Well, the Microsoft IT Pro Townhall discussions are over and the only thing left is dinner tonight. Overall, I think that the topics that were brought up in the three panel sessions were valid and interesting. However, in some of the discussions, the responses from the Microsoft folks were a bit defensive instead of opportunistic. This could have been a great opportunity for Microsoft to get some poignant feedback from the IT Pro Community on new technology trends and in some cases, I believe they did. However, in the cases where Microsoft gave defensive answers, I believe that they missed an opportunity to ask “Ok, we see that you have a concern or suggestion, what do you (as an IT Professional) think we should do to improve our products or move toward a solution.” Getting an outside perspective on any product or service is, in my opinion, one of the best things that a company can do to foster product growth and acceptance. In the next few posts I will briefly discuss some of the topics that came up during the panel discussions and what Microsoft did right and what they could have done to improve the event.  I will post the details as I gather my notes.

FYI- I am outlining these posts before the dinner provided by Microsoft, so that I am completely free of any kool-aid influenced statements .

[tags] Microsoft, Web 2.0, Information Technology [/tags]

So, I got invited by Microsoft to attend an IT Pro Townhall Event. This is a panel discussion with many Microsoft Executives, including Steve Ballmer. I was one of the approximately 50 IT Professionals invited to Redmond, WA for the event. I arrived at 11PM Pacific and was too tired to post last night. My original flight with an arrive time of 2:20 PM got cancelled as we were heading out to the runway (long story ) Anyway, I am here now and I am looking forward to the event tomorrow. Topics of discussion will include upcoming virtualization and web technologies (two of my favorites). Dinner at a local winery is also being provided by Microsoft. I will probably post more about the meeting tomorrow (barring any NDA requirements ). For now, I am going to check out Bellevue. It’s actually not raining outside and my hotel has a great view of the hills in Bellevue, WA.

[tags] Virtualization, Microsoft, Information Technology, Harley Stagner [/tags]

I have been updating the site layout the past couple of days to take advantage of the excellent K2 theme. I have been playing with the css to make everything line up and I have learned much more about css functionality.

A special thanks goes out to both PaulStamatiou and JohnTP for their excellent K2 styling tutorials.

I am still working on the layout and theme (colors, borders, bling). If you drop by, any suggestions are always welcome. Well, it’s late and I have been looking at hex colors for way too long…

[tags] CSS, K2, Harley Stagner [/tags]