When Software Attacks!

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Server 2008 R2

We were in early today, looking forward to a session on SharePoint with Bill Engolish. Sadly, that was cancelled so Andy and I sat in on the Server 2008 R2 overview session presented by Iain McDonald. That was very interesing, and we learned a bit more about BranchCache. It doesn’t look like it will replace WAN accelerators like Riverbved, because it doesn’t appear to function at their low level. However, it does a similar thing at the file level.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, November 5, 2008

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 2 - Windows 7 Feature Preview

So, the first session of the day was an extremely well-attended overview of Windows 7 features. When they talk about evolution rather than revolution with regard to Windows 7, I think that’s accurate. It was very much about developing and extending the foundations of Vista. A few things stuck out, however. An almost throwaway comment about DirectConnect requiring IPSEC and IPv6 means that I must dig deeper, and that the technology, whilst cool, is almost totally useless to me, stuck behind two layers of NAT in a managed building.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Tech Ed EMEA IT 2008: Day 1 - Keynote

So, the keynote was interesting. Much of the content I had seen before, but there were some demos that were interesting and a few snippets that made me take note. For example, I had not understood that the acquisition of Kidaro will enable interaction between applications running within a virtual machine and the host desktop in ways that are not currently achievable. That the technology will ship as part of a new Desktop Optimisation Pack was news.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, November 3, 2008

Tech ED EMEA IT: Day 1 - Waiting for the Keynote

It’s an exercise in surreality. I’ve just walked through tunnels reminiscent of THX1138, to emerge in a wonderful blue-bathed auditorium, and they’re playing the Akira soundtrack (specifically the bit from just after the first nuclear explosion). Weird. Andy and I travelled all the way from Bradford, and the first guy we strike up conversation with… is from Salford! What are the odds? Anyway, here’s a pic of the view from our seats.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, November 3, 2008

Catching Up

I’ve been far too busy lately and whilst there have been lots of things I wanted to post about, time has not been on my side. Before I start to forget some of the points I thought a quick post was in order. @media 2008 was great. Slides and audio are just filtering onto the blog now. A highlight for me was Indi Young’s talk on Mental Models. I now have her book on my desk (waiting for having the time to read it) and I’m excited about how the technique might interface nicely with the User Stories we use for feeding requirements into our Scrum development process.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, June 13, 2008

@media 2008

After sadly missing last year due to workload, I am excited to be able to attend @media 2008 in London along with Tom and Lauren from Black Marble. If you know me and you want to meet up please get in touch!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, February 10, 2008

EMEA Project Conference: Keynote Thoughts

Well, the keynote just ended and I needed to check email so I thought I’d do a quick post. A good chunk of the keynote had already been covered by yesterday’s partner-only sessions. However, Mike Angiulo publicly announced that the Office 2007 family Service Pack 1 will be available on December 11th, 2007. I guess that means we can tell the world! I’m surprised, actually, that I haven’t noticed this on any of the SharePoint blogs I frequent.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, December 4, 2007

EMEA Project Conference - Madrid

Finally, after all the excitement that Richard and Robert had in Seattle and Barcelona, I find myself in the Auditorium Hotel, Madrid for the EMEA Project Conference. According to the multilingual sales blurb in my room, the hotel is the largest in Europe, and I must say it’s very nice. We flew in yesterday and today is an MS Partner-only day before the conference itself kicks off tomorrow. Project Server is something we’re very interested in using ourselves, and it’s integration with SharePoint (MOSS/WSS) makes it an attractive solution to anybody who has already deployed MOSS for their corporate intranet, as we have.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, December 3, 2007

Project Partner Day

Well, it’s the end of day zero, the partner-only day here at the Madrid Project Conference. It’s been an interesting day. I’m not sure what I am allowed to say, but service pack 1 for Office 2007, which covers the desktop products, sharepoint, project server et al is very close to being available now. That was an interesting announcement, as we are looking at installing Project Server in Black Marble. I’d like to wait for SP1 - it makes sense - but because SharePoint will be patched at the same time I need to do some testing of our customisations first.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, December 3, 2007

Mix:UK 07 Round-up

We’re back up north after Mix:UK 07 and I thought I’d follow up my earlier post with a few thoughts on the event and it’s content. Before I do that, however, I need to give a cheer for our guys: Jonny performed incredibly in the Guiter Hero competition to be triumphant in front of his screaming supporters, and Sam, Mat, Tom and Jonny cleaned up the the goody-bagging stakes of the Swaggily Fortunes quiz!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, September 13, 2007