Looks like Interact 2008 was considered a hit, I agree. All of the feedback I have heard, from MS and from attendees has been very positive.

Here are some of my thoughts about the event in general:

• There ended up being over 530 attendees, and with probably close to 50 MS experts, there, that puts only about 10 attendees per MS expert. Pretty good numbers, it allowed real access.
• MS put up this huge tent and called it Pub World and it was awesome. 20 foot projection TV on the wall, open bar during events, XBox stations, great food, very nice.
• The Sheraton where the event was located in was beautiful with great views, but is behind the airport on an island, so it is very isolated. This makes it hard to go anywhere. You can’t see San Diego or visit anywhere without a car. Microsoft had off-site events 2 of the 4 nights and provided transportation, so that was nice. The other 2 nights they had events at Pub World. So, for an event like this it was a good location, but as a tourist it is not very good

Here are some thoughts about my role at Interact 2008, proctoring the hands-on labs:

• Attendance was pretty low at the hands-on labs. This was what MS was expecting, since most of the labs are on Technet and with the sessions going on at the same time, it is no wonder.
• There were many people who came in and tried to do labs, but ran out of time because they wanted to get to a session. I think we need to have shorter labs next time, and /or have labs that are started and ready to go.

I look forward to next year’s event, hopefully I will be able to go again.

 I took my family with us and will post soon some of our adventures, San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park, Phil’s BBQ, Mission Beach, Cafe 222, etc.

I just finished configuring the servers and labs for the hands-on labs at Interact08 and will be heading on down on Saturday. Should be a pretty cool event. I have been impressed by the amount of people and level of expertise Microsoft is sending to this event.

I am taking my family and will hit the San Diego Zoo and maybe Seaworld. I think my son  Elias will have a blast seeing the animals. My daughter  Anaya might be a little too young.

Anyway, should be an interesting trip. I will blog more later after the event.

I know this is of no importance to anyone but me, but I finally solved a Rubik’s cube.  My wife bought one last fall and I started playing with it. It is surprising how easy it is once you know the algorithms you need to move the squares around.

It’s official, our sessions have been accepted by Exchange Connections:

 http://www.devconnections.com/shows/SP2008EXCH/default.asp?c=3&s=116

Hope to see you there!

Our presentation has been accepted by Interact 2008 in San Diego. We will be developing 12 OCS and Exchange Labs that I will setup, proctor and present. Should be fun.

This is also in April, same as WinConnections and another conference that my wife is going to. It is going to be a busy April!

I have seen that some people have had problems getting the MSI’s for the Console and for the Outlook Add-in. I got them to extract and thought I would post the MSI’s here in case anyone else needed them.

http://www.thomforeman.com/LMConsole.zip

and

http://www.thomforeman.com/LMAddinPack.zip

OCS Public Beta to RTM Migration Guide

This is way late but here is the OCS 2007 Public Beta to RTM Migration Guide.

LSU is probably the best football team and program in the country right now, but I don’t think they didn’t deserve to be in this game. Here is why I think this.
We were told all year how good LSU was, how they had the talent, the coach and the program. But, they kept losing games. They lost those games because they weren’t the best TEAM on the field that day. Football is a TEAM sport, probably moreso than any other sport.  I think that as a TEAM they didn’t deserve to be in this game.

Who should have been? I certainly don’t think that Kansas or Hawaii deserved to be there, they played horrible schedules in bad conferences too. I am not sure who should have been there. I think that we should have a playoff system. Like the top 4 teams play. No more bitching (except by the #5 team).

Just my thoughts.

I just made a Technorati profile and my blog is now internationally ranked!

I am number  8,911,336th! Watch out world!

I am doing some research for a course I am developing and found some resources for Quintum gateways and OCS. I thought I would share them:

http://www.quintum.com/microsoft/index.html

I am working with all three vendors that work with OCS and have to say that I am getting great help and fast responses from Quintum.  I will post whatever I develop (if it is allowed) here on this site. I do not mean to slam the other vendors, I am just commenting on how helpful Quintum has been.