communities in the north, the south, east and west.   Things are done in unique and interesting ways in every type of CPLS, ITA, and even in training businesses from coast to coast.    

When the bus tour was announced, I was gangbusters set on trying to win this, and this is even before I would realize the full depth of the experience, but once I did I yearn for it even more.     I evangelized about this opportunity constantly within the community (and my local community) to encourage them to take advantage of this, because while this may come along again, you’ll never have been part of the first one, and that first makes all the difference!

I look forward to something like this being done again (EMEA?!:)) and definitely the opportunity to get out in front of more members of the community, helping them connect with each other and just grow, grow grow!   The friendships, relationships and all the people I met cannot be replicated, cannot be bought and the experiences will be stories and legends to tell for years to come!

I want to thank all of you for following along and reading of our adventures cross country, cross community, and for making an investment in yourself through education.