Yesterday was a very busy day. First there was Sanjay’s keynote. Sanjay is the driving power behind DPE (Developer & Platform Evangelism) - he’s one of the leaders I value most because of his insights in how we should approach our audiences and which audiences we should focus on for which reasons.
Apart from paving our path, he also listed the best achievements of the past fiscal year, and Nic Fillingham - my fellow Enthusiast Evangelist from the Asian-Pacific region got nominated for an award! So cool! Later during the show, Sanjay appeared back on stage painted as a fifth Kiss-member to perform a rock song (with altered lyrics) together with the coverband Kisstory. After the song, the two brand new Harley Davidsons that stood on the stage were given away through a raffle, and Nic won a Harley !!! Damn lucky b*stard!!! That was pretty Wow!
Other sessions I attended were Joe Wilson’s ‘WOW’ session (Joe is my Director in Corp) and Justin Barsotti’s ‘how to work with influentials’ session, which had a slide deck filled with very useful stats I can take home and use to go talk to BMO and the other product teams to convince them that the key to the future is in the hands of the influencers, and not in the hands of classic media and their channels. I wanted to attend a session of Windows Live, but unfortunately it was fully booked, so Nic and I roamed around to see if we could sneak in on another session like the presentation of Windows Mobile.
I really REALLY need to upgrade my device software, or switch to a device that supports the functions already because this is just awesome! I want to play around with this a soon as possible. (mental note: ask new device upgrade to IT ASAP)
After the last session we went back to the hotel and freshend up a little for the evening events. We went to the Disney Downtown thing to attend the Server/security party in the House of Blues, which was going to host a concert of Live, a popular band I like since somewhere in the 90s. Before the headline band, a coverband played kick-ass songs of the 80s and 90s from Motley Crue, Van Halen, Guns N Roses and basically every other band that has a weak spot in the heart of everyone who listened to ‘the real’ rock and metal back in the days. You could see guys in their late 20s to early 40s totally go crazy as if they were a teenager again. Dresscode of the evening was ‘Margherita or beer’, which basically meant: if you don’t carry one, you better order it now’ ;-)
Around 10.30 pm, we headed over to the original Harley Davidson factory and store for the DPE party, and I had a supergreat time. I never actually saw my vice president walking around in a sleeveless leather jacket with a bandana on his head, but hey- there’s a first time for everything. The atmosphere was pretty wild with the same Kiss cover band on stage as during the morning keynote and dozens of ‘real bikers’ who’ve parked their babies out front and they’d take you for a ride. There was a pool table made of ice (which is a supercool idea for a summerparty back home) and you could have giant ice mugs where they’d tap your beer in so it was always ice cold during the evening. The amount of swag was ridiculously huge, I hope I can still close my suitcase.
I got back at the hotel around 1.30 am and checked my pile of email, took a shower and went to bed around 3.
Got up again at 6.45 to get ready for the sessions. There’s only two before lunch and after that we go back to the arena and later on to a theme park called Adventure Island (or something). It’s the general MGX attendee party. Looks like it’s going to be great - again.
