Month: December 2005

Rock the Launch

The launch videos asked if we were ready to be rocked, and I know one person who was totally rocked by The Launch.

A little background: one of my consulting clients wants to upgrade their website, with multiple branding based on URL used to access the site.  At my suggestion, they waited on the upgrade until the .NET 2.0 was launched, since I felt the versatility of Master Pages and other new additions would make our lives a tremendous amount easier.  They didn’t want to buy new software, so I told them to register for the “Best Of” event in Pittsburgh, which was held Thursday (12/1), and they’d get a copy of VS 2005 for free.  Their guy attended both the SQL Server and VS sessions, and the MS Events folks can claim “Mission Accomplished” with at least one person.

At the SQL Server 2005 session, my client saw for the first time SQL Server Integration Services and Reporting Services.  The company uses an old Oracle-based ERP system that doesn’t provide much in the way of business intelligence, which hurts their competitiveness in today’s environment.  All morning, visions of a new data warehouse with a reporting front end danced through my client’s mind.  Knowing they just added a new Windows 2003 file server, I suggested they look into Windows Sharepoint Services as an intranet, and explained a little of the integration with reporting services and WSS.

Once he saw Master Pages in action, he felt my recommendation to take advantage of technology was very sound, and wondered when could we get started.

My client walked away from one day’s events with a whole new outlook on how to make use of his company’s data, and the tools to provide a proof-of-concept to the decision makers.  He was rocked.

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Now playing: Povertyneck Hillbillies – One Night In New Orleans

Downloadsquad: “We love Microsoft’s recent openness.”

Naked Conversations covered it in depth, and now Downloadsquad’s Ten Things We Love About Microsoft includes Microsoft embracing employee blogging:



So many Microsoft employees write blogs. Whether it is an astute marketing ploy or not is yet to be determined, but hearing from the likes of Omar Shahine and Chris Pratley is a good thing. The spread of blogging throughout Microsoft has added a humanizing quality to the company that you can’t imagine coming from other tech behemoths like IBM or (especially) Apple.


Besides humanizing, the information in these blogs will be a huge driver of another entry on the list: Microsoft’s wealth-creation machine.