MMS 2011: Day One
So I arrived yesterday for the yearly Microsoft Management Summit. Man, what a long day. Left the house at 1:30, didn't hit the sack at the Luxor until 10:00pm.
Registration was a breeze. Simply walk up to an open window (there are 10), flash your picture ID, and bang! You've got your attendee badge and lanyard. Also given out is a very nice gray backpack, with a special compartment for your laptop. Contained in the back is large stack of various sales docs from the sponsors, and a cool little eco-friendly water bottle.
The attendee services area, in the same large room as the Registration desk, provides comfortable places to sit and chat, as well as free wifi if you really need to keep in contact with the home office. There are also three hands-on labs areas, so you can go through any of the lab sessions you might have missed, or even re-do labs that you already attended.
Very busy day. Got to listen to some really good talks, especially one given by Eduardo Kassner, regarding desktop strategy. Basically he preached, "Don't let your devices dictate IT procedures and policies. Let your policy dictate what device is right for a particular worker." Only he said it much better.
There were some good labs yesterday as well. I got to play a bit with SCOM 2012, which is pre-beta yet. Yup, I killed it a couple times. But it's all good, just needed to re-open the console.
Another good one was the AVIcode lab. AVIcode is a standalone program that works along with SCOM to troubleshoot problems with applications that might be misbehaving. We can get total transaction time, end-to-end, throught all tiers. So what that means, we can actually get an idea of what the user is experiencing, and in which tier (of multi-tier applications) to start troubleshooting. Looks like it can actually get right down to the line of code or module that caused the problem, or even what SQL query was passed to the database from the app. Very cool stuff.
First thing after breakfast Tuesday will be the Keynote Address, given by Brad Anderson, VP of the management and security division at Microsoft. Really looking forward to this as well.
Following the keynote I have another full day of labs and lectures, with a surprise at the end. The good folks at HP have set up a private showing of the Lamborghini exhibit at the Palazzo. Now just being in the same room with all that wealth would be enough for me, but they are taking it up a notch. The attendees of the showing will be able to throw their names in a hat, and one lucky winner will get a test drive of a Lamborghini, while another winner will be able to go for a ride in a Ferrari F450.
For me, the neat trick will be to fold myself twice in order to fit into the vehicle. These things were designed for someone not quite five and a half feet tall. It will be fun trying to squeeze my 6 foot four inch frame into this tiny, tiny supercar.
More to come tomorrow, summarizing my activities for day two.
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